Slashdot Mirror
Being Too Clean Can Make People Sick
An anonymous reader writes "Young people who are overexposed to antibacterial soaps containing triclosan may suffer more allergies, and exposure to higher levels of Bisphenol A among adults may negatively influence the immune system, a new University of Michigan School of Public Health study suggests (abstract, full paper [PDF]). Triclosan is a chemical compound widely used in products such as antibacterial soaps, toothpaste, pens, diaper bags and medical devices. Bisphenol A is found in many plastics and, for example, as a protective lining in food cans. Both of these chemicals are in a class of environmental toxicants called endocrine-disrupting compounds, which are believed to negatively impact human health by mimicking or affecting hormones."
nuff said
Bath in my own urine, I do... I've never been sick a day in my life
Then what?.. lets go back to basics?
But it won't kill me, because I won't use them. In the past 20 years or so we have become so afraid of dirt that our kids will have practically no immune system at all.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
I've suspected for years that the use of antibacterial soap would prove problematic as it promotes the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Life always finds a way...
I write sci-fi for metalheads
It's not new that our immune system has to be trained to work well. And only some kind of idiot doesn't make the link that keeping the kids away from every source of infection must result in an inferior immune system. Where's the news here?
Now the article suggests that it could either be caused by the hygiene or the chemicals used in the cleaners.
Now if this study was well done and had some control groups, say other forms of cleaners, we might learn something we didn't already know.
I'm just being healthy.
One claim is that being too clean makes people unhealthy. The other is that triclosan and BPA make people unhealthy. Those are two very distinct and different claims. The latter claim is what this study seems to prove, while the former claim seems completely unsubstantiated by this study according to TFA.
If those antibacterial products could have been made with a compound other than triclosan, would cleanliness still have a negative impact on health?
Further, the closing comment on the article makes another good point:
So really, there seems to be NOTHING in support of the claim that being too clean makes people unhealthy.
This is either another case of journalistic ignorance or journalistic sensationalism. But seeing as the journal is called Medical Daily, you'd expect them to have at least a minimum amount of knowledge and insight.
The 1954 study by the Public Health Service and the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP) study already found that out about polio when they did the Salk vaccine field trial: "But polio is a disease of hygiene. A child who lives in less hygienic surroundings is more likely to contact a mild case of polio early in childhood , while still protected by antibodies from its mother. After being infected, these children generate their own antibodies, which protect them against more severe infection later. Children who live in more hygienic surroundings do not develop such antibodies" (Source: "Statistics" page 4, by David Freedman, Robert Pisani & Roger Purves, publisher: Norton)
I place a lot of blame on the marketing people for this. Soap manufacturers were the first. Despite the fact that soap already kills like 99% of the germs on contact, soap marketers started dumping stuff like triclosan into their products to tout their "antibacterial effects". Now triclosan and its ilk are in everything and everyone must have it, even if it's completely pointless. Seriously, do we really need triclosan covered toothbrushes? Has anyone in the past 100 years really gotten sick because of their toothbrush?
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
Today's kids are so wrapped in cotton wool the poor darlings never get dirty.
I blame the TV advertising for this. Many ads go out of their way to suggest that the only way to stay healthy is to use AB stuff at every opportunity.
Last year I told my grandkids how I used to play in the dirt. They were shocked.
They didn't beleive me until I showed them a picture of me covered in mud from head to foot aged two.
Their mothers were horrified.
"All those germs? How could you?"
Pah.
Then to make them feel rally bad, I told them how we used to dig holes in the ground and make underground camps, have cooks outs and other cool stuff.
All done when I was less than 12.
Ok, we didn't have PlayStations or Xboxes back then. We had fun inventing things to do.
Sounds like another possible confirmation of the hygiene hypothesis and the increase of autoimmune diseases and allergies.
I suspect those that use triclosan and BPA would tend not to live with farm animals, eat dirt and be exposed to parasites.
Would be interesting to get some cross referencing to see exposure to these elements is causal or additive to the hygiene hypothesis' supposed imbalances in the immune system which would do these all by itself.
It's not new that our immune system has to be trained to work well. And only some kind of idiot doesn't make the link that keeping the kids away from every source of infection must result in an inferior immune system. Where's the news here?
Except that this proves almost the opposite. It's not that their immune systems are not working; it's that, in the absence of real targets (bacteria) the immune system is targeting harmless compounds (allergens.)
