Families Against Cancer & Toxics

Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona

Don't ask Arizona's state environmental agency for advice on green cleaners. It legally can't give any.

In 1997, the Legislature passed a law forbidding the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality from suggesting less-hazardous substitutes for household consumer products, unless the information is "competent and reliable and based on a test, analysis, research, study or other evidence that yields accurate and reliable results."

Alternatives to pesticides can't be promoted unless the federal government has registered them or exempted them from registration.

At the time, chemical industry lobbyists said ADEQ needed restraining because it produced errors in brochures making household products look more dangerous than alternatives.

Manufacturers found fault with a suggestion to use vinegar in water instead of linoleum cleaners and waxes. Vinegar is a 3 percent solution of acetic acid, itself a volatile organic compound, they said.

Today, the state doesn't use studies to weigh a product's "greenness" because the law's wording is so vague, said ADEQ spokesman Tom Marcinko.

"Because there is no industry to test whether a little soapy water helps with aphids or whether boric acid will help with cockroaches … and because these products are not 'registered' as pesticides, they cannot recommend most of this in lieu of some nasty chemical that we know kills stuff, but is bad for people or the environment," said Sandy Bahr, a Sierra Club lobbyist in Phoenix.

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