Clorox has launched an improved consumer website that lists product ingredients and provides access to Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS). You just click on the logo of your favorite brand and it lists the ingredients, along with a description of what that ingredient does from a “usefulness” point of view. From a transparency point of view, it’s very helpful and a great step forward. My only major complaint is that the site does not tell you easily what each ingredient is like from a “hazardous” point of view. That’s where the MSDS’s are interesting.

For example, if you look up Formula 409, you will find 3 hazardous ingredients listed including n-Alkyl (C12-16) Dimethylbenzyl Ammonium Chloride, n-Propoxypropanol, and Monoethanolamine. You can then check out those hazards on The Environmental Working Group site as well as The US Occupational Safety & Health Administration and US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. What you find out about the ingredients for Formula 409 is:

• N, N-Alkyl(C12-16) Dimethylbenzyl Ammonium Chloride: listed as a moderate hazard by the Environmental Working Group and has been linked to cancer, immune and respiratory problems, skin and eye irritations, and is a suspected mutagen.

• N-Propoxypropanol: an alcohol that can cause skin and eye irritation and can affect the central nervous system. When involved in fire, it can create irritating vapors and toxic gases, such as carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.

• Monoethanolamine: a flammable, corrosive metal that is known to cause skin and eye irritation, affect the central nervous system (creating lethargy), can be toxic to humans if swallowed and can harm aquatic life when exposed in large amounts.

No shocker—pretty nasty stuff. It was also interesting to check out their Greenworks line, which I didn’t know much about. I was surprised to see pretty typical natural cleaning ingredients and nothing hiding that was a big green no-no. A few checks of other sources to confirm what I thought–and yes, Clorox Greenworks is pretty green from a health standpoint.

But let’s be practical, who the heck has time to be checking out MSDS’s on products or doing the random google walk through scientific journals to figure out whether a chemical is good or not. That’s one of the reasons I am loving the Good Guide–which ranks products on health, environment, and corporate responsibility using a simple numerical scale. Greenworks, for example, gets a good grade (7) on health, but does not do as well in the other categories. The “best” all purpose cleaner, in terms of health, environment, and social responsibility was Method.

I am a big believer that improvement is what matters when embracing green and in that sense, it is GREAT that Clorox is putting more information out there for people like you and me. But unless that information is accompanied by something to translate ingredient mumbo-jumbo into easy to understand connections between ingredients and health and environmental risk, it stops short of being truly transformative. Maybe that’s coming in version 3.0?