That's why Bisphenol A is a registered toxic substance in Canada. It also causes more girls to be born that boys.. but maybe that's a good thing for the /. crowd.
I only shower once every 4 days. I also only eat one large meal per day... Some days I even skip eating! However, I have a perfectly healthy weight for my height (~140-150lbs, 5'8"), and for some reason I hardly ever smell bad. Correlation?
Join me, slashdotters, as I expand my life expectancy in that mud pit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnmMNdiCz_s&feature=player_embedded Take a fucking chance. ;)
Is it such a slow news day that a finding in a health study is posted on Slashdot? There are zillions of studies of various quality with lots of different findings on lots of different health-related topics. What makes this one different from every other one?
Stuff like this is the best day-to-day indication of editorial bias in the news. But it's hard to guess the particulars of the bias involved in selecting this story.
Bisphenol A is an estrogen mimicking compound.. that has absolutely nothing to do with being clean! For chrissakes, who came up with this headline.
...indeed that being 'too clean' is disastrous to one's health. Having spent more than 15 years in Africa, I came to the observation that folks over there are allergic to nothing I could tell. Not pollen, nuts, honey, dust...name it!
When I came to America, I found it strange to see that people were allergic to certain smells during summer! Insane.
The trouble is that companies continue to tout these so called hygiene products which in effect, make people's lives miserable. The fact is that bacteria found in the environment are more or less harmless.
Was going to point this out myself, their control toothbrush (kept out of the bathroom under a bell jar) had just as much fecal coliform bacteria as the other brushes (even the ones kept directly over the toilet for a month).
Also in their double dipped chips episode they found that there is more bacteria already IN the salsa fresh out of the jar than you add by scooping it into your mouth and then spitting it back into the container (much less simply double dipping a chip).
Fear of Germs.
Skip ahead to 1:49.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Sterile actually.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
We got a puppy a couple years ago, and since then, whenever we go for walks, I always let her drink from puddles, play in the dirt, and sniff and eat pretty much anything (except cat poop--that's just gross.) My thought is that if her body gets used to the dirty things around her, she'll have a stronger constitution. Obviously far from scientific, but after over two years, she's in perfect health. it's really nothing more than how I grew up as a kid. We played in the dirt, drank from streams, and pretty much didn't care about what we got into. Other than the occasional bout of the runs or poison ivy (thankfully, unrelated!) my friends and I grew up pretty healthy.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
the data indicates that being "too clean" makes people MORE SUSCEPTIBLE TO BECOMING sick.... and in those terms "too clean" is defined only relative to that susceptibility. the article is ignorant rhetoric.
also, being less clean does not guarantee less susceptibility to becoming sick.
all of the proper scientists have long left this internet web site chat room message board. nothing is left but ignorant marketeers pushing their hypocrisy at no cost to anyone who would hear it.
slashdot = stagnated
Not using approved hand washing procedures (including soap) will get you fired.
And alcohol based hand sanitizers dry your skin out too much.
I think it's interesting the arguments about whether being too clean makes one unhealthy or not. I realize the article really didn't answer that, but I think in general history tells us the answer pretty clearly. For most of human history we lived in our own filth, didn't bath and had many other unclean things about us. And we've learned that being cleaner has doubled or tripled our lifespans. And cleanliness especially plays a role when someone is not healthy for some reason or another. While I am not certain of this fact at the moment, and would love to research it if given the time, but I believe that during the medival period in Europe people in the cities had a shorter lifespan then people in the country. It wasn't that country folk bathed more often or did much difference in living, but the real difference was that they weren't constantly being contaiminanted by other peoples "dirt". So I think a kid digging in the dirt doesn't really need to rush in and clean off the bacteria. But I think a kid in the mall run his hand along all the places other kids run thier hands, playing in the playgrounds where other kids have played, and don't get me started on those plastic ball pits and what's in them... there, perhaps a dose of cleanliness afterwards is useful. I think overuse of antibiotic cleaners would indeed have several potential problems, but if used in context and looking at where true risk really is, I think they are useful.
