The Home: Down the Drain

Modern man is beginning to suffer for his syndets.

Syndet stands for synthetic detergent. Handed in sudsy quantity to the happy housewife after World War II, syndets proved so popular that they now account for 70% of all household cleansers, marketed under a series of bouncy monosyl lables as synthetic as themselves — Tide, Fab, Cheer, Breeze, Duz, Surf. During 1961, U.S. housewives bought 3,469,114,000 lbs., or $831 million worth.

Such popularity is indeed deserved: syndets do the job better. They dissolve the greasiest grease and dirtiest dirt, leave no scum behind, make clothes cleaner and cutlery more coruscating. But the result of all this cleanliness is a mountain of foam. Most of it is created by the high-sudsing detergents used for household work or washing dishes in the sink. Such detergents sometimes cause foam to back up stories high in the pipes of tall apartment buildings. A high-sudsing syndet falling through a pipe from the 15th floor may enlarge itself 17,000 times by the time it hits the basement. The widespread use of low-sudsing detergents (among them: All, Dash, Fun, Spin) would help vastly to solve the problem, but they are nowhere near as popular — one building management firm offered to supply upper-floor dwellers with a low-sudsing detergent free of charge, but without success.

Some washing machine manufacturers, recognizing the problem, have recommended low-suds detergents for their machines. But housewives, who tend to equate sudsiness with cleanliness, do not always take their advice.

The foam is not only gushing out of bathroom drains and kitchen sinks; it is also pouring out of faucets. In many suburban areas, such as New York’s Suf folk County, a glass of water from the tap is likely to have a detergent head on it like a schooner of beer. The city dweller does not suffer nearly so much from syn dets in his water, but he probably does most to contribute to the syndet problem.

Foam from sewerage syndets sometimes piles up five feet high on rivers, and volcanoes of it belch and billow over the aeration tanks of sewage-disposal plants, to be windborne for blocks, blighting vegetation and stinging eyes.

Gourmet’s Delight. The reason for all the trouble is that most syndets are made of petroleum derivatives that are all but indestructible. Instead of breaking down in the soil and becoming food for bacteria as does soap — a nonsynthetic detergent made of animal and vegetable fats — the syndet remains active long after it goes down the drain, bubbling on and on through rivers and lakes and often seeping through the earth from septic tanks to well water (where its foamy presence may be a valuable warning that sewage is seeping in too). European waterways also foam with detergent suds, and German bargemen on the Neckar have complained that 3-ft. fleeces of the stuff are a menace to navigation.

The Seep-Out. Most experts agree that syndet-spiked drinking water so far offers no serious threat to health. Government standards hold that drinking water may contain a half-part of detergent sudsing agent to a million parts of water, but this is based on the esthetic qualities of taste and foaminess rather than on toxicity.

There are some, however, who anticipate the worst if syndets keep pouring into the ground. A self-appointed Paul Revere of detergent danger is Edward J. Zimmer, director of Chicago’s Plumbing Testing Laboratory. Says Zimmer: “You know how detergents get in under the grease and soil and lift them right off your plate? Well, you get too much detergent in your system from drinking water and the same thing happens—it lifts the mucous lining right off your stomach and intestines and esophagus.” Others insist that the syndet menace, like the fallout danger, is vastly exaggerated. But the problem will not go away by itself, and some steps are already being taken to see what can be done to lessen syndet seep-out. The Public Health Service is spending some $500,000 in 1962 to study the effects of detergents and other wastes in water. Some sewage plants have installed antifoam equipment. Britain is experimenting with organic synthetic detergents, and several U.S. companies have similar “soft” syndets in the laboratory stage. But it will take a much bigger head of foam in the water glass before popular pressure will go into action against a product that has 40 million housewives rooting for it.