clean rage

You know the brain-liquidising cliche: the detergent ad that shows you a mythical, spotless, sparkling kitchen that contains an angelic brat. Said brat drops a jam sandwich (or lolipop or some other shite) on the glistening floor. Brat retrieves its snack and proceeds to heartily lick and chew it. (Oh Christ! we're supposed to gasp, did you see that? isn't it terrible!). But Mother grins knowingly at the camera with a nauseating combination of gleaming joy and smugness. Is it really safe for your brat to eat that dropped nosh? we are supposed to ask rhetorically. Only if you fork out for our fantastic chemically product to clean up your filthy, stinking house, hint the ads with the finesse and subtlety of a belly dancing ass.

Yes, the brainwashing mantra that these ads seem to be putting over is that you really can protect your little uns from some unimaginable peril by hosing everything down with their beloved detergents. However, there is a tiny problem. On the one hand, it is laudable to clean up grot; dropped food; anything exposed to meat; etc. Indeed, many take-away/restaurant food kitchens are filthy, and food poinsoning is only a phone call away. But a sense of balance is being lost in the house. Cleaning product ads tend to encourage people to go mad and smear chemicals all over their domestic floors and surfaces at every opportunity. The problem is that cleaning chemicals are toxic to bacteria, and by extention, toxic to other types of biological cell, cells in a child's body, and cells in your body, to pick two examples at random.

There are three further points here. Firstly: disinfecting houses and other entities with antiseptic/detergent chemicals will create plagues of super-bacteria that are resistant to these chemicals. (Natural selection will select those bacteria that are best able to withstand the toxins, and will favour gene combinations and mutations that further increase this resistance). Such resistant super-bugs will be extremely difficult to eradicate. These bugs would generate nightmares for hospitals, and may one day exterminate healthy people in the West (if there are any healthy people left in that region) including the brats in the ads.

Secondly: there is scientific evidence that sparkly-clean houses can really screw up kids' health. This morbid irony arises because we evolved to be exposed to dirt as kids. The immune system must have plenty of exposure to grot and grime to function normally later in life. This conjecture is known as educating the immune system. The modern Western epidemic of allergies, including asthma, eczema, hay fever and other illnesses, is beleived to be a direct consequence of kids living in dwellings that are too clean! Over-protective parents can be a child's worst enemy. Not entirely sans wisdom does ancient folklore decree that if a babe hasn't gobbled through double its weight in dirt by the time it is about two, then it's doomed.

Thirdly, cleaning products wreck the environment. The energy intensive manufacture, distribution and disposal of these detergents and the plastic bottles they come in, creates polution of many kinds. Then, once they are used, these chemicals end up in lakes and rivers, in wildlife and in you and me. Amongst other things, detergents, and chemicals used to make them, may be "endocrine disrupters" - gender benders to you and me. Oh, and did I mention the increased chance that unnecessary animal testing is carried out because of our thirst for these chemicals? (Disclaimer: in my opinion, not all animal testing is unjust: for example, two words: cancer research).

Not all muck is good. Aside from the examples given above, cats can screw your brain, and carpets are a trap for toxic dust, so they should be hoovered often. (Carpet dust derives some of its toxicity from residues of household cleaning chemicals).

Kids will inevitably be in contact with, and ingest, harmful chemicals in cleaning products that are smeared and sprayed so lovingly all over the house. Then you have detergents that haven't been rinsed from plates, and end up in your next dinner. (Despite what those ads say, those soft, lemony bubbles are NOT good for your hands, or for your insides, though at least the ads don't go so far as to say washing up liquid tastes nice. Not yet...).

Unfortunately the (over-washed?) masses get much of their knowledge [sic] from adverts. The smirking mother in the ad does not let slip that she is inadvertently wrecking her poor brat's health.

Marketing for cleaning products is not only misleading, it is hazardous to the environment, to public health and creates a hellish drain on health services resources. I'm not advocating we should live in a sty and wallow in six inches of muck, but we're close to the opposite extreme. After all, research consistently shows that kids that are routinely exposed to soil and grot - kids raised on farms for example - are far less prone to asthma, eszema, etc than kids brought up in clean households. Cleanroom environments may be necessary for semiconductor chip manufacturing, but they can be literally lethal to children.

Every household cleaner/detergent ad should be forced to admit, CLEANING PRODUCTS CAN REALLY FUCK UP YOUR HEALTH AND YOUR KIDS' HEALTH!

There is one deadly flaw in this plan for health warnings on cleaning products: people will surely try to smoke them.




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