Then don't forget phthalates, sunscreen and many more products. It makes no damn logical sense to complain about hand soap when you can basically get the same results from sunscreen or plastic (or plastic-lined) water bottles. This crap is in so many products that hand soap is only the tip of the iceberg.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalate
http://www.ewg.org/2010sunscreen/9-surprising-facts-about-sunscreen/
http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001616.php
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
...Are more effective & not toxic (and less expensive) than the highly marketed, petrochemical brand names. Lavender & Tea Tree herbs can be grown & their tinctures of essential oils made into a diluted synergistic blend that, when applied topically, are antiseptic, antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral. They should not be taken internally, but can be added to lotions, soaps and detergents as a natural preventative. The essential oils may also be purchased online or from a local coop. My personal favourite brand is http://www.auracacia.com/ but there are many other local, organic & wildcrafted brands that are also available at many farmer's markets.
There was an article a while back in Nature
At least for pigs, an aseptic environment for the piglet, actually leads to a less healthy individual. Researcher Denise Kelly (University of Aberdeen, UK) explains that for the study, piglets were divided equally between an outdoor environment, and indoor environment, and one where they were fed a diet high in antibiotics. The outdoor raised pigs intestinal tracts had a significantly higher population of "healthy" bacteria than their indoor raised brethren. Further, the indoor piglets gene expressed more genes for T-cell formation while the indoor raised pigs had more genes related to inflammatory immune response.
Kelly also explains that the pig is a good model for this type of research due to similarities between the organisms found in human and pig guts and their comparable size in organs."
Now about EDC's (Endocrine Disrupting Compounds) had an article a while ago by pickins. Basically these compounds have been shown to feminize males.
A somewhat more disturbing article was published by the National Research Council (http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12528) showing potential linkage between the chemical class called phthalates and decreased size of male testes. The article reports that the EPA needs to study the impact of phthalates as demasculinizing agents on male reproductive organs. Phtlalates are ubiquitous in the environment due to their use as a plasticizer. Traditionally the EPA has studied the effects of pollutants individually rather than as a class. The impact on exposure is permanent causing developmental problems (and if you want to see what an atrophied rat testicle looks ).
There also growing concern that this class of chemicals are actually impacting the ratio of male to female births. A decent summary is posted on .
As an analytical chemist working in the environmental industry, one of the challenges with this issue is that the concentrations we are attempting to measure are absurdly (though potentially significant) low. It is not uncommon for the studies to be needing levels of detection in the low parts per trillion range. Because we are not simply dealing with outright mortality (its fairly easy to tell when all the fish in a river are suddenly floating belly-up) and instead trying to understanding fairly subtle changes in the endocrine system of the impacted species (including homo sapiens) the issue is significantly more difficult to understand and address (slow shifts in the ratio of males-to-females)."
Subject: No shit !
Content: nuff said
Moderation: (Score:2, Informative)
Would some of the moderators, please, inform me which information is that post bringing to me?
Wash (scrub) your hands with ORDINARY soap and hot water.
If you can't do that, you can always use alcohol, which is really keen when you light your hands on fire briefly.
Anti-microbial and anti-bacterial soaps are almost always a BAD idea.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If antibacterial soaps contain alcohol, then why don't they smell like alcohol?
For example, see: Fighting Allergies by Mimicking Parasitic Worms
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
A recent study found Bisphenol A in many cash register receipts as well. They found that the BPA is readily transferred to a person's skin and possibly absorbed.
This study doesn't surprise me, and I've been doing my best to avoid triclosan for years. It's not easy. Lots of hand soaps tout their antibacterial effects. Very few don't, so you have to pay close attention to what you buy. It's in some kinds of toothpaste as well. It's also used on some toys and cutting boards.
My preference is to avoid anything claiming to be antibacterial that doesn't need to be. If normal washing will sufficiently remove the bacteria, that's good enough. Appropriate germ exposure is a good thing.
I've got a friend who tries to make a business around that, selling cloths and fabrics made of wool, artificially polluted with common allergenes. http://www.astmate.com/
His hypothesis is available on the webpage under "more info", if anyone is interested reading it. (I have no kickback from this business)
What do Triclosan being an potential alergen and Bisphenol-A which is not a sanitation product have to do with "Being Too Clean Can Make People Sick" which is reference to the hygiene-hypothesis?
And then we're not being too clean, we're just cleaning the wrong way, the wrong things, the wrong time.
My understanding of the hygiene-hypothesis and modern auto-immune disorders is that its nothing to do with the over use of sanitation products, and more to do with we don't spend enough time outdoors in the natural environment which our immune system seems to need to be calibrated by. Instead of contact with environmental bacterial, dust, spores, we're exposed to artifical chemicals in our indoor environments and food/water and our immune system gets the wrong idea about what to fight.
