The net legend

> >      Warning for your animal's health: I recently had a neighbor who
> >had to have their  5-year old German Shepherd dog put down due to liver
> >failure.  The dog was completely healthy until a few weeks ago, so they
> >had a necropsy done to see what the cause was.
> >The liver levels were unbelievable, as if the dog had ingested poison of
> >some kind.  The dog is kept inside, and when it's outside, someone's with
> >him, so the idea of him getting into something unknown was hard to believe.
> >My neighbor started going through all the items inthe house.  When he got
> >to the Swiffer Wetjet, he noticed, in very tiny print, a warning which
> >stated "may be harmful to small children and animals."
> >         He called the company to ask what the contents of the cleaning
> >agent are and was  astounded to find out that anitfreeze is one of the
> >ingredients. (actually  he was told it's a compound which is one
> >molecule away from anitfreeze).   Therefore, just by the dog walking on
> >the floor cleaned with the solution, then  licking it's own paws, and the
> >dog eating from its dishes which were kept  on the kitchen floor cleaned
> >with this product, it ingested enough of the  solution to destroy its liver.
> > 
> >Soon after his dog's death, his  housekeepers' two cats also died of liver
> >failure.  They both used the  Swiffer Wetjet for quick cleanups on their
> >floors. Necropsies weren't done  on the cats, so they couldn't file a
> >lawsuit,but he asked that we spread the  word to as many people as
> >possible so they don't lose their animals.

Debunking

I have to call BS on this for the following reasons:
#1, there are no references and no explaination of the chemicals.
#2, Ethylene Glycol poisioning hits cats 4 times harder than dogs
#3, it takes 2 ounces of EG to kill a dog or child, not micrograms from 
surface contact.
#4, it takes hours, not days for the effects to do their work
#5, EG and PG poisioning cause KIDNEY failure, not liver failure
#6, Liver failure could be detected without having to dissect the 
animal.  All of the signs of hepatitis would have been present.  
Specifically, the whites of the animal's eyes would have been yellow; 
the dog would have lived through days of whining due to the pain of the 
bilirubin crystallizing in it's skin; etc.
#7, what does "one molecule away" mean?

So anyway, the ingredients of the swiffer wet jet juice are:
   water (more than 90%)
   propylene glycol n-propyl ether or propylene glycol n-butyl ether 
(1-4%)
   isopropyl alcohol (1-4%)

Propylene glycol by itself is a replacement for EG in antifreze due to 
the fact that it takes very large quantities to cause kidney failure.

I think that if you wrung out a few boxes of the wipes and chugged the 
sudsy solution, you might get a belly ache, probably even throw up, but 
probably still wouldn't have enough to cause kidney impairment.

The half Life of EG in a human is 3 hours.

I couldn't find the half-life of 2,4-D, propylene glycol butyl ether 
ester because it takes SO much to be a noticable problem.  Many IV drugs 
are distributed in a Propylene Glycol suspension to aid dissolution and 
absorbtion.  Generally, acute overdose causes heart arrhythmias and 
chronic overdose, only in animals, has been reported to cause kidney 
failure.

Primary References:

http://vetmedicine.about.com/cs/diseasesall/a/swiffer.htm http://www.cah.com/library/antifreeze.html http://www-clinpharm.medschl.cam.ac.uk/pages/teaching/topics/poison/poison8.html http://www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/p6928.htm http://www.inchem.org/documents/pims/chemical/pim443.htm