Few products typify American consumerism as well as household cleaners. Capitalizing on our insecurities, manufacturers and marketers have transformed a mundane collection of products into over an $18 billion market of household helpers. We’re constantly told we’ll humiliate ourselves if our toilet bowls and counter tops don’t sparkle as well as our neighbors’ do.

Marketing hyperbole aside, modern cleaners are significantly more effective than their predecessors. Synthetic cleaning agents, anti-redeposition agents, bleaches, builders, enzymes and optical brighteners have produced a generation of products that work under more varied conditions, against more forms of dirt, in colder water, and with less time and effort than ever before. But in our attempts to get our clothes whiter than white and homes cleaner than clean, we’ve accepted a plethora of chemicals whose presence in our homes raises very serious health and environmental concerns.

Click here to download The Seventh Generation Guide to a Toxin-Free Home