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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."
what is a soap?
Anti-Bacterial Soap Sells Better than Plain Soap
Hurray for marketing!!!
Over the last few years it's become harder to find hand soap (at least the liquid type) that isn't antibacterial. The fad has pushed the added chemicals into all the major brands.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
I've been saying for years that plain soap is good enough, and that it's bad for us as a species to use anti-bacterial soap. I have "body wash" in my soap dispenser in the bathroom, because all the "hand soap" is anti-bacterial these days.
Just goes to show that even an uninformed, loud-mouthed, opinionated jerk is right sometimes.
-Peter
Tric...losan [trik-lowsun] - fooled 'ya! Only kidding! This stuff is no better than spit and sand, sorry chump!!
...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.
But "IF I DID" murder my wife, and I am not saying I did, for nagging me about being online all day, which would be best to clean my hands so the CSI people can't catch me ?
While I quite agree that plain soap is good enough, I've known some real germ-phobic types, OCD sufferers, hypochondriacs, and similar who wouldn't be able to go out into the world and function without some sort of antibacterial agent in their pocket. What do we tell those people now that their beloved Triclosan is known to just screw things up further?
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.
I'm always hearing about how we should not use antibiotics unnecessarily because it allows bacteria to adapt to and as such defeat their use. I get that, but aren't we then fighting a losing battle? Are we all just waiting around until bacteria become superior and wipe us out? Is there any way to escape this eventuality?
I'm not a frequent soap user at all, unless I really have some grime going on. I find that a simple rinsing a few times a day, along with the good ole pumice scrub, works wonder -- and keeps my hands soft enough to work with. Since I do a lot of hands-on production, I absolutely HATE the feeling of dry hands that comes along with using soap. Moisturizers are worse, since they always leave a greasy feel -- and when working with print jobs for churches, I can't leave smudges behind.
I've always told the wifey to stay away from anti-bacterial anything. A lot of bacteria is GOOD, and the ones that are bad are relatively easy to defend against if you're healthy. We want our bodies to adjust to whatever new bacteria is growing in our homes. Between cleanings, you'll have some growth. The body has a great defensive system already -- it builds the necessary defenses to learn and kill whatever comes into the body.
I've been sick twice in the last 2 decades -- once when I shook the hand of someone who was days later became VERY ill, and once after I rubbed my eyes after playing craps in a casino late one night. Both times I didn't rinse my hands after -- and I recovered well enough in a matter of days (much faster than the guy I got sick from).
Let others be suckers and buy into the manufacturer's marketing campaigns about what is healthy and what isn't. Humans have been around for a long time -- longer than soap. Running water > most daily chemicals for living longer and healthier.
I, for one, welcome our new mutant bacteria soap overlords.
parasight.de
It's just better at facilitating mutation and resistance to anti-bacterial agents, instead of the opposite...
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.
my fiance is a med student and has been saying this to me for years (the negative effects of antibacterial everything in the household). It makes perfect sense if you stop and think about it. As for the dry skin thing, she can attest to that too.
is that they tend to dry and irritate the skin more than plain old soap. This makes the skin actually more vulnerable to pathogens. I, too, have been advising folks to just use plain old soap and water and avoid antibacterial soaps. My grandmother used to make her own lye and lard soap. Maybe not such a bad idea. Being a germophobe isn't necessarily a good idea.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
If you really want to rid your hands of germs, use 200 proof ethanol.
I recommend a strong bleach solution ...not so strong that it hurts but as strong as you can toler.... oh a what?... a joke.. oh.. yea of course.
----------
Trying to fix or change something only guarantees and perpetuates it's existence
I would be extremely surprised if that was not the case. Just as I would be surprised if, for instance, the "revitalising" shampoos work, i.e., re-vitalise the hair. Does anyone take advertising seriously?
Just use lye like baby powder.
When I trained as a nurse in the early nineties we were taught to fear the germ. They piled on so much shite about asepsis that you could end up paranoid about bacteria. I am not exaggerating...
On the wards we had anti bacterial soap, and cleaning alcohol dispensers, and there was a strict routine, wash with the soap, then the alcohol, and do so many, many times throughout the day.
The result was nurses with awful skin, and screw the patients, *we* were getting infections.
Within a year someone with a brain dumped the routine, and our soap/alcohol dispensers were replaced with non scented, ordinary liquid soap. Amazingly enough the much espoused explosion of infections because of the mighty germ failed to materialize.
Then they buggered it all up by replacing in house cleaners with minimum wage contract workers, and we got a whole new set of problems, but that's another story.
What surprises me is that this is news now. as far as I'm concerned, this was all sorted out fifteen years ago. I guess different hospitals have different standards.
All hand soap I see at the store says "Anti-Bacterial". All the brands have switched. I know because I would use plain soap if it was there.
just use the alcohol based ones. No mutations!
Not only that, but when you're camping, the sanitizer gel makes for a good fire starting paste.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I'm an undercover agent working for the FB... oh, it was a joke. Nevermind I posted this. In fact, I didn't log in today.
*dammit, I blew my cover*
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.
It took research to figure this out? Docters have been saying not to use this on children or elderly for years now. What the hell is the U of M wasting time on this crap for? It would be nice is "regular" soap was anywhere to be found in store now-a-days, and if "regular" soap had a smell better then just "soap".
For cleaning vegetables anyway, a mild vinegar solution killed more bacteria on the surface of vegetables than did soap. The food scientists at the magazine explained that lowering the pH interferes with many kinds of biological processes inside bacterial cells. A quick Google search turned up this interesting site that recommends using hydrogen peroxide as well.
That being said, I think we should trust our immune systems more. Unless the immune system is compromised in some way, it does a bang up job fighting off most bacteria. When I was a kid, I played in the dirt and ate bugs. Now, I never get sick and I have no allergies. I think over-protecting the immune system not only weakens it, but causes it to focus on the wrong types of things, creating more allergies.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Hydrochloric acid? It'd certainly make sure that there was no residue on your hands and that they couldn't trace finger prints (if they weren't already on record) ;)
Try Kirk's Castile Soap - in my area, Rodman's carries it for $.99 per bar, and it's excellent. I haven't used their liquids, but the bars are really high quality.
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Most of us don't that soap exists
Or there's thing dictionary, neither.
my fiance is a med student and has been saying this to me for years (the negative effects of antibacterial everything in the household). It makes perfect sense if you stop and think about it. As for the dry skin thing, she can attest to that too.
