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Anti-Bacterial Soap No Better Than Plain Soap
eldavojohn writes to advise us to stop buying antibacterial soap, as it's no more effective than the regular stuff. And, using it introduces a risk of mutation of bacteria. From the article: "The team looked at 27 studies conducted between 1980 and 2006, and found that soaps containing triclosan within the range of concentrations commonly used in the community setting (0.1 to 0.45 percent wt./vol.) were no more effective than plain soaps. Triclosan is used in higher concentrations in hospitals and other clinical settings, and may be more effective at reducing illness and bacteria. Triclosan works by targeting a biochemical pathway in the bacteria that allows the bacteria to keep its cell wall intact. Because of the way triclosan kills the bacteria, mutations can happen at the targeted site... a mutation could mean that the triclosan can no longer get to the target site to kill the bacteria because the bacteria and the pathway have changed form."
...people take antibiotics too often as well.
Our bodies are germ fighting machines. Sometimes it gets overwhelmed and needs help but more often than not it can fight off most everything.
It's all about money. Damn the environment, health, people's lives, future as long as someone is making a ton of money.
From: Mayo Clinic Article 05 Dec 2005
It has been known for quite some time that it's the mechanical action that does an important part of the work for disinfecting your hands. The water and soap just help the process by carrying dirt and bacteria away. This is part of the reason that you don't see hand sanitizers allowed as a replacement for proper hand washing at restaurants and other commercial food prep areas.
I'm flabbergasted that people still buy antibacterial soap. For years I've known that antibacterial soap isn't any more effective then normal soap, and I fear the super-bacteria being created by this soap.
Here's an article from consumer reports in 2004:
Don't bother with antibacterial cleaners
I went to Target last week to look for bulk containers of liquid hand soap. It was **all** antibacterial soap, normal soap didn't exist.
Soap, a surfactant, kills using physics. It turns lipid membranes inside out. Also by reducing surface tension it creates other havoc (e.g. it suffocates garden insects who drown when their air-pores are blocked ). It's essentially impossible to evolve away from this without immense changes to the very design of the but. Sure it can be done but it's an enormous burden on the germ.
Chlorine kills with chemistry. It tends to react with a lot of things and even create radicals. It's a little easier to deal with for bugs since they encounter oxidizing environments naturally and have learned to adapt, but it's still so generic an attack that in high concentration it's very lethal and almost impossible to mutate away from.
Bacteria-cide works by biology, targeting some very specific feature of the bug that is mutable. The difference between antibiotics and "bacteria-cide" is largely the degree to which the target is mutable. Target the ribosome machinery and it's unlikely the bug can mutate in time--antibiotic. Target something less unique and primitive and the bug mutates eventually.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Some years ago, I read an article about a study that Johnson & Johnson did. In a third will country with wide-spread dysentery they gave 100 families anti-bacterial soap and 100 families plain soap. And there were 100 families that got no soap at all. Instructions were given as to when to use the soap. They found that there was no difference in the cases of dysentery between the families with the two different kinds of soap, but a huge difference between the soap and non-soap families. The families with soap had almost no cases of dysentery.
I always wonder if these companies ever feel for their study groups and actually try to relieve a little suffering by making the knowledge and in this case the soap easily available in these countries.
Anti-bacterial on everything in the house definitely seems to be a bad thing.
I had a friend at primary and secondary school, and his mum used to frequently wipe everything down with Dettol (don't know if it's a US brand as well). My mum wiped the surfaces down with a dish cloth, and occasionally used bleach or something when there was a particularly bad patch. He was ill way more than I ever was.
Okay, so it isn't conclusive, but given that they give inoculations for things then it can't be all that bad to actually expose yourself to some germs and bacteria and not just kill all of them, thereby leaving yourself more immune when you find a larger pocket.
Anti-Bacterial Soap Sells Better than Plain Soap
Hurray for marketing!!!
Sadly yes. Last time I went to buy hand soap for home, of the two dozen different brands and sub-brand products on the shelf, only TWO were not antibacterial.
