About House Cleaners & Why They Kill Plants

How Cleaners Come into Contact with Plants

• Both indoor and outdoor plants are at risk from household cleaners. Some homemade weedkillers use dish soap and other household cleaners as their base. If you spray these solutions onto a weed, they can sometimes bounce onto nearby plants. Other common ways that plants come into contact with household cleaners are through mists, drips or vapors. For example, when cleaning your windows with ammonia outdoors or indoors, some of the chemical can drip down from the window and land in potting soil or on a plant directly.

Detergents

• Detergents are often found in the form of dish and laundry soaps. Consumers often falsely consider it harmless. Unfortunately, for dish soap to be harmless, it has to be in a low concentration. High concentrations of detergents that come into contact with the foliage of plants can remove the protective waxy coating of the leaves, which exposes plants to insects and disease. In severe cases, detergents can destroy the membrane of the plant, which in turn renders the plant unable to absorb water and nutrients and eventually causes death.

Acid-Based Cleaners

• The majority of household cleaners on the market contain a form of acid, which helps give them the corrosive ability to remove grit and grime. When an acid-based cleaner comes into contact with planting soil, it affects the pH level. When the pH level is too low, certain species of plants are not able to gain nutrients from the soil, especially if the pH balance was already low to begin with.

Air Fresheners

• Though air fresheners may seem harmless enough to indoor plants, aerosol air fresheners are listed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as an air pollutant. The average aerosol air freshener contains chemicals such as formaldehyde and petrochemicals, which are dangerous pollutants. If a home's air quality is low, plants can absorb these chemicals into their soil and eventually contain dangerous concentrations that affect the plant's ability to thrive.