[Ironman433]

My neighbor just had to have their 5 year old German Shepherd put down due to liver failure. The dog was completely healthy until a few weeks ago, so they had a Necropsy done to see what the cause was. The liver levels were unbelievable as if the dog had ingested poison of some kind. The dog was kept inside and when he was outside someone with always him so the idea of him getting into something unknown was hard to believe.

My neighbor started going through all of the cleaning items in the house. When he got to the Swiffer WetJet, he noticed (in very tiny print) a warning which stated "May Be Harmful To Small Children And Animals". He called the company to ask what the active ingredients of the cleaning agent were and was astounded to find out that antifreeze is one of the ingredients. (Actually he was told it's a compound which is one molecule away from ethylene glycol that is found in antifreeze.) Simply from the dog walking on the floor cleaned with the solution and licking it’s paws and eating from the dog bowls which were also on the same floor, it had ingested enough of the solution to destroy its liver.

I decided to go to Swiffer's website to make sure my info was correct - spelling the product correctly, copy and paste the ingredients if I could, etc... I searched for the list of active ingredients which MAY HAVE BEEN THERE SOMEWHERE!! But after not seeing them after several tries I followed their Pet Care link to PET HEALTH: HOUSEHOLD PET SAFETY MYTHS DEBUNKED and this was their information on the cleaning solution:

Pet Health Myth #3

Deadly Household Cleaners: A frantic email message has probably landed in your in–box warning about chemicals in water–based cleaning products (used to clean household floors) causing liver damage in family pets.

So is the Internet rumor true? Can these products cause damage to your pet’s health? Absolutely not, say veterinary toxicologists at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ (ASPCA) Animal Poison Control Center in Illinois.

These cleaning products contain mostly water, in addition to chemical cleaning ingredients. "These ingredients are safe to use around pets when used according to label directions and would not cause liver damage at product concentrations," say ASPCA veterinary toxicologists. The chemicals, they note, differ significantly from ethylene glycol – the potentially toxic ingredient present in most antifreeze products.

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For what it's worth... Since I do most of the cleaning these days with what appears to be my permanently UNEMPLOYED status and I just watched the trash collection truck drive off with our Swiffer and Clorox sweeper/duster chingadaruses... AND because we already put our Spike #1 to rest after he drowned 5/09 here...

I don't think testing to see if their MythBuster Skills are of JOURNEYMAN quality or not is worth risking (Spike #2) JUNIOR and MITZI's life to prove them right/wrong... I'll just use the wring-out type mop and a few drops of beach in hot water from now on...