And she is completely right. I work in computational biology, working for a microbiology professor who specializes in bacteria. Never get her started on antibacterial products, she's said more then once she wishes she could rip them all off the shelves of stores because of the risk they pose for mutations.
Antibacterial is bad, m'kay?
I use Greased Lightn', I also say just remove the top layer of skin and you'll remove the bacteria that on it too. Lava Soap works good too. just not in the private areas... unless you into that..
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
What's bukaki ?
Seriously... just lay off the stuff.
It's just as bad that your children don't develop a resistance to everyday germs.
My sister's got this weird OCD thing going with alcohol based antibacterials... she's beginning to sound like a heroin addict.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
I've read several months back in a hydroponics gardening magazine that some green houses are now staying away from bleach and other chemicals when flushing their systems between crops. Seems the constant bombardment of flushing agents is mutating pathogens that attack plants. What they are doing now is actually flushing the system with water and then introduce beneficial microbes into the system. Once those are established they replant the greenhouse. Now there is a protective layer or beneficials that out number the pathogens and make it harder to them to get established on/in the plant.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
When you're looking for antibiotic resistant, tough-as-steel and unkillable bacteria, you don't go to a biology lab. You go to a hospital.
When you hear that some hospital has a problem with bacteria, stay away. Far away. Preferably you're on another continent. Yes, even if it's just some "normal" bacteria strand that causes something like a mild sneeze or something else that's usually harmless and goes away in a week or two of rest.
Simple reason: There's nothing in the world that could kill those critters. Those are the descendents of the bacteria that survived the onslaught of the toughest anti-bac crap that's available to mankind.
That is btw also the reason why taking antibiotics for harmless junk illnesses is about the worst thing you can do, surpassed in stupidity only by taking them only 'til the symptoms end. If you accomplish anything that way, it is to toughen the bacteria, but not yourself. They'll be back with a vengeance, and then those ABs won't hit them anymore. They adapt amazingly quickly. Kill them all, ok. Kill 99.999% of them and you're in for trouble.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I've suggested to all of my friends with children that they should let their kids play with (and be licked by) my dog, as a pre-emptive anti-allergy exposure. I agree that the world nowadays is way to "sterile."
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So what we are saying is that eventually anti-bacterial soap will no longer kill bacteria.
If this is true... then it will no longer be anti-bacterial!
Problem solved!
If you're worried about the harshness of soap, I'd stay away from the lye+lard stuff: it's pretty rough on the skin. I'm a big fan of castile soap (I really like Kirk's - it's old-school, and cheap too), and that's not quite so rough but it still does the job.
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
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 work in computational biology
So, you're studying the germs on your keyboard? They say your toilet seat is cleaner, but I don't think I would eat off of either one of them.
What?
i think i remember reading somewhere that chemical derivatives of triclosan are endocrine mimics. which means they mess with things like amphibian reproduction (amphibians are on the decline around the world). triclosan is found in 60 percent of American stream and rivers now
i cleID=024FEAE8-E7F2-99DF-323D8E02C4E48BF6&pageNumb er=1&catID=9
and you can even find triclosan in breast milk now too: it gets in our food via fertilizer. hey, when you flush it down the drain, it has to go somewhere. sometimes it comes back to you
now normally, a slight level of this chemical or that chemical is no big deal. for example, chloroform and dioxin are chemical byproducts of triclosan reacting with chlorinated water. but that doesn't matter, as the levels of those scary sounding chemicals are the same as normal background readings, meaning hysterically mentioning them has no real scientific basis for alarm (but is effective propaganda for the scientifically uninitiated)
but endocrine mimics are different, as the slightest of levels really can have an effect on biological processes. but i guess that's ok, because between all of the birth control, propecia, viagra, and xanax we're also pissing and flushing into our waterways, yes, our animals and children will all be hermaphrodites, but they will have a full head of hair, a hard on, and be strangely blissful about it all
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa029&art
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triclosan
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Will she trade sex for Purel ? My kind of addict - ready to do anything to get her fix AND completely germ free !
No matter what kind of soap you use, it is not useful unless you give it time to work. Most people wash their hands for 3-4 seconds. This is nowhere near long enough to kill or remove bacteria. You need to wash your hands for a good solid minute.
We taught our kids to sing the Alphabet song while washing. When they were done they could rinse
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.
This is some nice anti-anti-bacterial soap hype.
No, it's not necessary or very useful to use anti-bacterial soap. No, it won't create super-bacteria that come and kill us all.
I don't use it because I'm allergic to the anti-bacterial ingredient. I'm not sure why we need misleading hype for every opinion on either side of everything though.
Definitely! Just look at any OCD sufferer's hands... smooth and silky!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I'm no biologist, but isn't it the case that the mutations happen anyway? Antibiotics don't CAUSE bacteria to mutate, they simply weed out the non-mutated population that would otherwise compete for nutrients with their mutated peers. I'm not saying that over-use of antibiotics isn't a bad thing, I just think the above statement is factually wrong.
That said, I think antibiotics in handsoap is a non-issue, and I'm not surprised they aren't any more/less effective than "regular" handsoap. Ultimately the bacteria is being removed from your hands, right?
Soaps made from ladies' fat asses don't need triclosan.
Get some help for your OCD. Seriously. Living germ-free is dangerous - it compromises your immune system, often with nasty long-run consequences. If you've got kids, for goodness' sake don't impose your OCD on them. Ultra-sterile environments in developmental years are what cause asthma and other immunological disorders. We are expressly designed to function in conjunction with microbial ecosystems - both inside our bodies and outside.
A-Bomb
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.
There's absolutely no evidence that a lack of exposure to bacteria reduces the efficacy of the immune system.
In fact, it seems that the reverse is true. As we've become more hygenic, the immune system, strong as ever, goes looking for soft targets to beat up. It becomes hypersensitive, creating conditions like allergies and athsma.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
if you wash you hands a 100 times a day it is better for your skin. Ask you doctor, who has to do this.
There are periods in my professional life where I have to wash my hands many times a day for weeks on end. What works best for me is to wash with normal hand soap and immediately follow with a hand creme.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Once more,marketing gives us a product that cost's more, does no good, and may ultimately harm millions all for the sake of the almighty buck.
Once again, they face no sanctions for blatantly lying to the public for years.
This is a good example of why the free market fundamentalists are so often wrong. Most soaps are anti-bacterial because of marketing hype which causes consumers to prefer buying them, when the long term consequences are clear. It's clearly in the public interest to ban or tax or otherwise de-insentivize the purchase of such soaps, but that would violate the holy precepts of the free market.
