Antibacterial Soap & Spinach connection?

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October 20, 2006

 

Why You Don't Need " Antibacterial " Soap

 

by Tabitha Alterman, Mother Earth News Associate

Editor

 

If you choose " antibacterial " products because you

trust them to kill

germs, you might want to reconsider. According to

recent studies,

antiseptic ingredients added to numerous products are

not effective

and may actually be harmful.

 

In 2005, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

panel concluded

that there is " no added benefit " from using

antimicrobial products

over plain soap and water.

 

There's also toxicity to consider.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of

Public Health

discovered that one of the most popular

antimicrobials, the pesticide

triclocarban (TCC), defies water treatment methods

after we wash our

hands of it. Once it's flushed down drains, about 75

percent of TCC

makes it through treatments meant to break it down,

and ends up in our

surface water and in the biosolids known as municipal

sludge. This

sludge is regularly applied to U.S. crop fields as

fertilizer, so the

chemical could potentially accumulate in our food,

too.

 

Rolf Halden, assistant professor in the Department of

Environmental

Health Sciences at Johns Hopkins and lead author of

the study,

estimates that TCC contaminates 60 percent of U.S.

streams. He says it

is known to cause cancer and reproductive problems in

mammals, and

blue-baby syndrome in human infants.

 

Introducing an antimicrobial into the environment in

this way also has

the unwanted effect of increasing pathogens'

resistance to clinically

important antibiotics.

 

The antiseptic triclosan -- related to TCC in

structure, function and usage -- is known to promote

the growth of

resistant bacteria, including E. coli.

 

In fact, the American Medical

Association (AMA) took an official stance in 2000

against adding

antimicrobials to consumer products. Since then, the

AMA has

repeatedly urged the FDA to better regulate these

chemicals, advising

that they should be avoided " until the data emerge to

show

antimicrobials in consumer products are effective at

preventing

infection and have no detrimental effect on public

health. "

 

Currently, TCC is not required to be monitored, but

about 1 million

pounds of it are released annually in the United

States. Since 2000,

about 1,500 new antibacterial products have hit store

shelves.

 

Halden says the irony of his research is two-fold:

" First, to protect

our health, we mass-produce and use a toxic chemical

which the FDA has

determined has no scientifically proven benefit.

Second, when we try

to do the right thing by recycling biosolids, we end

up spreading a

known reproductive toxicant on the soil where we grow

our food. " He

emphasizes the importance of considering the full life

cycle of the

chemicals we manufacture.

 

Read More:

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