Posted on 02/11/2008 2:36:16 PM PST by Kimmers
Indiana banned phosphorus-based detergents twenty-five years ago. Home dishwashers were rare then, so they were excluded.
Dishwasher detergents sold in Indiana still contain up to eight percent phosphorus which, along with nitrogen, remains a major cause of algae in lakes and streams.
Now the state legislature wants to close that loophole with a ban on the sale of phosphorus-based dishwasher soap after July 1, 2010.
Thomas Easterly, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, says soap manufacturers will have an enzyme-based product available by the deadline that will clean dishes well.
Commercial dishwashers, such as those used in restaurants, will remain exempt from the ban. Scientists haven't found a way to prevent the extremely high water temperature in those machines from killing the enzyme in the new formula.
The bill banning phosphorus-based dishwasher soap slipped easily through the senate's environmental committee after originating in the house chamber.
I think it is a clean bill... (rim shot)
>says soap manufacturers will have an enzyme-based product available by the deadline that will clean dishes well.
nope...
Whew,,,,,I used to stay up nites worrying about this, now I can sleep easy..and I don’t even live in IN!
I used to live in Indy but one can certainly hope this will encourage other states to do the same.....sarc of course
Didn’t MN do this a while back ?
Aw geez, that means my state will soon adopt this nonsense...thanks for the heads up,,,,,I'm in MA, BIG TIME nanny state........
They’d be smarter to ban triclosan from soaps.....since it is like an overused antiobiotic reducing our abililty to fight germs
We should cram the soap into the politician’s mouths.
Well, I’m going out and buy up my fav dishwashing soaps and I will store them and have them for a long time to come.
Dishwashers were rare in 1983 in Indiana? I’m glad I lived in Texas. I had a dishwasher, microwave, and a VCR in 1983.
Jeez, figuring that an acre of alfa-alfa hay requires maybe 50 pounds of phosphorus per per, and there is lots of hayfields in Indiana, ya just gotta wonder whether the Hoosier legislature doesn’t have too much time on its hands.
NC hssn’t allowed the use of phosphates for a long time. Even though we have one of the world’s biggest phosphate plants in Aurora! The red tide swept through here a few years ago and they blamed it on everything. No one—not one single official—said a word about the tanker load of fert—leaking tanker—that left the state port, trailing fert the whole way. The red tide was so bad here for a week or two that you couldn’t go outside. It would literally take your breath. People who lived/worked on the beach got all kinds of interesting rashes/problems.
Well, we didn’t have a microwave, but here in Indy, we had a dishwasher in 1963.
This racist hatred of algae has to stop.
They have already passed the same types of laws here in Washington. at the time the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, dishwashers were only in about 2% of all businesses and homes and were exempted at that time.
The “problem” we face now is that the enviroweenies can’t get a foothold to force agri-industries to stop making/using these products so they will come after your local city governments to install expensive and unproven technology at the waste water treatment plant. I am the PW Director here in a city of 15,000 and we just paid $19.4M to upgrade our plant over that last two years which was completed in June 2007. Dept. of Ecology shows up for their annual review in December and says oh by the way you will soon be treating to remove phosphurous,nitrates, and temperature. Our consultants have estimated that to install these new processes will cost an additional $15M...
The DOE reps also mentioned that the other large problem besides dishwashers is the flow of illegal soap products from Mexico!!!! I said if the government can’t stop illegal immigration than how are you planning on stopping illegal soap!!!!
The phosphates in the old laundry detergents worked great, but were/are really bad for the environment. In the end, I don’t think this is such a bad thing overall. I don’t miss the algae blooms and the foam on the water surface of most lakes and streams since they banned the use of them.
I’ll conceed that this was/is a good idea.
I like the fact that a soap bill slipped easily through the legislature. (Maybe it was greased.)
As far back as I can remember my family had a dish washer. I don't think dishwashers were all that rare in the 1960's.
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