I don't know anything about the other points, but point #2 is conflating antibacterial and antibiotic. Soaps that contain antibiotics definitely contribute to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and thus should not be used. But soap that is merely antibacterial without using antibiotics will not cause bacteria to become antibiotic-resistant.
I remember seeing a comment on reddit about this a few years back. It went something like:
"If you put a poison in the air in hospital nurseries that kills 50% of babies, after enough centuries you'll have a human population that's resistant to the poison. But if you go in there with a flamethrower you'll just have a lot of dead babies because, well, it's a flamethrower."
Alcohol-based solutions that are anti-bacterial dissolve the lipid membrane around the bacteria. They can't really develop a "resistance" to this.
But soap that is merely antibacterial without using antibiotics will not cause bacteria to become antibiotic-resistant.
Yes it will. "Antibiotic" is just a name for a particular kind of antibacterial compound that's put in a pill and given to sick people so it can work inside their bloodstream. The general point about bacteria evolving resistance applies to any antibacterial chemical, not just the ones in pills.
[Edit: It's possible that by "soap that is merely antibacterial without using antibiotics" you mean just ordinary soap, with no chemicals added; but that's not what the article is talking about, it's specifically talking about triclosan, an antibacterial chemical.]
I never used antibacterial hand soap precisely because I assumed it would somehow contribute to bacterial resistance, and because humanity survived just fine with regular hand soap in the bathroom for centuries. Having said that I've recently been given a bottle of it. Maybe I'm overthinking things, but is there any way to dispose of this stuff in a responsible way?
> humanity survived just fine with regular hand soap in the bathroom for centuries.
What? No! No, we didn't do well at all! Child mortality in the US was 20% just a hundred years ago. What killed everyone? Infectious disease. Yeah, the entire human population didn't die out. Obviously your great grandparents both survived long enough to reproduce. Go check how many of their aunts, uncles, siblings, and children didn't.
The past sucked. Wealth and technology has made it much, much better. There are some drawbacks, but let's not pretend we were doing just fine without.
It won't contribute to resistance. There is a possibility it could become resistant to the chemical itself at best, but it's not like it would become resistant to antibiotics or anything from that. If anything the resistance would make it weaker, since adaptions that make organisms resistant usually make them reproduce slower and less fit.
Only a small percent of bacteria would be exposed to the soap so it wouldn't have a huge selection pressure. Chemicals used to kill bacteria outside the body are generally much harsher and harder to build resistance to than antibiotics which have to avoid killing human cells. So I don't think resistance is very likely.
I don't know if there is an advantage of antibacterial soap, but humanity hasn't "survived just fine" with regular hand soap. Washing hands to prevent infection wasn't even common until the past century or so.
I don't disagree with your conclusion, but do want to point out that the "humanity has survived just fine without this" argument could be used to argue against anything that might improve survival rates. Back when people didn't wash their hands, it could be used to argue against washing hands.
Presumably you could throw it in the garbage. Way worse chemicals are thrown in the garbage every day, and waste sites are required to be protected from leeching into the groundwater to the extent possible. Or you could use an incinerator, but then you have to weigh the significant economic and environmental costs against the almost trivial risk of having it in a dump somewhere.
You could just use it occasionally, or put it out for guests. After all, if used only occasionally the generations of bacteria would not develop resistance?
I've never used anti-bacterials, not when it got introduced into dish-washing soap, and not when H1N1 created a ridiculous scare.
This is one of those things where I take the elitist path and my palm hits my forehead at high velocity.
Disease, illness, death, it's all a part of life, and some ridiculous washing ritual which consumes a significant portion of your daily thought process will not keep any of it at bay. I know hypochondriacs and obsessive cleaners who are sick almost year-long, who almost die every time a cold hits their town.
But it's a tough sell, living life on the edge like that. Isaac Asimov has gotten pounded these last days, but this scare is another symptom of what he predicted: Man has taken further steps away from nature. This is another aspect we fear, one the majority does not understand as anything except what kills us. Truth is, in my opinion, sickness is what keeps us alive.
> Disease, illness, death, it's all a part of life, and some ridiculous washing ritual which consumes a significant portion of your daily thought process will not keep any of it at bay.
My understanding is that washing really does help to keep these things away, and washing with soap helps more; it's not a ridiculous idea that a different kind of soap could be even more effective, and antibac soap takes no more effort than any other kind.
