Some Maryland stores selling banned dish detergent

Baltimore - A ban that's designed to protect the Chesapeake Bay from a dangerous pollutant went into effect more than a month ago and you may not even noticed. That ban impacts the detergent we all use in our dishwashers. ABC2 News Investigator Joce Sterman explains what's been cut out of the cleaning product and where we found banned items out for sale.

She's got kids, a career and still has to make time to do those households chores. It's obvious Lutherville’s Jenny Atwater is a busy mom with plenty on her plate. She says, “I hate unloading the dishwasher and I really hate unloading the dishwasher and seeing the dishes seem not very clean."

But Atwater has noticed that’s been happening a lot lately. She tells us, "I do notice there tends to be more stuff left with this detergent, just stuff that normally would have been washed away probably."

The dish detergent she's talking about is phosphate free. Jenny made the switch a few months, and chances are so did you, although you probably didn’t even notice. Jenn Aiosa with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation says, "The average consumer doesn't know."

Marylanders may not be aware that automatic dishwasher detergents with phosphorus are now banned in this state and more than a dozen others. The ban is thanks to a law put in place to help get rid of one of the biggest pollutants in the Chesapeake Bay. Aiosa explains, "It's really something that's relatively easy in the grand scheme of things for consumers to do but can have an impact."

The impact is something you should already be seeing on store shelves, but it took awhile to put this plan in place. Dennis Griesing with the American Cleaning Institute says, "It was a significant undertaking."

That’s why, under the law, the makers of dish detergent were given years to fall in line. Griesing says companies were essentially challenged with handling a nationwide rollout while creating new formulas that took out the most powerful part of the detergent, phosphorus. He tells ABC2, "The new product started to roll out back in January, so by and large we think consumers were probably using them by March or April."

Under Maryland’s law, stores had until July first to make their shelves phosphate free and get rid of any automatic dish detergent that had more than trace amounts of phosphorus. But more than six weeks after the ban went into effect, we still found it.

We shopped 10 stores in the Baltimore area and found loads of banned detergent at four of them, including Mars, Dollar General, Superfresh, and Family Dollar locations. Our discovery surprised State Senator Brian Frosh, a primary sponsor of the phosphate legislation. But he says cracking down on the ban isn’t easy. He explains, "We really can't afford to become the dishwasher detergent police."

Still Frosh feels a message must be sent to retailers and manufacturers that don’t take the ban seriously. He was angry to hear the banned products were easy to find, considering the stores had a lot of time to become compliant. Frosh says,
"They had three years to get rid of the excess inventory if that's what the problem is. The fact that it's still on the shelves today is graceful."

Griesing also responded to our findings, telling us, "It's an anomaly. I don't understand it. It may be oversight. I just can't explain it." But the ACI is quick to explain and talk about one thing: the effectiveness of these new environmentally friendly products made by its members. We asked if the phosphate free products can be as effective. Griesing’s answer was a solid, “Yes. We believe they can."

But not everybody's a believer. As Jenny told us, her dishes seem a little dingier since she switched to the phosphate free product. But it’s a trade-off she says she’s willing to make to protect the Bay. Atwater says, “I generally think it's a small price to pay to have dishes that don't sparkle as long as you're helping the environment."

As far as the stores involved in our shopping, Mars didn't respond to our request for comment and Superfresh offered no comment. Dollar General’s representative, Tawn Earnest, says, “Dollar General is committed to protecting our consumers and to complying with applicable state laws. We have begun investigating the claim that a detergent sold in our store was not compliant with the new laws regarding phosphorus. Dollar General is in the process of blocking the sale of the product in question, pending the completion of our investigation.”

Family Dollar’s spokesman released this statement, saying, "Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We are working with our vendor of the products to ensure that we are in full compliance of all local, state and federal regulations."

Maryland has said it is not prepared to take enforcement action against stores that carry the banned detergent. As for the effectiveness of the new products, Consumer Reports tested 24 low or no-phosphate detergents. The magazine was able to recommend four of them.