This article (and maybe even the paper) is fundamentally flawed because it espouses (probably by accident) a backward, Lamarckian view of adaptation that simply isn't possible. Bacteria don't develop resistance because they want to, they develop resistance because the population is killed en masse and what's left to repopulate usually turns out to be more resistant.
The triclosan in antibiotic soaps soaps can't be BOTH completely ineffective AND causing antibiotic resistance--that doesn't make sense. Either the resistance of the antibiotic is developing because the antibiotic is working (making antibiotic soap, at the very least, slightly better) or the soap is relatively ineffective. It can't be both.
I know it's popular to bash antibiotic soaps and there's good reasons for doing so, but enough with the bad science articles.
-Grym
Five comments in this story (and counting!) from thegameiam, and four contain links to KIRK'S CASTLE SOAP. I don't think the story is a marketing ploy, but I'm beginning to think that user may be a KIRK'S CASTLE SOAP employee.
Your brain is not a computer.
Yes, but by the same theory of evolution shouldn't the bacteria that are more resistant to dessication be passing on more genes?
Whenever I hear about human products and chemicals killing 99.99% of something, I wonder if we are truely doing ourselves a favor?
...something like 27 different times.
Hans, is that you?
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
The label on my Zest "Aqua Pure" does not list triclosan.
It does list sodium chloride, which is a mixture of two poisonous elements!
We're so screwed.
Just run reiserfsck. Gets rid of dirty filesystems... er... Hans... uh... hands...
Washing with soap basically washes off the dirt and oils, which hold the germs, down the drain. Are you afraid you'll develop germs that stick to you hands and soap won't get them off ?
Hans, is that you?
Of coarse not. Reiser already killed his wife, why would he be asking for advice now?
Sorry, but if you had actually read the scientific papers, you would have noticed that it says that anti-bacterial soaps are not just not better, but in fact are worse for you than a good basic soap.
Why? Because, as we in the medical research community like to point out, and our friends in the biochemistry community as well, anti-bacterial soaps breed antibiotic-resistant strains of many diseases.
STOP. Do not use or buy anti-bacterial soaps. Do not use or buy anti-bacterial sprays - use a standard detergent or a common vinegar solution.
By using these soaps you breed strains of diseases that are difficult to fight.
How do you think we got drug-resistant staph infections in the first place? People overusing drugs when they shouldn't have.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You would be too if you had to use rubbing alcohol for mouthwash!
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Storm
...it probably doesn't kill everything
triclosan also kills sexual desire
it was in this month's discover magazine...
so, stop using it already!!!
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
I can't point to any sources, but I've heard it said that a possible cause in the rise in asthma in the US is this hyper-cleanliness that some parents are obsessed with. By trying to sterilize everything, children's immune systems just don't get the exposure to all the things they should while they're in "learning mode" early in life. They then spend the rest of their life with a somewhat compromised immune system.
The hypothesis relies on the idea that when you're an infant that your immune system is in a special mode where it is trying to learn about as many pathogens as possible. I don't know if that's really true, however.
Use anti-bacterial soap to cause stronger bacteria
Use anti-Terrorism to cause better terrorism
remove all the multicolored sheep to cause an increase of multi-colored sheep being born.
Use memory protection anti-crash to cause more need for it as coders use it as a crutch.
.
I would suggest that you start selling them tiny bottles of DiHydroOxide. You can explain to them that it is one of the worlds most powerful solvents. It is found in almost 100% of all household cleaners. Advise them to use it in proper quantities, as it is powerful enough kill a horse, and has been known to eat through solid rock if the rock is exposed to sufficient quantities. This is some pretty serious stuff. They will have to pay a reasonable price to get such an effective hand cleaner, so $25 an ounce should be sufficient.
My soap experience comes from grappling. When we get a ringworm outbreak those of us who use antibacterial soap do not get it. Everyone who uses regular soap does. I used to be a big believer in not using antibacterial soap, after a few ringworm infections, I started using antibacterial dial. No infections from that time forward.
For the people more knowledgeable about this than I am, what about cleaning hard surfaces?
I try and use anti-bacterial soap to clean my boa constrictor's water dish. He has a pesky habit of dragging a dead rat through it before he eats it, so I try and make sure it's clean.
Can I just use ordinary soap instead and get the same properties, or is the argument being predicated on the fact that anti-bacterial soap, though more effective, can have worse long term consequences? I mean, I don't really concern myself with my water dish getting an infection...
I found a dish washing liquid that didn't _say_ it was antibacterial in the $1 aisle at our huge mart but this is a meme the industry really piled onto. Not that much selection available and who knows when they'll quit doing it.
For dry skin? What's better, the plain soap? I know you were in a hurry to get first post, but do try to elaborate when you have useful information.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Er, from personal experience, I'd beg to differ. Alcohol-based hand sanitizer dries out my hands and leaves them feeling more "raw" compared to regular soap and water. I'm not sure what the cumulative effect of having to wash your hands dozens of times a day would be, nor how well you'd have to wash with soap and water before it's considered to be as effective as using the alcohol-based stuff.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
What about soaps with citric acid ("Lemon scented")? I heard they kill bacteria. Is citric acid effective? Does it cause mutations?
I won't debate the point that anti-bacterial soap may lead to new strains of bacteria that are hardier and resistant to the chemicals in the soap, however, I do believe the assertion that it is no better than regular soap is wrong. My own personal experience says otherwise. Bread in our household use to last about a week before it would get moldy and need to be thrown out. My wife saw anti-bacterial handsoap on sale once and bought some for the kitchen sink and both bathrooms (completely unrelated to the bread issue). Suddenly, the bread stopped getting moldy. A single loaf would last for weeks. Once all the anti-bacterial soap got used up we ended up using some other brand that happened to be on sale and we went right back to bread lasting only a week. Because I noticed this trend, I went out and got all A-B soap again and - voila - long-lasting bread. So in my mind, the A-B hand soap *IS* definitely doing something much better than regular soap does.
I gave myself a nasty slice on the hand a few years back that was bleeding a lot and wouldn't stop. I didn't have much around me at the time to help. I had heard that cayenne pepper works as a reasonable astringent to staunch bleeding, so I poured it all over the wound and applied pressure. *&%!(*%!@ Worked like a charm (very fast!) but it was *horribly* painful for a few minutes.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
If you have a septic system, many people tell you to avoid anti-bacterial soaps and reduce the usage of bleech. Because the two works against the bacteria in the system that help break down the solid waste. It is very difficult to find liquid hand soaps that do not contain anti-bacteria.