And I am totally in favour of making disease, illness and death be as-small-as-possible parts of life, and not parts at all, if possible.
Normal hand washing has saved very many lives. Regular hygiene is a miracle of medicine, and has ties with early "infographics" of Florence Nightingale's cocks-comb diagrams.
There is a not negligible chance you would have died as a child, or even an adult, from any number of diseases that used to be far more widespread. Certainly it's likely at least one person you know would have.
Modern sanitary practices have saved literally millions of people. Not hand washing alone perhaps, but it is a significant factor.
Humans now live in populations of millions of other people that are constantly in close contact with each other, and people travel more and faster than ever before all across the globe. Be thankful we haven't had more plagues.
Points 3 and 4 are reasons why I should stop using antibacterial soap. But the others are reasons why all the rest of you should stop using it. There might still be some benefit to me if I use it.
This is why it's important for its removal from soap to be public policy. We only benefit when we all stop using it. If I stop using it, but everyone else continues, I gain nothing (excluding reasons 3 and 4). So I have no individual motivation to stop.
(I hope it's obvious that I intend "I" in some sort of generic sense in the above.)
I use a single type of bar soap around the house for washing my hands, showering and shaving. Works just fine, not to mention probably saving me a pretty penny every year. On top of that, the dry skin problems I had with liquid soap are gone.
On top of that, the dry skin problems I had with liquid soap are gone.
I would point out that soap, by its very nature, removes oil from skin (including sebum) "drying" it out. You may have been using an overly harsh (read: effective) liquid soap, but for many people, all soaps will dry out their skin to the point where they could use something like lanolin to rehydrate it.
Things like this always reminds me of the way the Romans poisoned themselves with lead pipes for centuries. What modern equivalents to this do we have? Soap? Cell phones? Sitting? Who knows. There have to be plenty of things in the modern world that we aren't yet fully aware are killing us over time.
Having said that, now that I've Googled the Roman lead pipe fact I learned in High School I have found that to be in question as well, so really I don't know what to trust ever.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is question everything.
Augustus died in AD 14 at the age of 75, and Vespasian died in AD 79 at the age of 69, and these were just emperors whose longevity I happened to recall.
Neither were considered to have many (any?) symptoms of lead poisoning either, so I am somewhat skeptical of widespread significant health effects from their use of lead pipes.
Apparently the calcium deposits in the water did a good enough job coating the lead that it ended up not causing much of an issue (from what I recall on History channel). Also, wouldn't the Romans have developed a resistance to lead poisoning after enough generations?
This presents an interesting marketing issue. What do normal soaps advertise as. "Non-anti-bacterial soap"?
I've found it exceedingly difficult to tell whether commercial soaps are antibacterial or not, because flaunting the opposite of antibacterial makes the soap seem ineffective.
>I've found it exceedingly difficult to tell whether commercial soaps are antibacterial or not, because flaunting the opposite of antibacterial makes the soap seem ineffective.
Soaps and products containing triclosan are considered over-the-counter drugs by the FDA, so any soaps in the US containing triclosan are required to list it as an active ingredient in the "Drug Facts" box on the label.
> What do normal soaps advertise as. "Non-anti-bacterial soap"?
"Probiotic"!
I'm only half-joking. Maybe "polarizing"? That's essentially what soap is doing: it's a polarizing agent that helps bacteria wash away. It's a word that's sufficiently confusing sounding to pass as a decent marketing term, and it's not wrong!
Well-cleaned surfaces are now known to harbor strep bacteria for months. Perhaps this is (to some extent) because bacteria has adapted to stick to materials much better than before we used soap?
What does well cleaned really mean? When I worked in a restaurant, sanitization of certain food prep surfaces required that we wipe down the surface, leave the sanitizer in place for 3 minutes, and then dry.
In a daycare, cleaning is spraying and wiping. Keeps stuff clean, but clean doesn't mean sanitized. (Although I donut that is needed)
Isn't the skin whole ecosystem of bacteria? Killing all of them often and efficiently may destroy power balance between different species of bacteria and by accident allow more harmful bacteria to win the power struggle. Something akin to when you take antibiotics that kills of bacteria in your intestines ending up with messing up your internal bacterial ecosystems entirely and giving you a condition that is recently most successfully treated with fecal transplant.
You probably had to bathe in antibacterial soap to do that but still..
