Cleansers

Your clothes stink, your books are covered with soot and your car is topped with ashes. Here is a list of things that can be done to rid your home and yourself of the fire and its aftermath. The suggestions are taken from "After the Fire," a pamphlet produced by the Costa Mesa Fire Department. For a complete copy, call the fire department at (714) 754-5683. Clothing: * Smoke odor and soot can sometimes be washed from clothing.

Using an anti-graffiti cleanser, workers have begun scrubbing the walls of a Mojave Desert limestone cave inadvertently defaced by artists creating an on-location set for filmmaker Oliver Stone. State park officials said the cleansing process--which uses water, a nontoxic citrus-based detergent and a soft-bristle brush--should safely strip Mitchell Caverns of the 100 fake Indian pictographs applied by artists creating a backdrop for "The Doors," a film about rock legend Jim Morrison.

Corporate headquarters: Irvine; production facility in Pomona Founded: May, 1989 Founder: Paul R.

Allergan Inc. has introduced a new one-bottle disinfection system for contact lenses and, with it, what the company says is its biggest promotional campaign to date. The Irvine-based company said Wednesday that the campaign will be aimed at consumers as well as eye-care professionals, but it would give no details. Wesley-Jessen, a division of Schering-Plough, is a partner in the promotion.

Although her mother used a pine-scented wax to polish the furniture in their Canoga Park home a generation ago, today Jan Zussman prefers lemon-scented cleaners to keep her furniture dust-free and her dishes spotless. "I guess it's the idea that lemons cut grease and smell good," mused Zussman, a 28-year-old administrative assistant at a Los Angeles accounting firm. "It's not that I dislike pine, but when I smell a lemon I think of the natural and fresh outdoors."

More than half of the nation's most commonly used polluting industrial solvents could be eliminated in a decade without significant cost to industry, according to a controversial study made public Wednesday. The $1-million study by the Metropolitan Water District and the Environmental Defense Fund found that environmentally preferable substitutes for the five most widely used industrial solvents already are available or soon will be.

Exposure to fumes emitted by cleaning products in the home may be linked to asthma in children. Researchers have found that children exposed to higher levels of volatile organic compounds are four times more likely to suffer from asthma than children who were not. Volatile organic compounds are found in solvents, paints, floor adhesives, cleaning products, polishes, room fresheners and carpets.

The district attorneys of three Northern California counties have filed a lawsuit against the Orange County makers of Simple Green, a cleaning product advertised as nontoxic, alleging that the product can be hazardous to fish when improperly dumped.

Two Gardena men were arraigned Monday on more than 30 petty theft counts involving an alleged "cash-on-delivery" scam in which cheap cans of household cleanser were sent unsolicited to people and businesses in three other states. John Leland Lindquist, 63, and Michael Harrison, 33, pleaded not guilty and will face a pretrial hearing June 26 on allegations that they sent cans of Ajax cleanser to addressees in Arizona, Colorado and Florida, asking residents to pay $29.95 COD each.