"... 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."
I know that it's kinda a bad word now in the US and no-one wants to upset Anne Coulter and Bill O'Reilly (why anyone would care is beyond me though), but I think the word you're looking for there is "evolved"
Don't thank me, just doing my job...
Yeah, and you're kids can actually drink the alcohol based ones and get a buzz! ...oh wait, they stopped making the alcohol based ones because of this.
Don't kid yourself that humans are the pinnacle of evolution, bacteria always were and always will be.
Actually, you could say that animal life (including us) is the pinnacle of bacterial evolution, at least on this planet. The life of almost every cell in our bodies depends utterly on one particular, very specialized bacteria: the mitochondria. Mitochondria has its own DNA, which is not passed in sperm cells -- the mitochondrial DNA is only passed down from mother to child from the mitochondria contained in the egg cell. It's an endosymbiont. We may be the product of a bizarre interspecies love affair between a bacteria and an amoeba.
include $sig;
1;
I can't point to any sources, but I've heard it said that that germs were an inside job.
I can't even buy non anti-bacterial soap in the grocery stores here in vermont. ugh.
I've used a similar excuse for just about every woman I've known that bitches that I don't throw perfectly good food out of the fridge, after being in there 3 days!! I say ingesting the little germs...keeps me healthier.
But, really...I mean, when I make home made mayo or something else, with raw eggs...no, I don't keep that very long. But, if it is cooked food, in my ice cold fridge...it can last 1-2 weeks easy. If it isn't blue, fuzzy, bad smelling, or developing into intelligent life.....it is good to eat!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
If we all die off from some super-bacteria because too many people bought the marketing hype regarding anti-bacterial soap, well, that is the free market at work. And we all know that when there are no government regulations the free market is infallible. Besides, who are any of you to take away my right to make stupid decisions that impact others?
If you oppose anti-bacterial soap, you hate the free market and you hate freedom.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I always wondered why people felt antimicrobial soap was worth anything. Here's why:
i d=doi:10.1086/502183 has some interesting comparisons of hand washing techniques.
Bacteria have cell walls. Triclosan, as the summary notes, targets a component of the cell wall that is integral to survival. You know what else is integral to survival? The cell wall. You know what other component of soap targets the cell wall? Soap. Even small amounts of detergent will completely solubilize a cell wall. Imagine the concentration of detergent on your hands when you wash them, with soap.
No bacteria is surviving that, and if it is, it sure as hell is going to survive a tiny concentration of Triclosan.
Also, on a side note, the motion of -rubbing- one's hands together has been shown to contribute at least as much as the soap, to the killing of bacteria. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?
If you can't find a real troll, just mod down whoever you don't agree with!
shampoo is better, it makes you hair fresh and clean. no conditioner is better, it makes your hair silky and smooth!
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.
"(the negative effects of antibacterial everything in the household)"
Tricosan is bacteriostatic, but so is soap. One of the points of washing is to get rid of bacteria. Every time you do anything against bacteria, you encourage bacterial evolution to find a new pathway.
The article has fraudulent elements, or at least sleazy elements, in my opinion. This is just a Slashdot comment; the subject warrants a lot more investigation, which I plan to do.First, the Slashdot story only references a press release on Physorg.org, an organization that apparently exercises little oversight over the articles it runs.
Second, read this article by the same author, which says exactly the opposite of the present article: Antibacterial Cleaning Products and Drug Resistance.
Quote: "... we did not observe a significant impact on antimicrobial drug resistance during the 1-year period..."
NO development of drug resistance or Triclosan resistance has been shown as a result of use of Triclosan, apparently, although people have been speculating about that for at least two decades. There are some chemical pathways that bacteria cannot abandon.
The story is not new, but is apparently chosen only because it easily excites the popular imagination.
The sloppiness and over-valuation of the work suggests either: 1) The University of Michigan does not deserve our confidence, or possibly 2) Allison Aiello is allowed to be sloppy because she is attractive.
This quote from the U. of M. press release is pure, wild speculation, not supported by theory or experiment, apparently: "Because of the way triclosan kills the bacteria, mutations CAN happen at the targeted site. Aiello says 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." [my emphasis]
Yes, Triclosan may not prevent bacterial or virus infection. But no one said it did. The purpose of Triclosan is to prevent or reduce skin fungal infections, and it does that very well, in my experience.
My parents make their mayo also, its sometimes 2 months before it is used up. Never had any problems, maybe because of the vinegar and mustard.
When your newborn third child drops their pacifier onto the ground, "Fido, fetch". Then you wipe the worst of the dog slobber off the pacifier and stick it back into their mouth. You have observed that dog germs and dirt didn't hurt numbers 1 and 2.
My now 21 month old son dropped his pacifier on the garage floor. He picked it up, and said "dirty," while handing it to me. I gave it a cursory look, brushed the dirt off, and tried to put it back in his mouth. He pulled it out, looked at it, and more insistently said "DIRTY." I looked at it, looked at him, and just stuffed it in my pocket.
Back to the original point, we ARE breeding super bugs with anti-bacterial everything. We did it with penicillin, and we're doing it with anti-bacterial chemicals. I go out of my way to purchase store-brand soaps that don't have chemical anti-bacterial agents.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
I beg to differ.
When you have two other room mates and the three of you are in the room, back out, 15 minutes to get ready in the morning, sweating in the California sun, and hydrating all day, then I'd eat off of my keyboard any time! If only you could see the stuff we eat -- Hot Pockets aren't the worst of it!
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.
I'm sure you understand this, but your wording has incorrect implications that I think should be cleared up:
A germ couldn't mutate away from or evolve to face a threat as some sort of active response (well, let's hope not anyway). If a singular bacterium that is vulnerable to one of the above threats encounters it, it's pretty much screwed.
The risk is that within a species or strain of bacteria, some may already exist that just happen to have a beneficial mutation that makes them resistant to these threats. So when the population encounters the threat, primarily the mutated ones survive. This also reduces their competition for resources, often allowing these survivors to flourish as a new strain that uniformly has this mutation.
The concern is that we will have then accomplished an accidental form of selective breeding that fosters the creation of bacteria-cide resistant "superbugs" that will enslave humanity and suck our brains. This may have already happened with cable TV.
It's also possible that no such mutations occur and the bacteria-cide remains effective indefinitely. It's hard to guess the chances.
