Verbal Review Question No. 27 || Help Needed

[pranavs280]

Hi Experts,

This is my first post ever on this forum, so please do excuse if this post should not have been posted here.

I will be glad if you could help me out with this question

Consumers may not think of household cleaning products to be hazardous substances, but many of them can be harmful to health, especially if they are used improperly.
(A) Consumers may not think of household cleaning products to be
(B) Consumers may not think of household cleaning products being
(C) A consumer may not think of their household cleaning products being
(D) A consumer may not think of household cleaning products as
(E) Household cleaning products may not be thought of, by consumers, as

OA- D

I chose 'E' as an answer. I realize that 'D' is superior to E because it is written in active voice, but my question is this-- in the second clause 'especially if they are used improperly' .. the logical referent of 'they' is 'Household cleaning products' so doesnt is make sense to start off the sentence with 'Household cleaning products' as the subject in the first clause as opposed to starting with 'A consumer'. I would also be glad if you could point out any other 'solid' elimination criterion besides active vs passive construction.

Regards
Pranav

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Thanks for posting. However, this problem is from a paid-for resource, so unfortunately we can't publish it here due to copyright.

That's a tricky choice between D and E. It's not as straightforward as 'active voice good, passive voice bad', although answer E definitely feels more awkward than answer D. However, I don't think the pronoun in answer E is the problem: a pronoun may refer to the subject of the sentence or not, but there's no real risk of any confusion here, as it would be absurd to take 'them' as referring to consumers.

This is a pretty subtle issue, but the meaning of the sentence is focused on what consumers think rather than the cleaning products, making the active voice more appropriate here. There's also a slight parallelism issue here, revolving around the word 'but'. Generally GMAT prefers to balance an active phrase with an active phrase, or a passive phrase with a passive phrase. Again, it's quite a slight issue here, but check out SC 865 from OG2020 for another example.

Personally, I would take this as a rare example of which my instinct for a simpler, less awkward sentence is what I'd rely on.