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."

Comments

No shit !

[Picardo85]

nuff said

Re:No shit !

[eln]

On the contrary, it would appear that a lack of shit is the problem. "More shit!" would be a more appropriate response.

Anti-bacterial soap will kill you all.

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

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.

Re:Anti-bacterial soap will kill you all.

[krazytekn0]

which is why my poop eating, dirt crawling, ringwormed, 2 year old that I let play in a pile of wood with rusty nails sticking out, will RULE THE WORLD

Re:Anti-bacterial soap will kill you all.

[DigiShaman]

I think the idea is to stimulate the immune system, not overwhelm it.

Re:Anti-bacterial soap will kill you all.

[Beardo the Bearded]

My kids will turn on the taps, wait, and then turn the taps off just to avoid washing their hands. I was asking why the towel wasn't damp and they started rinsing their hands. Pests.

I stopped caring about germs. I bike to work, I exercise at the Y (26 minutes ago, excellent!), I have one kid in school and one in daycare, I SCUBA dive in the ocean (we discharge screened sewage here), and I eat at a pub about once a week on average. (the chefs there don't exactly use antibacterial soaps...) I've had someone puke in my mouth. (My daughter; she was very young and the game was very high.) Normal germs don't stand a chance in my body.

I licked my keyboard while I was posting this. I'm not afraid of germs.

Re:Anti-bacterial soap will kill you all.

[viking099]

Well, they're not so bad after a run through the autoclave.

Yawn

[Kosi]

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?

Re:Yawn

[jeffmeden]

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?

What's new, it seems (even by reading the summary and not venturing near TFA) is that the story has NOTHING to do with "training" the immune system. Instead the study was on how endocrine inhibitors influenced immune system effectiveness. Strangely, they made no mention of the "kids who played with dirt vs. kids who were kept in a hermetic bubble" research that so many on slashdot are fond of reciting.

Re:Yawn

[gordguide]

'Antibacterial' soap kills almost no bacteria that regular old soap doesn't. It is a marketing term that means nothing in the world of reality because soap itself destroys most strains of bacteria on contact. Therefore, this is something more going on here than just "not enough germs weakens immune system". ...

Not true, actually. Soap simply breaks the bond between your skin and the oils your body produces. These oils are what prevents plain water from washing away bacteria.

So, washing with ordinary soap washes away bacteria; it does not kill them.

Antibacterial soaps do kill many of the bacteria, while also washing them away (as it is, after all, soap). By antibacterial soaps we are talking about products like Irish Spring; by ordinary soap we are talking about products like Ivory bar soap.

No antibacterial agent (that you can safely use in the home) kills 100% of the flora it's exposed to, and no soap washes away 100% it's exposed to.

Your body needs some types of bacteria to be healthy; as does your own skin. You don't really want to be killing helpful bacteria; you are less healthy as a result, but antibacterial agents are non-discriminatory. They kill the good with the bad. So, there's one problem with antibacterial soaps.

With ordinary soap, you wash away a large amount of bacteria but helpful bacteria remain in enough quantity that they can reproduce and do their helpful job.

Also, bacteria are able over time to resist agents deployed to kill them. So, if you use antibacterial soaps where ordinary soap would do, you end up with "superbug" infestations, like ordinary staph bacteria that morphs into aggressive agents that infect wounds in hospitals and are extremely difficult to control. There's the second problem with antibacterial soaps.

Use ordinary soap, wash as often as required, and live a healthy life. It's not complex.

Two completely different claims

[SpeedyDX]

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:

"It is possible, for example, that individuals who have an allergy are more hygienic because of their condition, and that the relationship we observed is, therefore, not causal or is an example of reverse causation," Aiello said.

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.

Re:I've suspected this for years.

[jeffmeden]

Except instead of your "hey wouldn't it be totally ironic if anti-bacterial soap made people SICKER!!??" observation, they have identified Triclosan and Bisphenol A as an endocrine disruptor with the specific function of inhibiting the immune system not by protecting it from exposure or selectively breeding resistant germs (the two popular "well duh" observations here) but by actually inhibiting the effectiveness of the immune system. Knowing this, as opposed to say "knowing that for sure, antibacterial soaps are totally bad because they don't let your body *learn* about bad germs!!!" is what leads to advances in medicine and pathogen control.

I'm not a doctor but I appreciate what they do.