I already knew about the bacterial resistance issue, but I wasn't aware that triclosan was known to be an endocrine disruptor in animals. That's a significant additional risk factor.
The thing that kills me is we are supposed to be encouraging proper hand washing technique, but public rest rooms are mostly set up to specifically discourage proper hand washing technique.
You have to pump about 5-7 times to get any amount of soap, then you get maybe 5 seconds of frigid ice cold water that you can hardly stand keeping your hands under, with no water pressure at all, then it stops. You either have to press a button again or wait for the sensor to detect you again, which of course takes a while. This goes on for some time. It encourages you to half ass or skip the hand washing procedure. Companies I guess think public health is less important than saving on the water bill.
If you are washing grease off your hands then you actually do want to apply the soap/washing up liquid first.
In this way the grease-loving end of the whatever-it-is molecules stick to the grease before the water-loving end gets to adhere to water. You can then remove the grease from your hands using less soap and with less water.
Also you should always silently sing the happy birthday song to yourself whilst washing your hands to make sure enough friction goes on for long enough to get the job done...
If it's so bad why are they waiting to 2016 to ban it? Aren't there people who are forced to use this like food workers and hospitals? Not to mention schools, public bathrooms and people who just don't know any better buying it for their home?
Points 1 and 4 contradict themselves. So triclosan is no better than regular soap at killing bacteria. But the point 4 implies its killing too much bacteria and contributing to allergies.
How come antibacterial soap is sold freely while antibiotic drugs are only available with prescription? If they both create resistant bacteria, both should be under similar regulations.
The reason regular soaps works is because it removes surface oil and dirt from your hands, which the bacteria binds to. So the bacteria gets mechanically removed from your hands and goes down the drain. And this is very effective.
Antibacterial and antibiotic soaps do something extra of a chemical nature that acts on the bacteria to kill it.
Recently, researchers from the University of California at Davis and the University of Colorado found that the chemical impairs muscle function in fish and mice and stated the results they found show “strong evidence that triclosan could have effects on animal and human health at current levels of exposure.” Beyond Pesticides has provided more extensive documentation of the potential human and environmental health effects of triclosan and its cousin triclocarban. Triclosan is an endocrine disruptor and has been shown to affect male and female reproductive hormones and possibly fetal development. It is also shown to alter thyroid function, and other studies have found that due to its extensive use in consumer goods, triclosan and its metabolites contaminate waterways and are present in fish, umbilical cord blood and human milk. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also found that triclosan is present in the urine of 75% of the U.S. population, with concentrations that have increased by 50% since 2004. [1]
The study, entitled, “The effects of triclosan on puberty and thyroid hormones in male wistar rats,” was reviewed by the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and approved for publication in Toxicological Sciences. Researchers measured blood concentrations of testosterone and several other types of hormones and weighed a variety of organs that are essential for rat development and puberty, including the pituitary gland, the testes, the prostate gland and the liver of male rat pups fed an oral dose of triclosan for 31 days. The purpose of the experiment was to determine what effects triclosan would have on concentrations of thyroid hormones and the onset of puberty. [2]
This study demonstrates that triclosan exposure does not alter androgen-dependent tissue weights or onset of PPS; however, triclosan exposure significantly impacts thyroid hormone concentrations in the male juvenile rat.[3]
Could someone for the love of all things natural please elucidate on how relevant, in general, are rodent studies and fish studies to the physiology and therefore the prophylaxis of humans?
For every two or so multi-year studies done on humans there seem to be dozens, if not hundreds, done on rats, fish and ferrets. /s/
Anatomically speaking, aren't pigs much better candidates, in that they much more closely resemble humans? There have been organ transplants from pigs, right?
I've always thought antibacterial soap was a bit ridiculous. Bacteria are everywhere, most are harmless, and they reproduce rapidly. It seems then that killing a bunch with a soap that "kills 99.9 percent of bacteria" only creates churn in the environment-- unless it targets only the harmful bacteria, which I doubt.
To me, bacteria are just another force of nature like wind or chemicals: harmful or harmless depending on context more than anything else. Table salt will kill you if you ingest 300g of it, but small amounts are healthy. Example with bacteria: E. coli, which is beneficial in its right place (the gut) but harmful elsewhere.
[+] [-] lilyball|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ninkendo|12 years ago|reply
"If you put a poison in the air in hospital nurseries that kills 50% of babies, after enough centuries you'll have a human population that's resistant to the poison. But if you go in there with a flamethrower you'll just have a lot of dead babies because, well, it's a flamethrower."