I'm disturbed by the lack of handwashing in the general population. Almost nobody remembers to wash their hands before they eat, barely do it after visiting the bathroom, and it certainly never happens when your eating out. Blame fast food which is "finger food" to some extent. Some kids these days don't know how to use a knife and fork let alone name vegetables and fruit. Some are genuinely perplexed by the need to wash hands before handling food - and don't really grasp the reasons why - from experience managing a food kitchen.
Previous generations were much more fastidious about washing and scrubbing themselves and everything, perhaps because before antibiotics it was the only defence against the spread of pathogetns. Perhaps because these people had deadly global flu pandemics in living memory.
It's ironic that we are both over using antiseptic compounds where they aren't needed, poisoning ourselves, and not cleaning when it actually is needed to prevent the spread of potentiall deadly pathogenics (salmonella, campolybacter, hepatitis A, influenza and many more). Virtually all human to human or human to food transmission of this stuff is due to some dim wit not washing his hands after taking a dump. Influenza is weakly spread airbone, but strongly spread by touch.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
How does this relate to any of the posters on slashdot, where an accidental bath once a year is more than enough?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I get far fewer colds and flu infections BECAUSe I had to take the "wash a lot clean clean clean" mantra. when you touch 10-20 people's keyboards a day, you will get sick as hell fast if you do not.
Biggest benefit, train yourself to NEVER EVER touch your eyes. This one trick, harder to do that stopping smoking, will cut infections by 5/8ths as it eliminates the biggest path most bugs take to get in you.
I touch your PC, I wash with hand santizer and will at least 3 times a day go to the bathroom to wash my hands. I ALWAYS do that before going back to my workstation.
No colds or flu for 5 years now. Last infection was because my spouse decided to share.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
everyone has AIDS! AIDS AIDS AIDS! AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS! Everyone has AIDS! And so this is the end of our story. And everyone is dead from AIDS. it took from me my best friend, my only true pal--He died of AI-HAY-HAY-IDS...
This is not news, because it's not new information. We've known this, at least academically, for decades. Getting that knowledge to filter down to the plebian masses being bombarded hourly with mis-education disguised as advertising, though, may be a nearly impossible job.
It would be easier to simply put a stop to the mis-education.
BPA has been a hot topic over at the EWG (http://ewg.org). They've got several articles about how BPA is in your canned food (http://www.ewg.org/New-Research-Fuels-Demand-for-BPA-Free-Food-Cans), and how it's been banned in Europe (http://www.ewg.org/Europe-Steps-Up-to-Protect-Babies-from-BPA) and Canada and several other countries. How can a chemical considered to be a toxic chemical in several countries be allowed to be used in food products in the US?
But I also have cats... so I get enough bacteria under my skin thank you.
I'm really surprised that America has so many people allergic to environment. That means you are not part of your environment. To adapt the natural environment, you have to be part of it. Don't be to isolate (clean) from it. Is that simple? Eat wider variety of food as you can. Don't just eat burger, sandwich, beef, chick, fast food. If you allergic to something, try to access bit by bit other than refuse it all the time. Human body is designed to adapt. Too clean certainly makes you very vulnerable to any disease. Chinese knew that for thousands of years.
Everything comes from nothing.
Europe bans baby bottles with Bisphenol A
Too bad for the people whose baby bottles were protected by only the free market.
--
make install -not war
Playing outside, in the dirt, is the best activity for children to grow up healthy. I wonder how much immune system development is compromised these days by replacing that activity with TV and videogames.
--
make install -not war
There is an old Czech proverb saying “Cleanness – half of health”. Some people like to extend it with “Dirt – the whole”.
As pretty as Tali's is, I don't really want to live in an enviro-suit.
Send them to day cares and school. Half the stuff I got growing up came from school....chicken pox, flu symptoms every winter, etc. I don't know how teachers can survive that stuff. I don't even have kids, but being around other people's kids during these high infection seasons makes me sick with at least a "Wow, I don't feel quite right." kind of cold for a day or two.
Same with work, people with kids, drag in their sicknesses to work.
I can understand exposure, but please learn when you are sick as hell to stay home so other people don't have to be sick as hell too. It's especially bad when you have something that interferes with the lungs for those of us with asthma, takes me forever to get over chest colds and I am absolutely miserable...if I were older or much younger that stuff could be deadly.
