Ed Huntress wrote:

"CaveLamb" wrote in message
m...
Ed Huntress wrote:

I was discussing this here with Dan just a couple of weeks ago. My last
box of TSP, which I bought less than a month ago, is 70% real TSP. It
doesn't say so on the box but you can learn that by searching for the
MSDS. The brand I bought is Savogran, which I bought at Home Despot. I
mentioned in that discussion that I prefer to buy TSP at a real paint
store, as you say.

...


So it is a real issue, and, although I haven't seen anything about it for
a couple of decades here, taking it out of laundry detergent did seem to
help. I asked the guys at Oakite if the new stuff was as good, and they
said that it was not. But they said it could have been. The reason it
wasn't is that detergent manufacturers took advantage of the opportunity
to make cheaper detergent and they knew their competitors were all doing
the same -- and blaming it on the lack of phosphates. They said there are
better ingredients than phosphates today but they aren't cheap. However,
the cost of the chemicals in detergent really is trivial. It's the
advertising and the packaging that cost real money.


Ed,
We haven't been using the dishwasher.
Just two people it's hardly necessary.

But for laundry...
What about using borax?
Is there a similar feed-through problem with that?

'Don't know. The issue that concerns the EPA is based on phosphate being a
fertilizer, and it seems to have a strong effect in promoting algae
blooms -- more than the nitrogen in fertilizers, according to one or two
papers I've read.

It can kill a river or a lake that drains residential groundwater, or a
river that has a lot of treated wastewater dumped into it, like the
Delaware.

I've never heard of any problem with borax, but I just know what I read.
It's a mild alkali but I've never heard of it causing problems.

I don't even worry about adding some TSP, because very few people do it, so
it can't amount to much of a load on the river. Besides, our treated
wastewater dumps into the Raritan, not the Delaware, and we've abandoned all
hope on the Raritan. You probably could mine lead from the river bottom.
Maybe even spent uranium from the local arsenal. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

Then there are those of us with septic systems that don't get anywhere
near any sort of river, lake or stream.