Tag: Asthma

CDC Confirms: Less is More When it Comes to Disinfecting

Posted on by Doug Gatlin

Last Summer, I warned of a dangerous trend of over-disinfecting buildings to reassure people about safety amid the pandemic – with minimal effectiveness at reducing virus spread and significant risks to people’s health from toxic chemicals.  Now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has updated its guidance to confirm that regular cleaning is preferable to disinfecting most of the time.  

When is disinfecting appropriate? The CDC now says to disinfect when someone confirmed to be infected with COVID-19 has been in the building within the past 24 hours.  

This is the same guidance Green Seal provided last Summer in our Safer Guidelines for COVID-19 Disinfecting for Schools and Workplaces, a free public resource that is now being implemented in more than 1 billion square feet of building space, including by Green Seal-certified cleaning services.  


Why Disinfecting Can Harm Instead of Help

It has been clear for some time that dousing a space in hazardous disinfecting chemicals won’t do much to prevent the spread of COVID-19. There are two main reasons for this: COVID-19 is much more likely to spread through person-to-person and airborne transmission than it is through surface-to-person transmission, and coronaviruses are relatively easy to kill on surfaces with plain old soap and water (or regular cleaning solutions).

There is a natural instinct to turn to the harshest chemicals available to attack a nasty virus, but the CDC’s new guidance should reassure us all that we can follow the science to avoid a dangerous reliance on disinfection. Doing so will avoid health risks ranging from cancer to serious respiratory disease – an especially grave risk for vulnerable populations such as children and the 1 in 13 Americans with asthma.

Not All Disinfectants are Created Equal 

For the times when disinfecting is appropriate, some disinfecting products are safer than others. Green Seal has curated U.S. EPA’s List N: Disinfectants for Coronavirus to help you identify safer ones.

Unlike other active ingredients commonly found in disinfectants, the active ingredients we recommend are not linked to asthma, cancer, endocrine disruption, DNA damage or skin irritation. Find our list of recommended ingredients and products here. 

Why We’re Certifying Safer Alcohol-Based Hand Sanitizers

Posted on by Taryn Tuss

Green Seal is now certifying hand sanitizers that meet the highest standard for safety and performance in the marketplace.

With the COVID-19 pandemic spurring many first-time producers to enter the market, the FDA has warned consumers to avoid hundreds of hand sanitizers because of high levels of hazardous ingredients including methanol (wood alcohol) and the contaminant 1-propanol.  Meanwhile, even when properly formulated, hand sanitizers can include hazardous ingredients linked to cancer, allergies, and skin and eye irritation – even if they have an ecolabel.  

With our new certification program, Green Seal is providing consumers, purchasers and facility managers a simple way to identify hand sanitizers that meet the highest standard for health, safety and performance.  

The Highest Standard of Clean

Formulating with healthier ingredients is vital for a product that people apply to their skin dozens of times a day. Our new certification standard, created with input from public health and industry experts, screens 100% of alcohol-based hand sanitizer product formulas for:

  • carcinogens
  • reproductive toxins
  • skin irritants
  • phthalates
  • parabens, and
  • contaminants

And as always, consumers can be confident that Green Seal-certified products meet uncompromising performance standards, do not pollute waterways, and use environmentally preferable packaging materials.

Verification By a Trusted Authority 

Our new hand sanitizer certification program is part of our commitment to leverage our expertise in healthy and sustainable cleaning and facility care to help protect people from both COVID-19 and negative health impacts from toxic chemicals. 

  • Green Seal’s Guidelines for Safer Cleaning and Disinfection for schools and workplaces have been adopted by commercial cleaning companies servicing more than 1 billion square feet of space.
  • We’ve partnered with SEIU 32BJ, the largest union of property service workers in the U.S., on COVID-19 training for its members.
  • More than 30,000 Green Seal certified products are used in offices, schools and homes each day, including cleaning products and hand soaps critical to de-contaminating buildings and protecting people.

Learn more about Green Seal certification for hand sanitizers here. 

A Trend in COVID-19 Cleaning Is Hazardous to Your Health

Posted on by Doug Gatlin

COVID-19 has precipitated a worrying cleaning trend that’s getting little airtime – excessive exposure to hazardous cleaning and disinfecting chemicals that itself can endanger health. To reassure people about the safety of indoor spaces during the pandemic, some workplaces are turning to unnecessary or even counterproductive cleaning and disinfection methods – a practice the Atlantic calls “hygiene theater.” 

The Best Disinfecting Tool is Accurate Information 

After physical distancing and mask-wearing, the best tool to combat COVID-19 is accurate information. We have good reason to believe that schools and workplaces don’t need to turn to hazardous methods to effectively clean and disinfect for COVID-19.  Consider that:

  • COVID-19 is most likely to spread through person-to-person and airborne transmission. In fact, no specific reports of transmission from surface-to-person had been recorded as of the July 9 publication of this World Health Organization report.
  • Coronaviruses, such as the COVID-19 virus, are relatively easy to kill on environmental surfaces.

While companies are increasingly asking for or advertising frequent disinfecting, as a general rule only high-touch surfaces (such as door handles and elevator buttons) should be frequently disinfected. Applying the product correctly is also important, as over-using a product will not be more effective at killing the COVID-19 virus and leads to waste and unnecessary chemical exposure.

Foggers Are Poor Choices For Schools and Offices

Application technologies like foggers are being heavily marketed as COVID-19 disinfecting solutions. These are a poor choice for school and office environments – they promote hazardous levels of chemical exposure without any benefit, as there is no evidence that they are more effective than traditional application methods. 

As some schools prepare to reopen, administrators should consider that disinfectants can include ingredients linked to asthma, cancer and endocrine disruption. Applying them in excess can create significant health risks for students and staff, including – ironically – serious respiratory disease.  

This is an especially grave risk for the 1 in 13 Americans with asthma – a group the CDC has identified as high-risk for COVID-19. Choosing safer proven-effective products, especially those that do not contain asthmagens or respiratory irritants, is critical for protecting high-risk groups. (Green Seal’s list of recommended safer COVID-19 disinfectants is here.)

Hazardous Chemicals May Do More Harm Than Good

Dousing a space in hazardous chemicals won’t necessarily better prevent the spread of COVID-19, but it will lead to significant health risks for those inside. The good news is that there are effective ways disinfect for COVID-19 while protecting health, safety and indoor air quality. 

Green Seal’s Safer COVID-19 Disinfecting Guidelines are a free resource for comprehensively protecting the health of building occupants and cleaning personnel during the pandemic.  And Green Seal’s public health lead Nina Hwang provides additional information on safe and effective disinfection here.