The description of the synthetic detergent issues in consumer books on general environment and on water environment were analysed. The descriptions were classified into eleven items. Nine items of them are concerned with the harmfulness to the human body such as liver function failure, teratogenicity, skin disorder and so on. Two items are concerned with the environmental influences on biodegradability and aqua toxicity. The descriptions were evaluated in five stages using harmfulness presentation score proposed in the previous report.
The results showed that the ratio of descriptions, which strongly emphasize the harmfulness of the synthetic detergent, in the consumer books on general environment and on water environment were lower than in the consumer books on detergent. However, there are many books concluding“the synthetic detergent is bad and the soap is good for environment”. It seems that many of these books refer only to the prejudiced information on detergent transmitted in the past, without understanding the whole of synthetic detergent issue. The problem of the information flow was found out on the consumer books which dealt with large field of health and environmental science.
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