Alcohol-based solutions that are anti-bacterial dissolve the lipid membrane around the bacteria. They can't really develop a "resistance" to this.
[+] [-] pdonis|12 years ago|reply
Yes it will. "Antibiotic" is just a name for a particular kind of antibacterial compound that's put in a pill and given to sick people so it can work inside their bloodstream. The general point about bacteria evolving resistance applies to any antibacterial chemical, not just the ones in pills.
[Edit: It's possible that by "soap that is merely antibacterial without using antibiotics" you mean just ordinary soap, with no chemicals added; but that's not what the article is talking about, it's specifically talking about triclosan, an antibacterial chemical.]
[+] [-] acabal|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lkbm|12 years ago|reply
What? No! No, we didn't do well at all! Child mortality in the US was 20% just a hundred years ago. What killed everyone? Infectious disease. Yeah, the entire human population didn't die out. Obviously your great grandparents both survived long enough to reproduce. Go check how many of their aunts, uncles, siblings, and children didn't.
The past sucked. Wealth and technology has made it much, much better. There are some drawbacks, but let's not pretend we were doing just fine without.
[+] [-] Houshalter|12 years ago|reply
Only a small percent of bacteria would be exposed to the soap so it wouldn't have a huge selection pressure. Chemicals used to kill bacteria outside the body are generally much harsher and harder to build resistance to than antibiotics which have to avoid killing human cells. So I don't think resistance is very likely.
I don't know if there is an advantage of antibacterial soap, but humanity hasn't "survived just fine" with regular hand soap. Washing hands to prevent infection wasn't even common until the past century or so.
[+] [-] jfoster|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielweber|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dinkumthinkum|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chaostheory|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bjterry|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hershel|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patrickg_zill|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hrkristian|12 years ago|reply
This is one of those things where I take the elitist path and my palm hits my forehead at high velocity.
Disease, illness, death, it's all a part of life, and some ridiculous washing ritual which consumes a significant portion of your daily thought process will not keep any of it at bay. I know hypochondriacs and obsessive cleaners who are sick almost year-long, who almost die every time a cold hits their town.
But it's a tough sell, living life on the edge like that. Isaac Asimov has gotten pounded these last days, but this scare is another symptom of what he predicted: Man has taken further steps away from nature. This is another aspect we fear, one the majority does not understand as anything except what kills us. Truth is, in my opinion, sickness is what keeps us alive.
[+] [-] philh|12 years ago|reply
My understanding is that washing really does help to keep these things away, and washing with soap helps more; it's not a ridiculous idea that a different kind of soap could be even more effective, and antibac soap takes no more effort than any other kind.
And I am totally in favour of making disease, illness and death be as-small-as-possible parts of life, and not parts at all, if possible.
[+] [-] DanBC|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Houshalter|12 years ago|reply
Modern sanitary practices have saved literally millions of people. Not hand washing alone perhaps, but it is a significant factor.
Humans now live in populations of millions of other people that are constantly in close contact with each other, and people travel more and faster than ever before all across the globe. Be thankful we haven't had more plagues.
[+] [-] tptacek|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] varjag|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dded|12 years ago|reply
This is why it's important for its removal from soap to be public policy. We only benefit when we all stop using it. If I stop using it, but everyone else continues, I gain nothing (excluding reasons 3 and 4). So I have no individual motivation to stop.
(I hope it's obvious that I intend "I" in some sort of generic sense in the above.)
[+] [-] sdfjkl|12 years ago|reply
Everything since has just been feature creep.
I use a single type of bar soap around the house for washing my hands, showering and shaving. Works just fine, not to mention probably saving me a pretty penny every year. On top of that, the dry skin problems I had with liquid soap are gone.
[+] [-] Aloisius|12 years ago|reply
I would point out that soap, by its very nature, removes oil from skin (including sebum) "drying" it out. You may have been using an overly harsh (read: effective) liquid soap, but for many people, all soaps will dry out their skin to the point where they could use something like lanolin to rehydrate it.
[+] [-] herbig|12 years ago|reply
Having said that, now that I've Googled the Roman lead pipe fact I learned in High School I have found that to be in question as well, so really I don't know what to trust ever.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is question everything.
[+] [-] mmagin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ewoodrich|12 years ago|reply
Neither were considered to have many (any?) symptoms of lead poisoning either, so I am somewhat skeptical of widespread significant health effects from their use of lead pipes.
