My science rant … antibacterial soap
Keeping you and your safe and clean is very important, but at what cost to the rest of us? You see the explosion of anti-bacterial soaps (active ingredient is Triclosan) might be causing a larger problem … anti-bacterial resistance. Triclosan, while it is an effective anti-bacterial agent, wasn’t intended to be used this widely.
So, what is anti-bacterial resistance? Very simply it is bacteria becoming immune to the effects of things that we are using to kill them. This happens when an anti-bacteria agent is used, but not all the bacteria are killed by it. The survivors follow the old adage, and very true in this case, that which does not kill you, makes you stronger. And in this case stronger mean next time offspring of those bacteria run into the anti-bacterial agent, they might just laugh in it’s face (think … nanny, nanny boo boo you can touch me).
Here are some basic facts you need to know. First regular old soap and scrubbing kills bacteria very nicely thank you. Soap starts to break down the cell walls of the bacteria and scrubbing finishes the job. Yes, that means your anti-bacterial dish soap is overkill. Handsoap? Unless you are coming in contact with really sick people, ditto.
What about things like counter tops? For years the gold standard for wiping out bacteria on just about anything has been a 10% bleach solution. Yes it works great, and for a lot of applications is still the best. But, there are alternatives … that smell nicer and are much less toxic too. One of my favs is good old white vinegar. Yep, vinegar. A Swedish study showed (I’m still looking for the reference) showed that straight vinegar was just as effective at cleaning surfaces as bleach … and much safer too (bleach is rather nasty stuff remember).
My other fav is a mixture of tea tree and lavender oils in water (about 10 drops of each in about quart/litre of water should do the trick). Having that around in a spray bottle is a nice way to get rid of the ickies and it smells nice too.
So … keeping clean doesn’t need extras. Soap and water really does a lot and for an extra hit … try vinegar.
Tags: Triclosan, vinegar, bacterial resistance
1 Comment
[...] This is great news. An antibiotic that works in a new and novel way hasn’t been discovered for years. This particular compound holds promise to hit some pretty nasty bugs as well. But, why are we in this situation in the first place? Why isn’t good old penicillin enough anymore? The problem is bacterial resistance. I talked a little about this in an early post here about antibacterial soap, but it’s a topic worth talking about again. [...]