Green products claim to be better for the environment, but do they really work? CBS 46 Investigates tested green cleaners to find out what they're leaving behind.

"I just don't know that I want bleach in the house," said Josh Lieberman, a software company executive. Lieberman and his wife, Dana, a stay-at-home mom, live in Atlanta's Morningside neighborhood.

"We started going green when we first had children," Dana Lieberman said. The family has changed to chemical-free cleaning products to make the house safer for their two kids, and because they believe green goods are safer for the environment.

But what they didn't know is what green products could be leaving behind.

CBS 46 News took five different cleaners to a microbiology lab at Georgia State University to test the effectiveness of the different products. "This is all E. coli," explained Professor Sid Crow as he prepared dishes for our test.

We tested Lysol conventional cleaner and bleach against three self-proclaimed "green" cleaners. The results? "The bleach was the most effective. The E. coli didn't grow," Crow said.

The three-day test showed what Crow said was a "big difference" in their effect on bacteria. Bleach prevented the growth of e-coli the best, he said. The more green the products became, and the less chemicals they contained, the less effective they were against bacteria.

"Oh, wow," said Dana when we showed her our results. "It didn't clean anything.”

“Very little,” Josh added.

"Simple Green," one of the products we purchased, said right on the label it contains the chemical ammonium chloride. The company touts their products as nontoxic and biodegradable. But when we questioned them, officials at Simple Green admitted in an e-mail response that their green cleaner is "one of the two toxic products [they] produce."

Officials at Clorox Greenworks said their products are all natural, but on their Web site they admit their green cleaners do not disinfect.

So before you spend your green to go green, experts say you need to know what is best for your home.

"It would be nice to find something that is both safe and effective," Dana said.

"Which is worse, bleach or germs?" asked Josh.