Sentence Correction

1.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

Ans. is D

Reason; Choices B and C contain the word 'Being' unnessarily.

A and E confuses us as to what the 'them' in the question refers to...
i.e. it can either refer to consumers or to detergents.

Choice D is one of the several ways to remove the confusion created by multiple pronoun references, that is to changeone of the two plural subjects to singular, the statement would be much clearer and would convey the meaning with better understanding.

official answer -D

Can anybody shed more light here..

I thought (E) is more appropriate answer and more clear.
Can someone explain why (E) is not the answer.

Is it because of Passive construction?

Between D and E, D is better because it is active. Moreover it uses the correct idiom, if i may call it, 'think.. as'

as always in most cases usage of being is awkward

clean D

I have query regarding option D -
In the second half of the sentence, followed by the conjunction 'but', 'many of them' seems to refer to 'cleaning products' and 'many of them' is the subject in the second clause. Whereas the subject of the first clause is Consumer.

As per the rule, subject of the second clause should refer to/same as the subject of the first clause. Here it goes against the result.

Please explain, why E is incorrect as it is correct as per the rule.

ruhi.bhatia wrote:As per the rule, subject of the second clause should refer to/same as the subject of the first clause. Here it goes against the result.

Oh where did you get this rule from Ruhi?

Following sentence (and umpteen others like this) would be correct:

Peter came first in the class, and his brother came second.

Peter is the subject of the first clause, while his brother is the subject of the second clause.