Of course, the big advantage of bacteria-cides is they're generally not harmful to us. You can probably drink anti-bacterial soft-soap, and it'd be the basic soap would probably kill you before you got enough anti-biotic to harm you. If you drink bleach...well...you've got problems.
I suppose inside is where the germs do their jobs best...
I only said, "I can't point to any sources" because I can't point to any sources (maybe I heard it on the radio, maybe Dr. Dean Adell's show) and I don't want to lend any more weight to my statement than hearsay. The idea sounds plausible, but then again, I haven't studied immunology.
About 20 years ago my grandfather who was a pathologist told me to wash my hands as little as possible in order to keep my immune system strong. To this day the only time I wash my hands is after pooping and before cooking for others. Since then my body has been able to fight of hepatitis B without me even knowing that I ever got it. The only way I found out that I ever had it was when I tried to give blood the blood tests returned that I was a hepatitis antibody carrier. Also with the out break of encephalitis in this area and the sheer number of the mosquitoes it would not surprise me one bit if I have been bitten by an encephalitis carrying mosquito. Basically small weak germs are good for your body, they gives your immune system a work out and keeps it in shape so when it does encounter that really nasty germ it has the strength to fight it off.
sorry for my comments, I'm drunk
I'm not sure what makes soap "physics" rather than "chemistry". Soap is what happens when an alkali metal ion bonds with a fatty acid molecule called stearate. The "soapy" part of soap is generally potassium stearate or sodium stearate. Early soap was created using a solution made from the ashes of cooking fires combined with meat tallow. "Potash" gets its name from that original source, though mining is the most common method of producing potash today, and it provides the potassium hydroxide (lye) when put into solution. Obviously the tallow is an abundant source of fatty acids.
Potassium Stearate is an odd molecule--it is a hydrocarbon chain "tail" that is hydrophobic attached to hydrophilic potassium "head" on one end. Oil and water don't mix on their own, but the "tail" of the soap molecule attracts oil and the "head" attracts water molecules, allowing oily dirt to be carried away by water. Sounds like a pretty chemical process to me. It might disrupt lipid membranes but by no means is household soap meant to kill bacteria--it is meant to attach to it and allow it to be carried off by water--to be an effective antibiotic it would have to be too harsh to use for washing yourself. So I'd say it isn't how the microves are killed because regualar soap doesn't kill that many at all--it is what is done with the bacteria.
The real issue here is that antibacterial "soaps" (they are generally far from being "pure" soap) DO kill the bacteria rather than just wash them out of the way. The problem is that nothing is perfect--they all kill "99.9 percent" of bacteria. That leaves 0.1 to hang around, a large part of which are naturally resistant varieties and some of which are slight mutations of more benign bacteria that can reproduce into a "superbug" strain.
These rather un-soapy antibacterial cleansers are sometimes less effective at REMOVAL of bacteria tan regular soap, and sometime people who use these products do not use them as vigourously as they would normal soap because of the false sense of security they get fromthe "antibacterial" label. The net result is that there is very little benefit with antibacterial cleansers over plain soap--the former kills most bacteria but washes less away and the latter kills far less bacteria but washers more down the drain.
Soap, however, present less long-term risk in most situations because the bacteria left behind is still 1000-to-1 normal-to-harmful ratio, whereas antibacterials leave behind a much higher concentration of the more harmful kind. When they are that far outnumbered the "killer bugs" have to compete and have far less chance of thriving.
I like to restrict how much antibacterial cleaning product I use personally. I'd like to keep my resistance to infection thank you very much.
Do those Purell hand sanitizers type products fall under this category?
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
A lot of people are complaining that they can't find any plain soap in the stores. I use ivory. I buy it at Wal-Mart. I've never seen a Wal-Mart that didn't have it. Most drug stores have it to. It costs me less than 50 cents a bar. When I first started using it, it made my hands feel good. Now, of course, it's just business as usual, but I wouldn't use anything else. Ivory is "99.44% pure", and does not contain any anti-bacterial chemicals.
There is also Dove. It is not soap, but a "Beauty Bar." It has moisturizers. It doesn't dry your face like soap. The Equate brand at Wal-Mart is less than 50 cents a bar.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
I think that the marketing folks should jump on this new study. It will allow them to sell soap at a premium once again. Now that soap is better than AB soap, "premium", "all natural" soap could be sold at an increased price while also lowering costs!
Bruce A. Knack
Silicon Surfers
According to Fight Club (Authored by Chuck Palahniuk), It is the yardstick of civilization.
"Operating systems suck: you're better off using only the BIOS" --trainsaw.com
Heh. Ours was in the NICU for 3 months. I used Corn Husker's Lotion on my hands every evening, and Cetaphil every morning, to repair the damage.
And yet, somehow, our kid still wound up with sepsis in her second week in the NICU. Go figure.
So it's ok if your pizza turns into unintelligent life?
(Sorry, I really couldn't resist...)
Self-referential Sigs are cool on /. these days...
54
I wish I could mod you up. That was a really helpful example. Thanks!
no, hans id is 6963
\n.\n
Not only do I boost my immune system, it's also awesome for the skin!
Also, when I get out of my backyard mudhole, I look like a scary mofo, as a bonus, the 'hood kids won't hang out anywhere near my lawn...
Second, read this article by the same author, which says exactly the opposite of the present article: Antibacterial Cleaning Products and Drug Resistance.
Quote: "... we did not observe a significant impact on antimicrobial drug resistance during the 1-year period..."
Ummm, that's not the exact opposite. On the one hand he is saying a "Mutation can happen" and on the other hand he is saying "we didn't observe.." I don't see how those are opposites at all. I'm not sure about the veracity of the article (mostly because I don't care much). However, I find your comment to be a fraudulent, or at least a sleazy, analysis of the article.
The incremental gains your immune system might make in fighting off some random infection by itself is probably very small. Your immune system will already be producing antigens and killing bacteria during a course of antibiotics. This is really more about the community, because antibiotic usage DOES lead to resistant strains which might not affect you but will hurt the weakest in the population. The problems arise from the fact that antibiotics are really the only weapon that doctors have and when patients come in expecting results regarding the sniffles. It's about the only thing they can try.
In my personal experience, the answer isn't to avoid antibiotics but just to be a little more knowledgeable about your condition. If you feel sick for a couple weeks you're probably going to be fine. If the problem continues for more than a couple weeks your immune system might need some help. Also, there are some tell tale signs that your body is having trouble, such as the sickness expanding to an ear infection (which can cause hearing loss if untreated), unusually thick phlegm being coughed up, fever, or trouble breathing.