[+] [-] derekp7|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graeme|12 years ago|reply
I've found it exceedingly difficult to tell whether commercial soaps are antibacterial or not, because flaunting the opposite of antibacterial makes the soap seem ineffective.
[+] [-] arbitrarilyHigh|12 years ago|reply
Soaps and products containing triclosan are considered over-the-counter drugs by the FDA, so any soaps in the US containing triclosan are required to list it as an active ingredient in the "Drug Facts" box on the label.
Source: http://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm205999.ht...
[+] [-] ninkendo|12 years ago|reply
"Probiotic"!
I'm only half-joking. Maybe "polarizing"? That's essentially what soap is doing: it's a polarizing agent that helps bacteria wash away. It's a word that's sufficiently confusing sounding to pass as a decent marketing term, and it's not wrong!
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] fragsworth|12 years ago|reply
This is probably true. But do soaps in general have the potential to create soap-resistant bacteria?
http://consumer.healthday.com/general-health-information-16/...
Well-cleaned surfaces are now known to harbor strep bacteria for months. Perhaps this is (to some extent) because bacteria has adapted to stick to materials much better than before we used soap?
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spooky23|12 years ago|reply
In a daycare, cleaning is spraying and wiping. Keeps stuff clean, but clean doesn't mean sanitized. (Although I donut that is needed)
[+] [-] scotty79|12 years ago|reply
You probably had to bathe in antibacterial soap to do that but still..
[+] [-] yeukhon|12 years ago|reply
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but...
But when the immune system is not capable of handling them, you become sick.
[+] [-] pdonis|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rahilsondhi|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aestra|12 years ago|reply
You have to pump about 5-7 times to get any amount of soap, then you get maybe 5 seconds of frigid ice cold water that you can hardly stand keeping your hands under, with no water pressure at all, then it stops. You either have to press a button again or wait for the sensor to detect you again, which of course takes a while. This goes on for some time. It encourages you to half ass or skip the hand washing procedure. Companies I guess think public health is less important than saving on the water bill.
[+] [-] Theodores|12 years ago|reply
If you are washing grease off your hands then you actually do want to apply the soap/washing up liquid first.
In this way the grease-loving end of the whatever-it-is molecules stick to the grease before the water-loving end gets to adhere to water. You can then remove the grease from your hands using less soap and with less water.
Also you should always silently sing the happy birthday song to yourself whilst washing your hands to make sure enough friction goes on for long enough to get the job done...
[+] [-] tzs|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Houshalter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrfusion|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zavi|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrfusion|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afterburner|12 years ago|reply
Antibacterial and antibiotic soaps do something extra of a chemical nature that acts on the bacteria to kill it.
[+] [-] mlandis|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wozniacki|12 years ago|reply
The study, entitled, “The effects of triclosan on puberty and thyroid hormones in male wistar rats,” was reviewed by the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and approved for publication in Toxicological Sciences. Researchers measured blood concentrations of testosterone and several other types of hormones and weighed a variety of organs that are essential for rat development and puberty, including the pituitary gland, the testes, the prostate gland and the liver of male rat pups fed an oral dose of triclosan for 31 days. The purpose of the experiment was to determine what effects triclosan would have on concentrations of thyroid hormones and the onset of puberty. [2]
This study demonstrates that triclosan exposure does not alter androgen-dependent tissue weights or onset of PPS; however, triclosan exposure significantly impacts thyroid hormone concentrations in the male juvenile rat.[3]
Could someone for the love of all things natural please elucidate on how relevant, in general, are rodent studies and fish studies to the physiology and therefore the prophylaxis of humans?
For every two or so multi-year studies done on humans there seem to be dozens, if not hundreds, done on rats, fish and ferrets. /s/
Anatomically speaking, aren't pigs much better candidates, in that they much more closely resemble humans? There have been organ transplants from pigs, right?
[1] http://www.beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/?p=7913
[2] http://www.beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/?p=1004
[3] http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/107/1/56.abstract
[+] [-] michaelochurch|12 years ago|reply
To me, bacteria are just another force of nature like wind or chemicals: harmful or harmless depending on context more than anything else. Table salt will kill you if you ingest 300g of it, but small amounts are healthy. Example with bacteria: E. coli, which is beneficial in its right place (the gut) but harmful elsewhere.