NIH resource on products

[Lynn]

Today on one of my conservation listservs, I got this nifty announcement from NLM's National Institute on Health:

Date: 3 Sep 2003
From: Dan Riss <dan_riss@nps.gov>
Subject: Household products database

The National Library of Medicine has a new web site
<URL:http://householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov> that contains chemical data on household products. Over 4,000 products are listed. Each product listing, compiled from the MSDS, has information about the manufacturer, health effects, HMIS ratings for health, flammability and reactivity to help label decanted bottles, handling and disposal, and chemical ingredients.

Sure 'nuf, if you go to that site and click on "Products," there is tons of info on some of the major brands of auto detailing products -- chemical composition, MSDS facts, etc. Thanks to the work NIH has done, even for products that do not share MSDSs, you can get some info about their chemical components.

Though I'm no chemist, the preliminary searching I have done leads me to believe this could help some of us figure out which products actually have petroleum distillates, which have carnauba, etc. I'm probably not smart enough to really understand all that's in this online database, but I hope some of you will find it useful.

[carguy]

This is great info - thanks for posting.

I wish it had better product coverage - more are missing than are there.

I wish it were a little clearer in terms of use - I like this (nearly meaningless) sentence: "The query is searched as individual text words in sections of the MSDS such as: Acute Health Effects, Chronic Health Effcts, Carcinogenicity, and First Aid.

Is "Chronic Health Effects" an individual text word?

And the last thing is that, in reviewing some car care products I learned that Carnauba is considered a "mild skin irritant." But then I saw it is an ingredient in a myriad of cosmetic products!!!

Oh well, better than not having it ...

[Lynn]

Yeah, I agree: For our purposes there are some severe limitations. Not nearly enough Auto Detailing products are listed yet. I think it was actually designed for people worried about what their children might ingest. But, in my VERY limited web-knowledge, it's one of the first places where I've found I could search and compare some of the more common products.

carguy, I didn't look closely enough. Is there a "feedback" option on that site, where we could suggest other products to include or improvements in the descriptions?