I was very sleepy when I wrote my parent comment. Now that I've had some rest, I realize I should have said: The purpose of Triclosan is to prevent or reduce topical skin infection and skin bacteria and fungus, and it does that very well, in my experience.
For example: If you plan a 2-day trip hiking in the mountains, and you don't want to smell bad on the 2nd day, use soap with Triclosan. Triclosan doesn't kill all the bacteria, it just slows their growth, keeping your skin a little healthier if you don't take a shower every day.
I am making no statement here about whether using Triclosan has some bad side-effects. The point is, neither is Allison Aiello. Nothing she said is relevant to science, apparently. People are not going to go back to living with body odor because Allison Aiello said that there "could" be a problem.
Can't recall the story, whether I read it or heard it, but more than a few hospitals and clinics are adding hand sanitizer stations *because* it is less harsh on hands, it's faster, which removes the PITA factor for many Drs and Nurses. They did this after doing some serious observational studies on RNs and MDs washing their hands throughout their shifts, being rather surprised at how lax people actually were at washing their hands the way they were supposed to, vs what they said they did.
When they talked with staff about it, one of the big things was harshness to hands and the time-suck. Hand sanitizer works as good or better, and only takes a few seconds, compared to the recommended minimum 1 minute of scrubbing that they're typically supposed to do when washing hands.
Workers are happier, and disease transmission risk reduced. Sure beats hiring a bunch of Nurse Cratchetts to simply browbeat everyone to wash their hands or risk getting fired.
One of my previous managers spent a couple years living on the streets of Mexico City (for his post-grad "research"). After 2 weeks of diarrhea, he can go anywhere in the world and eat street vendor food and not get sick.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
This has more to do with your lack of training in how to wash your hands than in the soap you are using.
Ever seen Grey's Anatomy or any of the TV shows about doctors? Notice how they wash their hands? Do that.
Problem solved. Now get rid of that disease-spreading anti-bacterial soap and go buy bars of Ivory Soap - it works better.
Many people tend to scrub longer with anti-bacterial soaps than they do with standard soaps, as they are thinking about the anti-bacterial nature, not because it's better.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Vinegar and mustard? Basic mayonaise is pretty much only egg yolks, oil, salt,and lemon juice....
I've put in a bit of vinegar when no lemon juice around, but, never have put mustard in it...?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Well, I'm coming in at the end of this discussion, so probably no one will read this. I'm going to express myself anyway :)
I have four cats. I like to play rough with them, so I frequently get scratched. If I immediately wash with triclosan soap, the scratches usually heal before getting infected (even slightly). If I don't, they don't. I've tried it enough times to convince myself there's a difference. This does mean more than a cursory wash -- I leave the soap on the scratch for maybe 20-30 seconds.
Maybe there are other things that could work too, but alcohol stings much worse and the scratch doesn't heal as readily, as if the skin were also being damaged by it. I suppose I could try iodine.
Also, I'm not worried about the bacteria acquiring immunity. I thought it was a truism in evolutionary theory that the kind of rapid evolution required to develop such immunity only happens in isolated populations; which the bacteria on one's hands definitely are not. Washing such a small area, even frequently, doesn't begin to apply significant selection pressure to the entire population of bacteria in one's house. Consider: you wash your hands, and a few bacteria survive that have a little more resistance to triclosan than the others. Now you go about your day, exchanging bacteria with other surfaces, and the survival advantage conveyed to those bacteria once they've left your hands is zero (probably negative, actually, if the alternative pathway they're using doesn't work as well). The next time you wash your hands, the vast majority of bacteria on them are not the descendants of the survivors of the previous wash, but came from other surfaces. There's no opportunity for the more resistant bacteria to multiply faster than the others.
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
"Antibacterial soap isn't any better than normal soap"
and
"Antibacterial soap may cause mutations that help bacteria resist Triclosan"
The article you linked says:
"Antibacterial soap doesn't cause drug resistance"
and
"We don't know if it affects Triclosan, further research is needed"
This is hardly the opposite. In fact, I believe this new article is the "further research". If you put these together you get: "While antibacterial soap does not cause drug resistance, there is a small risk it will mutate bacteria to cause resistance to Triclosan. You're better off not using it since it's not any better than normal soap" NO development of drug resistance or Triclosan resistance has been shown as a result of use of Triclosan, apparently This is patently incorrect. The article states that they found resistance when soaps with higher concentrations of Triclosan were used.
Hmm
So
Think very carefully about the issues here. No one has demonstrated any bad effects from the use of Triclosan in soap. (I'm not saying there aren't any. I am saying no one, including Allison Aiello, the author of the study referenced by this Slashdot story, has demonstrated any bad effects.)
So, there is no story here. She apparently didn't find anything which would make anyone believe they should avoid using soap with Triclosan to avoid body odor, as they have been doing for three decades. Apparently what she did is just junk science, good for a misleading headline by those who care more about headlines than truth.
I work at a medical supply warehouse. We sell virtually NO antimicrobial soaps currently. It is either a fairly mild shampoo/bodywash (with or without conditioners) for patients or it is alcohol gel for the professionals. Most of our vendors have in fact discontinued them in professional packaging due to low sales. We used to sell a fair amount of Dial liquid but don't even order from them anymore.
:)
;)
In fact, doing this quick walkthru just now i had to pull 2 of the 3 cases of antimicrobials as they outdated on the shelf ! There is about 15 cases of alcohol gels and several dozen cases of shampoo/bodywash in various brands and sizes for comparison. The liquid handsoap (either type) has all but disappeared from our stock.
The professional market has certainly moved to the far ends of the spectrum.
Personally i use the shampoo/bodywash for my "soap" and it alternates as my shampoo. Unfortunately most consumer bodywash products are extremely overpriced. Pretty unfamiliar with whats available at store s lately as i get it here at wholesale but you guys seem to be covering that
As for the alcohol gels drying the hands, it does vary by brand. The cheapest with no additives is pretty harsh, while Purel and others usually add something to counteract that in varying degrees.
That was an interesting diversion and almost work-related
The real question is, Why is store-bought Mayo white?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I think Dettol has an anti-bacterial agent called Chloroxylenol (looked it up on wikipedia, though I could have sworn the bottle says some other name for the anti-bacterial). I wonder how it stacks up against soaps that use Triclosan. I think they work in different ways to kill bacteria.