Re:I've never been sick

[Anonymous Coward]

if gender==female then (send pix|vidz!)

Re:Wake up and read

[icebike]

That is not the Opposite of the GP's statement.

If anything you've proven his point.

Further, I think you misread the article.

Conclusions: Endocrine-disrupting chemicals like BPA and triclosan may negatively impact human immune function as measured by CMV antibody levels and allergy/hayfever diagnosis, respectively, with differential consequences based on age.

So rather than your assertion that "the immune system is targeting harmless compounds" the facts are that the immune system is not functioning up to par (depressed CMV antibody levels) thereby allowing higher levels of allergy/hayfever.

Re:Marketing Gone Wrong

[ElectricTurtle]

Actually plain soap doesn't do shit. It's an emulsifier, not a panacea. Plain soap simply binds oils and water, the theory being that if you take the oil off your skin you're magically "clean". It does not "kill" "germs" (the non-scientific catchall term which includes viruses which aren't even alive in the first place according to the classical definition of life) any more than other emulsifiers like lecithin or egg yolks do.

Re:I've suspected this for years.

[ColdWetDog]

Except instead of your "hey wouldn't it be totally ironic if anti-bacterial soap made people SICKER!!??" observation, they have identified Triclosan and Bisphenol A as an endocrine disruptor with the specific function of inhibiting the immune system not by protecting it from exposure or selectively breeding resistant germs (the two popular "well duh" observations here) but by actually inhibiting the effectiveness of the immune system. Knowing this, as opposed to say "knowing that for sure, antibacterial soaps are totally bad because they don't let your body *learn* about bad germs!!!" is what leads to advances in medicine and pathogen control.

I'm not a doctor but I appreciate what they do.

Let's not get hasty here. They took some data previously collected:

Methods: Using data from the 2003-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, we compared urinary bisphenol A (BPA) and triclosan with serum cytomegalovirus antibody levels and diagnosis of allergies or hayfever in US adults and children age 6 years. We used multivariate ordinary least squares linear regression models to examine the association of BPA and triclosan with cytomegalovirus antibody titers, and multivariate logistic regression models to investigate the association of these chemicals with allergy/hayfever diagnosis. Statistical models were stratified by age (

Then ran a series of statistical tests to see if there were any correlations between the body burden of BPA and triclosan and putative proxies for immune function (CMV titer and hayfever diagnosis).

They "adjusted" for a bunch of variables and come out with a correlation between the markers and their effects. They then go on to state that the chemicals may depress immune function.

It may be true but this sort of analysis is prone to a host of problems - poor data collection, poor data analysis, over correlation by the statistical software and god knows what else by the statistical software (disclaimer - I've only read the abstract, I don't know exactly how they did it but unless they have a very good statistician looking over their shoulders, they open to making any one of a number of mistakes).

And of course, our favorite logical fallacy: Correlation implying Causation. Specifically, the charge that the endocrine disruption mechanism of BPA and Triclosan is the cause of the immune changes is not addressed at all. It's simply assumed.

Unfortunately, this is like the vast majority of the literature in these areas. Because good science is so hard to do, we gets lots of these little studies that may or may not mean much of anything. They're fine, it's the way we have to do things, but don't flush all of the soap down the toilet.

Re:I've suspected this for years.

[Waffle Iron]

Antibacterial soap does not contain antibiotics. It contains simpler chemicals (alcohol, etc) which kill cells on contact.

Alcohol is usually found in hand sanitizers, not soap. Antibacterial soap usually contains triclosan, which is similar to antibiotics in that it gradually interferes with a part of bacterial metabolism that humans don't have. It prevents bacterial growth over time, but doesn't kill instantly. As with antibiotics, some bacteria have evolved resistance to triclosan due to constant exposure.

Hand sanitizers are mostly alcohol, which is immediately highly disruptive of many biological processes. Since it evaporates away after use, long term chronic exposure shouldn't be a problem. At any rate, if alcohol could breed dangerous resistance, then the Jack Daniels distillery would have been ground zero for superbug outbreaks decades ago.

I personally find it highly annoying that almost all liquid hand soaps on the market contain triclosan. (So much for the "wisdom" of free markets. The potential problems with triclosan, and its lack of effectiveness in preventing disease have been common knowledge for many years now.) We go out of our way to only buy Ivory, which is the one brand that seems to not include triclosan (or any annoying scents either), but it's not always easy to find.