Even if I want to be a good buy and not use antibacterial soap, I can't.
Of course being exposed to some bacteria over your life is a good thing anyhow - it builds the immune system. That's why parents should let their kids go out side and play/eat the dirt, they'll be better for it in the long run.
But you are right, screw the facts, hurray for marketing!
Well, they'd never managed to find an answer to penicillin in the countless millions of years before Fleming stumbled on it, so the indications are that they'd need a very, very long time to crack it by themselves if we weren't bathing the entire world in a weak antibiotic solution that they're getting increasingly used to.
And they'd never quite managed to wipe us out completely either. We can adapt too, admittedly not as fast as they can, but if we have a large and sufficiently genetically diverse population, the chances of at least some of us surviving are very good.
The problem now is that we're acting as if we can eradicate them, but we never, ever can, and if we keep exposing them to antibiotics etc. in doses insufficient to completely wipe them out, they'll come back stronger, and eventually we'll run out of tricks. The reason why your doctor reminds you to finish your course of antibiotics, even if you're feeling 100% normal again, is to make sure that nothing has survived to reproduce.
You're right. If it's alcohol based, it will just dessicate the bacteria and there's no chance of developing resistance. That's why you see little purell containers around the hospitals now. Alcohol based cleaners are also (surprisingly) easier on your hands than the old water-and-soap method.
(I've got a degree in cell biology, and I'm a med student, so that's where my info is coming from)
I've started making my own soap. Mostly because I have that Mad Scientist bug and it involves toxic chemicals (Lye), and partly because MacGyver is my patron saint. It's fun, and cheep in comparison to the price of soap. All you need is oil, lye, a few buckets and some rely big pans. Try soapcalc.com for getting your ratios right.
We are the Borg...
My wife and I buy "soap base" in bulk and use it. It's intended to be mixed with fragrances and coloring (and I suppose resold) but we use it straight. It's very inexpensive, though you have to buy empty dispenser bottles to use it.
Here's the site we order from. There's no "anti-bacteria" chemicals in it, and for people like me who hate fragrances, it's hypo-allergenic without the boutique price. For a gallon, it's 25 cents an ounce. And it should last about two years per person. If you want something with an interesting label, go with Dr. Bronner's.
For those chemists (cooks) out there, soap is easy to make yourself.
Sadly yes. Last time I went to buy hand soap for home, of the two dozen different brands and sub-brand products on the shelf, only TWO were not antibacterial.
This is particularly irritating for those of us that are allergic to triclosan. It's in all soap and all deoderent these days.
Happily, it's in non of these products: http://www.kirksnatural.com/
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
Meh, I grew up with dogs and cats. Today, I'm allergic (extremely so, in the case of cats). Childhood exposure doesn't seem to do a damn thing, unfortunately...
Why don't you back some of your outrageous claims up with some facts? I have OCD, and I've got serious problems and worries about money from time to time. Besides that, I'm a student and until recently I had a job in the weekends to support my hobbies and social life, but I had to quit this job because of my disorder. I'm on medication and I'm seeing a psychologist for this. Before saying such idiotic things again, you should know that I know of a person who has OCD, because she has repressed her memories from a childhood rape, and her OCD is a way of dealing with these memories. I wish you could explain to her your ignorant theory, I'm sure she could use your insight..
No that is not true. OCD occurs in the same percentage of the population, independent of the culture. See
this.
Exactly. The mechanics of washing your hands -- rubbing them together under running water -- kill 99.9% of the germs on your hands. Adding soap to the equation is only an aid in getting stuff off your hands. Adding anti-bacterial soap, as witnessed in TFA, is fscking pointless.
My blog
However, it doesn't have to be fancy. If you can get your hands on lye, you can use the lard or cooking oil found at your nearest grocery store, and the quality is still far above and beyond what you can get from most commercial soaps found at the same store. Plus, it's cheaper. And has no scent beyond what you put into it yourself. Good stuff.