Marketers win, takes rest of world 10 years to figure out!
This has been known for a very long time. Pretty much since the plague.
Slashot "New for nerds, um how about News for Ads so we can eat, Shutup Taco! Slashdot "We give up and want to be a tech Drudge but we suck to much."
Or even better,
Slashdot, "No point in actually reading this, we're going to point you to Wikipedia or some blog that has actual content anyhow." Can you believe we actually made millions off this thing?
I don't think it's incorrect. I take issue you being a dick. If you think he's wrong, explain why. If it's not worth your time to respond, don't. But to reply with some snide "you're not worth my time" remark is just small (and ironic).
In case someone would like to read more about Triclosan and Triclocarban:
Triclosan and triclocarban: "Triclosan and triclocarban have been used as effective antiseptics [1] in soap since the 1960's."
From the National Institute of Health, a U.S. government web site: The finding of mutants that carry no cost to resistance implies that such resistant strains could persist in natural populations, even without the constant presence of triclosan as a selective agent. That was 6 years ago. The issues in the current article referenced by Slashdot are not new.
Some bacteria are naturally resistant to Triclosan, and always have been.
To see more about Triclosan and Triclocarban, put those words into the U.S. government's PubMed.gov web site.
As I said before, people use soap with Triclosan and Triclocarban to prevent body odor, fungus, and bacteria on the skin. People who work outside and people who can't shower every day are not going to stop using anti-bacterial soaps because the University of Michigan writes a misleading press release.
Saying, as the title of this Slashdot article does, "Anti-Bacterial Soap No Better Than Plain Soap" is misleading. The article referenced by the Slashdot article is titled "Plain soap as effective as antibacterial but without the risk" is not what the study showed. The study concerned infectious diseases, and ignored the real reasons people use Triclosan: To avoid body oder, skin bacteria, and skin fungal infections.
I have no involvement with the use of Triclosan and Triclocarban other than as an occasional user.
Feminist-Mom, your question deserves an answer. It's unfortunate that there are so many ignorant, angry, disrespectful people who comment on Slashdot stories.
Yes, bacteria cannot develop resistance to alcohol, because alcohol breaks the cell walls.
I started using castille soap last year. It's available in most health food stores, and Dr. Bronner's brand even has the distinction of being Fair Trade (if you can handle the weirdness on the labels...). I was skeptical at first, but the stuff really works and I feel very clean. It works as shampoo too, and doesn't leave behind that oily, sticky film regular bar soap does when you try that.
...actually, you can use it as mouthwash after brushing too, though it tastes truly foul at the back of your throat.
~Eien no Inori wo Sasagete~ Searching for my Hatsumi...
I can not help but think how quiet it is in the White House now. Evolution is not supposed to exist, but I guess the bacteria in question did not get the presidents memo on that straight forward subject. Maybe the bacteria is lying, and it is part of the "Axis of Evil?"
Again, my first sentence was to ask that people read the original source scientific articles.
And I used bold to say that.
Perhaps you are sensing that I'm not happy that so many believe the distortions of the truth and believe that instead? As evidenced by the preponderence of "anti-bacterial" soaps?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Triclosan kills bacteria by interfering with an enzyme called FabI. FabI's job can also be done by FabI[G93V], which isn't affected by triclosan very strongly at all. E coli will make FabI[G93V] instead of FabI after a mutation of just a few base pairs.
I don't know about amoxicillin (discussed by TFA), but why is it implausible that bacteria could become resistant to triclosan in this way?
(By the way, my source is R. J. Heath et al., 'Mechanism of triclosan inhibition of bacterial fatty acid synthesis', J. Biol. Chem. 274 (1999) 11110-14.)
!("Flamebait" && !"Troll") < !(!"Disagree" || "Insightful")
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!
Do you use just your hands? In that case, I say that washing your hands frequently is even more important!
To
Never understood the point of "antibacterial soap" given that most soaps are some kind of hydrophillic group on a hydrophobic chain, and will thus bust bacterial membranes like nobody's business anyway.
My assumption was that it was some sort of marketing thing, like that birth control pill that advertised that it reduced acne (talking to some friends in the field, it's apparently common knowledge that they all do this, but only one company did the relevant clinical trial legwork so nobody else got to use it as an advertising point). Honestly, it's news to me that an actual drug was added to the soap mix to make it more "antibacterial" at all.
Regarding (5), I'm also curious what it is about the drug that actually causes mutation instead of simply bringing them out with selection pressure like normal antibiotics. Could just be poor translation from reviewed article -> dumb people article, but could be something cool, too.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Thanks for telling me that. I have a lot of bacteria in my mouth and throat I need to take care of all of a sudden. And maybe some more down in my stomach. Now, is beer or wine sufficient or will I get the best effects from scotch?
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
This is an article on PhysOrg about alien spacecraft parts being found that was referenced in the comments of a recent Slashdot story. In the comments below the article a PhysOrg editor explains "As scientists, we truly believe that even some irrational theories have the right to be announced" and "It's up to the readers to trust the facts or not and to form his/her own opinion. Our mission is to deliver science news content released by official institutions". I'm not saying that there is no merit to any particular article on the site, but the original poster's description as "an organization that apparently exercises little oversight over the articles it runs" seems fairly apt.
Enigma
Heresay.
No insurable clinician would violate the protocol. Cite sources, please.
thx
.. 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
It would be best if you didn't get zero her files before forcing the system to reboot. (Go look Hans Reiser's murder of his wife and the flaws of ReiserFS.)
You said, "Never understood the point of "antibacterial soap" given that most soaps are some kind of hydrophillic group on a hydrophobic chain, and will thus bust bacterial membranes like nobody's business anyway."
A film of Triclosan stays on the skin after washing. As I said above, the point of Triclosan is to prevent body odor, fungus, and skin surface bacterial infections. It's for people who work outside in the hot sun, for example, which I suppose is all of us, sometimes, and some people all the time.
Triclosan doesn't cause mutation. It only prevents some of the growth of bacteria that are affected by it, so bacteria that aren't affected, mutated bacteria, will grow preferentially.
Ah, yes, studies of studies. What's next? Studies of studies of studies?
Er, from personal experience, I'd beg to differ. Alcohol-based hand sanitizer dries out my hands and leaves them feeling more "raw" compared to regular soap and water. I'm not sure what the cumulative effect of having to wash your hands dozens of times a day would be, nor how well you'd have to wash with soap and water before it's considered to be as effective as using the alcohol-based stuff.