Because we're not born with immunity to most things. We acquire it from low level exposure. If you remove all of those initial low level exposures from someone's life, they won't acquire immunity. It makes perfect sense.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Avoid using soap toothpaste detergent floor cleaner etc...use natural alternatives...think of how our great grandparents cleaned themselves and live like them. Better still think of how native americans lived here before the european invasion. Otherwise we will become ravaged by all kinds of new diseases and we will never ever become a healthy society.
I think it's a good idea to agree with what everybody else knows, and I'm not afraid to go with the crowd and express that opinion.
What everybody knew yesterday was naive. What we now believe clearly exposes those prior beliefs as wrong headed and hopelessly at variance with currently accepted widespread opinion on the subject.
Also, chemicals are bad.
Like nobody before had correlated too clean people with allergic children. Why usually the richer have more allergies, and children that are poor and play in the sand and live in places with bad sanitary conditions doesn't? (I live in Brazil where economic differences are stronger, so this is easily noticeable.)
In other news, the grass is green and the sky is blue.
Ahem. *cough* 'Well Duh.'
and once again, The late Great George Carlin had it right.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Conventional wisdom has once again survived the onslaught of someone with just enough information to draw the wrong conclusion. You seem to have discovered that ordinary soap doesn't kill bacteria. Great, but that's not what soap is used for.
Pathogens are typically transmitted in droplets of fluid or on the surface of small particles. (Soap won't help with a direct exchange of fluids, either with parasites or members of the same species.) Washing removes pathogens by removing the foreign matter in which they are present on the surface of the skin. Further, only the skin's outermost layer of dead, keratinized cells and oil is directly exposed to bacteria. Ordinary washing with ordinary soap removes a portion of these dead skin cells and sebum, taking a percentage of surface bacteria with it.
You're "magically clean" after washing because there are less bacteria present. It's not necessary to kill that which can be easily removed.
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/5636472
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It all comes back to an episode of The Office: Dwight Schrute: [voice-over as people are seen sneezing on Dwight] The principle is sound: To avoid illness, expose yourself to germs enabling your immune system to develop antibodies. I don't know why everyone doesn't do this... Maybe they have something against living forever.
"The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as long as we live." - M.J. A
I thought this was obvious to most people.
Though I guess "most" is not "all", and so an article by an expert every now and then might help educate those who still are persuaded by TV ads.
But that still does not make it breaking news.
Do you reckon that the general population might need to be educated in this, en mass, to counter misinformed opinions?
Someone ought to throw the idiots who allow this crap to get posted under a bus. I'm getting sick of reading "breakthrough" and "discovery" articles about stuff that was, and still is, already known 40+ years before SlashDot was around. We knew this back in grammar school, while some high-paid, University egg-head rehashes old research and claims some kind of discovery!
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
When I was a kid, no such thing as "anti bacterial soap" existed for the public's use. Soap, of several varieties did, and that was used. I played in the mud as a kid, drank out of the hose in the yard (in the summer, you ran it because the water in it was HOT... not to clean/clear anything out of it that may be bad for you or living in there. I remember seeing ants and/or spiders crawl out of the hose when I picked it up. I ran the water until a cool temp, drank, and shut off the hose without giving it a second thought.) and like most kids those (and these?) days, usually cleaned up when Mom and/or Dad forced you to. Was I sick? Not really. Maybe a cold every year or two, depending on where we lived. As an adult, I never was phobic about any and all germs around me. At my current age (45), I am still healthy as a horse. I don't really remember the last time I had a cold that was much more than simple sniffles. The last time I missed work was from hernia surgery. I have that wonderful feature of an IMMUNE SYSTEM. I feel that your body can be conditioned to have one. Anti bacterial soaps, etc. kill EVERY germ you have on your skin, both good AND bad. No thanks. I never have used that stuff, and have ZERO interest in using it. I'll stick to common soaps and shampoos, thanks... Now GET OFF MY LAWN (and I'll get off my soapbox, no pun intended)
Stone
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1987
Summary (I thought it was well-known): BPA and triclosan are dangerous, yet approved in USA.
Under 10% of cells in the human body have human DNA, so we're buckets of "germs". Killing all surface germs (with triclosan) is not likely healthy.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
I actually heard of something similar years ago. It seems that keeping your house as allergen/dust free as absolutely possible weakens your ability to deal with dust and allergens.
My absolute best use of this information was when I turned down the Kirby salesman by saying that I feared his vacuum would filter the air *too well* and leave my children at greater risk of asthma.