A Dirty History of Cleaning Up: The Environmental Hazards of Household Work in Modern America (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780295755960)

The messiness and toxicity of cleaning house

Clean homes have long symbolized health, order, and responsible family life. Yet the modern pursuit of cleanliness has carried hidden environmental costs. A Dirty History of Cleaning Up reveals how the everyday work of cleaning reshaped natural systems across the twentieth-century United States.

Tracing the development of disinfecting, dry cleaning, and diapering technologies, Kendra Smith-Howard uncovers the industrial and ecological networks that made modern cleaning possible. Forests, quarries, and chemical plants generated the substances that promised spotless homes, while waterways, landfills, and the atmosphere absorbed the resulting waste. Nature became dirty, in part, because the water and air enabled domestic spaces to become clean. Moreover, the burden of cleanliness was distributed unevenly. Women shouldered the unpaid labor of caring and cleaning, while immigrant and nonwhite workers disproportionately faced hazardous exposures in commercial cleaning industries.

By following the material pathways of cleaning products from production to disposal, A Dirty History of Cleaning Up exposes a central irony of modern life: the drive to create more hygienic homes has produced environmental messes all around us.