Method of processing duck feet
As someone who routinely buys feed for livestock and has used OTC feed store remedies (wisely, of course), I know this is true. The best example that I know of is the use of Oxytetracycline ("Terramycin" brand) as a feed additive. Has instructions right there on the package, which is pretty scary. That's some pretty potent antibiotic, and (IIRC from the Merck Vet Manual), not only does a high percentage not get broken down by the body (thus passing out in the urine), it's fairly stable once it's left the body, so it'll act in the soil for a good while.
It's a wonder we haven't had a seriously nasty strain of E. Coli or Salmonella from cattle, pig, or chicken operations. To hell with West Nile and Bird Flu -- I'm more worried about something getting out of control at the nearest cattle feed lot!
Method of processing duck feet
But that's so wrong it's not even stupid.
Because washing with soap and water (with or without triclosan, etc) is harsh on your skin, it makes the users (i.e., doctors and nurses), resistant to doing it, which increases spread of bacteria because on a whole they're not washing their hands as often because of the PITA factor.
The detergent component is what trashes your skin, because it gets rid of the oils on the surface of your skin (which most of the bacteria live in...), which results in them drying out and all that stuff if you wash your hands too much. Triclosan does nothing to help your skin.
The triclosan enhances the inherent, but limited, antimicrobial action of the soap (due to the pH of the soap), and the mechanical action of scrubbing one's hands, binding the oil-soap-bacteria mix together, and rinsing it all off with water is what actually produces the desired end state.
Which is why clinics and hospitals are starting to use hand sanitizer instead. It is gentler on the skin, actually works better at killing bacteria. Because it's gentler, it is going to get used more frequently.
When my daughter was in the NICU for 10 days, scrubbing with the povidone-laced sponges and scrubbers, once or twice a day going to see her got harsh on the hands... can't imagine doing it multiple times a day, all the time, like a nurse or doctor does.
Mutations? -- Anybody else kind of offput by the use of "mutations by the way it kills the bacteria." -- I'm quite sure they are just talking about very simple evolution. I doubt attacking my leg is going to bounce back and have any effect on the DNA that codes my leg, in fact the entire article doesn't make any sense outside of an evolutionary context. Not only is a low dose it not effective, but in so far as it is effective it just kills the bacteria that the real stuff would have been effective against and lets the more resistant strains take the space they would have occupied. Really the basic "use some antibiotics in low dose over long time in a petri dish" experiment is pretty much exactly what we are doing in the large scale.
If we want better evolved bacteria, immune from our nice antibiotics... we are doing a perfect job.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Gimme a break. No clinician worth their salt would "resist" keeping their hands clean by either scrubbing or washing or sanitizing, regardless of whether the hands were irritated. It's a basic protocol. Not following the protocol puts human life in jeopardy. Skin can get parched, but there are moisturizing lotions and soaps that help. I work around doctors and nurses all day, and have one of each in my immediate family. There's no exception to the protocol, except, I guess, if someone wanted to put patient safety (and their own safety) at risk, and that person would not be in health care for very long.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
This may not be exactly wrong, but it is certainly misleading:
"There's absolutely no evidence that a lack of exposure to bacteria reduces the efficacy of the immune system."
the immune system (for lack of a better word) learns from the bacteria, viruses, etc. that it has been exposed to, lack of exposure leaves the system less able to defend then it might be against anything new that it encounters, resulting in much greater risk of damage or death from new diseases.
In other words, the efficacy of an immune system without any previous exposure is at a rather pathetic baseline level, and unless you want to die very young, it needs to be exposed to a variety of invaders in order to learn. There is boat loads of evidence to this effect, and it is in fact the basis of many of our vaccines which in some cases don't use the actual disease, but something that looks similar from the perspective of our immune systems.
The other scary part of the equation is, if this is killing off 99.9% of bacteria, what about that last .1%? Aren't we really creating super bacteria this way?
That is exactly how antibiotic resistance develops
Here's a link discussing it, circa 1999.... AKA the "Hygiene Hypothesis".
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!