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Widely Used Antibacterial Chemical May Impair Muscle Function
New submitter daleallan writes "Triclosan, which is widely used in consumer handsoaps, toothpaste, clothes, carpets and trash bags, impairs muscle function in animal studies, say researchers at UC Davis (abstract). It slows swimming in fish and reduces muscle strength in mice. It may even impair the ability of heart muscle cells to contract. The chemical is in everyone's home and pervasive in the environment, the lead researcher says. One million pounds of Triclosan is produced in the U.S. annually and it's found in waterways, fish, dolphins, human urine, blood and breast milk. The researchers say their findings 'Call for a dramatic reduction in use.' It's in my Colgate Total toothpaste, and in fact, preventing gingivitis is the only use that may be worthwhile, although this makes me think twice about continuing to brush with it."
This isn't the first time Triclosan has been in the news over safety concerns.
I can certainly dose any given collection of animals with nearly any given chemical in a fashion that will kill them (either quickly or slowly, depending on the particular substance.) I can also dose them with an utterly harmless dose of the most toxic and horrible poisons known to mankind and the animal will live. This applicable to everything from water or oxygen to nasty organic or radiologic stuff.
In the end, it all comes down to the dose. Was the dose these animals were given at all representative of the dosing received by a person using triclosan-based products? (Or animals absorbing triclosan in the environment?) Would have been nice if that press release had mentioned it. Since it didn't, I can guess that the dose is utterly ridiculous.
At least it has been banned from being used in the food industry! (Yes, it was used in plastics that came into direct contact with our own food until 2010).
http://www.beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/?p=3574
Currently, you can make any products with new chemicals until they are banned. Should it be the burden of companies to prove that chemicals are safe before they can sell products?
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
The experiments in mice were performed at 12.5mg/kg, which would be (for the average 65-kg human) a shocking 812.5mg of Triclosan. If your standard amount of handsoap and toothpaste is 2ml that's like brushing your teeth with a 1/3 solution of triclosan and swallowing it.
Like most of the research in PNAS this was not subjected to the high level of peer review expected in most scholarly journals and this paper got through without regard to its relevance and real-world significance.
At a high enough dose, caffeine causes cancer in lab animals. But not at the doses even Slashdotters consume.
Stop making life decisions based on limited evidence.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
Yeah you can, by exhausting the search space.
Of course, we're not talking about "proof" here in the pure mathematical "exhaustive" sense, but in the statistical confidence sense, and more specifically, in requiring a basic set of health/environmental impact studies before a new chemical can be used. Which just seems like common sense. If one is worried about that being too onerous, then the burden could be varied depending on how similar they are to existing chemicals which have gone through the full battery of health studies.
We're practicing our labials.
Your immune system needs exposure to bacteria in order to stay strong. If you are always using anti-bacterial lotions and wipes, your white bloods cells can 'forget' how to fight off infection. Some of the healthiest guys are sewer workers, they rarely take a sick day, because their immune systemsare so strong, since they are constantly fighting off bacteria.
Hmm, I drink just a touch over 4for liters of water every day...
You are going to die.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness, has a book chapter coming out that addresses this danger. Prof. Teleb's draft chapter on Medicine, Convexity, and Opacity from his upcoming book, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, can be found at:
http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/medicine.pdf
While the entire chapter is worth a read, at page 389 he observes:
That may have been the case here. That is, for years no evidence of harm was mistaken for evidence of no harm.
More generally, Prof. Taleb argues at page 376:
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
You can't prove a negative.
Got a proof for that?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Drink four liters of water each day, and you will probably die.
In fact, I can guarantee you will die.... eventually.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Indeed, I'd rather be using lotions/whatever with beneficial bacteria cultures in them than anti-bacterial stuff.
Probiotics are a main selling point of yogurt, we may as well promote the ones that help us rather than try to poison everything, period.
I think antibiotic treatments should always come paired with probiotic therapy to rebuild beneficial flora that you should not have killed.... And deaths from clostridium dificile bear this out.
--PM
There is a huge, symbiotic, non-human, microbial biomass that make our lives possible.
These microbes outnumber us, in our OWN bodies.
It is not your own body, you are just the biological protective suit for the bacterial life form inside you.