Check your sanitizer's ingredients.I found one, whose ingredients were antibacterial AND known to be carcinogenic....
So check.....
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When I read one of the comments I thought about this article from Freakonomics in the nytimes. It's lacking the details I'd like but does have vague statements like "Compliance had risen to about 80 percent from 65 percent, but the Joint Commission required 90 percent compliance."
Methinks he doth protest too much... "possibly 2) Allison Aiello is allowed to be sloppy because she is attractive" Can we please avoid the baseless libel? Attack the ball, not the player. Your one-sided FA-bashing already makes you sound like Triclosan's PR manager without denigrating the author.
Most articles about science investigations contain some statements that are not exactly true. But this one seems extreme to me, in that it is extremely misleading.
Soap prevents communicable disease. There is no need for Triclosan. The purpose of Triclosan is to slow the development of bacterial and fungal colonies on the skin after washing. As I've said, that helps prevent body odor and fungal infections. Triclosan has no relevance to what was supposedly studied.
I'm not saying Triclosan is okay. I'm only saying that the study was not relevant, and everyone around the author must have known that. Why didn't they tell her? My theory is that people often allow behavior from an attractive person that they wouldn't allow from an average person, because they are afraid of disapproval by someone who is widely admired.
Well, home made comes out pretty much white...depends on what other ingredients you put in it. If just yolks, whole egg, oil, lemon juice and salt...is kind of an off white...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You can have my anti-bacterial soap when you pry it from my clean, bacteria free hands!
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
Scotch.
Higher alcohol concentration, better tasting. I personally recommend Scapa, or for something a little more spicy, try Belvenie http://www.balvenie.com/. And if you get really sick, try Jagermeister (it'll either kill all the germs, or cause you to throw up all of the germs).
i've had it with these mother farking germs on my mother frakking hands!
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Alcohol works primarily because of organic chemistry, not something specific to certain strains of bacteria. If we keep using autoclaves to sterilize instruments, we are not going to evolve organisms that can survive fifteen minutes in 120C water (the microbes that can do this already live in such environments).
If you murder your wife, and need to get rid of the body quick... there's really only one question you need concern yourself with. Will it blend?
Mustard acts as an emulsifier, thus making the emulsion come together more quickly and stay more stable.
non antibacterial soaps are not meant to kill bacteria. I don't know for sure, but I suspect it never was. It was made to remove dirt, oil and other stains from things of all nature. When doctors discovered that they could greatly reduce infections in hospitals simply by washing their hands, they wondered why. Enter the microscope and microbiology. Scientists realized that the infection rate was reduced because that tiny organisms called bacteria that caused the infections were either killed or washed free when doctor's, nurses, etc. washed their hands and tools. Later it was realized that the bacteria could be almost completely killed by new chemicals. Still later chemical manufacturing companies that were currently making soap for the homes decided it would be good to make this available to the masses and started making antibacterial soaps. The problem is that hospitals are ridden with infectious bacteria due to the obvious nature of a hospital. Homes on the other hand, while they certainly do contain these types of bacteria, harbor mostly beneficial bacteria. Since the antibacterial agents are not usually selective they kill all the good bacteria too. then the good and the bad bacteria begin to regrow. In most cases, depending on the types present, the bad bacteria will grow quicker and larger and 'swallow' the good bacteria. This is because of the way it has already evolved to work: attack everything. So, we get more bad bacteria that is already better at killing us and less of the good bacteria that we require for normal biological processes. Its not that it facilitates the expedited evolution of infectious bacteria, but that it just allows it to propagate more than the bacteria we have already formed immunities to.
here is more info about SLS and it's presence in shampoo's and others.
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Like the climate and tobacco the beauty industry will sure not go open publically about dangers in their own products...
Take with a grain of salt but be warned?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
even more difficult to find soap which containing live-bacteria...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
What is the difference between this, and thistles evolving better abilities to cling to clothes?
"Alcohol works primarily because of organic chemistry, not something specific to certain strains of bacteria."
I don't follow this. Please explain how this stops evolution.
So, you are suggesting that the current 120C microbes didn't evolve this ability?
An environment which can not support any form of life is not a breeding ground for new or adapting species. Acids (which alcohol is) break down the types of carbon bonds that form living cells. A strong acid bath is one of many environments in which life can simply not exist. So, you are suggesting that the current 120C microbes didn't evolve this ability?
No, I'm not - an autoclave is a different environment than the thermal vents of an undersea volcano. For one thing, an autoclave does not possess the static characteristics needed to constitute an environmental shift that the bacteria can adapt to (it is not hot long enough, there is no ample food supply, etc.). Strain 120C can only survive because the temperature of the water near the thermal vent is cool enough for them to survive. If the temperature increases beyond 140C, then the latent energy begins prying their constituent atoms out of their bonds. Life does not evolve through that - it simply ends.
I was considering that the alcohol doesn't kill all of the bacteria, and they are only covered in it momentarily (and probably not fully). I do not die from it with a limited exposure, so it is possible for the bacteria to live through limited exposure. With such a short lifespan, and with regular use (but not total destruction), I fail to believe that the bacteria wouldn't start to become better defended against the chemical which is killing them off. I am not saying they would soon be able to live in pure alcohol, but a tolerance would build up. There is life on this planet that survives on entire chemical processes, in harsher environments that we once thought possible, surely this isn't unbelievable. Man, now I feel bad for giving bacteria an "acid bath"! Ouch!
Ahh, I suppose the length of time is critical to the evolutionary process. Just like above, that defines our views. I was considering a moment in time, where you were considering longer. So, how long does bacteria have to exists in an autoclave to die? I mean, at what time do you still run the chance of a few little buggers surviving? I assume, with shorter time frames, you could have a problem where some survive (presumably the most resistant?).
Ouch, so i assume even thermal vents are less than 140. Ouch.
Fair enough - a shorter exposure window will definitely enhance the bacteria's survival rate. There are bacteria which are much more resistant to alcohol than others, and continued exposure to small amounts of alcohol could potentially lead to alcohol-resistant strains of bacteria. The death rate of the bacteria is mostly a matter of exposure time and acidic strength.
So, how long does bacteria have to exists in an autoclave to die?This is called Thermal Death Time - it will be different for different types of bacteria, and it gives you a good measure of how many bacteria are likely to be alive during different exposure windows.
It's been a pleasure talking to you. Have a continued pleasant Slashdot experience!