Dangers of Modern Household Cleaning Products (or Why I'm Going to Sue Febreze)

According to data reported in 2002, accidental injuries, many at home or the workplace, were the fifth leading cause of death in the U.S.

"[...] causing as many as 20,000 deaths, 7 million disabling injuries, and 20 million hospital trips in the U.S. each year."

And this was in 2002! While we may all take this for granted, how many of us just attribute this to "people being stupid"? Yes, I'm sure some of these accidents are candidates for the Darwin Awards, but the truth is that some of these accidents are the result of gross neglect by household product manufacturers.

Yeah, I'm talkin' to you Proctor and Gamble!

So here is my story of victimization:

I had a guest coming to stay for the weekend and you know what that means for the typical single guy, that's right, binge cleaning. I had spent the week previous to the visit putting away various piles of papers and books, or finding creative places to hide them. The last obstacle to tackle...the kitchen. Literally an hour before rushing off to pick up the visitor from the airport, I was taking out garbage, washing dishes, and generally tidying up. The pièce de résistance was to give everything a quick spritz of Febreze to deodorize everything. At this point I should have stopped and headed off to the airport, but being Mr. OCD, I did another quick sweep of the apartment and dashed into the kitchen to throw away some paper.

Once you know that my kitchen has a ceramic tile floor, you can pretty much guess what happened next. I don't know what the hell is in Febreze, but I do know that a small amount covering a tile floor makes that floor more slippery than black ice on a highway. Before my brain had a chance to grasp the situation, my body was playing out a move generally only seen in cartoons. My body's natural reaction to finding that my feet are no longer connected to the ground is to do that cat thing to try to twist and land safely, but since I'm not a cat it typically works out as trying not to land on my head or crush my iPhone. Unfortunately, my elbows and ribs took the brunt of the damage this time and hitting tile didn't help.

That dark spot is a huge, painful bruise that actually wraps around to my elbow.

The twisting action pulls several muscles in my ribs causing periodic jabs of pain. None of this really started to surface until almost a week later after which time I had also attempted bowling which aggravated the rib muscle strain. All of this came as the result of wanting my kitchen to smell nice. This is my punishment for cleaning.

My dilemma now is whether to prosecute the makers of Febreze for not mentioning this on the label in really big letters. In reality, I'm probably to lazy to do this, plus I generally have a low opinion of people who sue large companies for things they have no control over. Somehow I feel this is a little more legitimate than the case where someone dries their cat in the microwave, but do I want to be that person...or retire early before they cut off Social Security?

Regardless, don't expect me to clean up my place if you come to visit.