FDA To Decide Fate of Triclosan, Commonly Used In Antibacterial Soaps

kkleiner writes "The FDA is finalizing its review of the antibacterial agent triclosan common to many soaps and other health/household products after four decades of use. Recent studies suggest the chemical may be harmful to animals and could interfere with the human immune system along with increasing the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The agency has been slow to cast a verdict, to much criticism considering its widespread use."

Comments

Toothpaste

[G-News.ch]

Personally, I find the thought that we put that stuff in our mouths every day much more worrying than the use in soaps. It's also in fabrics, clothing, plastic tools etc.

the scare the women marketing strategy

[alen]

always works, especially older women

GERMS. OMG, GERMS. my wife used to buy this crap and i refused to use it because there was literature in the 90's about how it made you sicker in the end by screwing up your immune system

Re:the scare the women marketing strategy

[anagama]

Anecdote:

I started life as a dirty hippy. There are quite a few photos, by the instamatic standards of the late 60s, of me crawling around naked in river beds next to the campgrounds we lived in or sitting in mud puddles splashing about. In one photo, I'm sitting in the dry part of a riverbed chewing on a stick I must have picked up, smiling like an idiot smile while some dirt and drool seep out of the corner of my mouth.

Anyway, I almost never get sick and the only thing I have an allergy to is acetaminophen. I do shower almost everyday now though.

Re:the scare the women marketing strategy

[Maximum Prophet]

You're tough, you didn't die, you've lived to post about it.

Every kid that was killed by weird diseases caused by picking things up, isn't posting.

Shouldn't those kids die?

[bussdriver]

Is it not nature that the unhealthy do not pass on their genes? We evolved too, not just the bacteria... except we stopped. Insensitive? no, realistic - stop living in a dreamworld you can't ever completely win against nature. It is one thing to take precautions by not swimming in your shit pool and quite another to wage an expensive a war against nature.

Re:Shouldn't those kids die?

[DarkTempes]

Just because it's what has worked so far for "nature" doesn't mean that it's the best way or the way that we have to do things.

Ideally we'd figure out what bacteria are in dirt that we need to expose some kids to for healthy immune system development and we'd use that knowledge to more directly influence immune system development. "Nature" can't do that but luckily we might just be rational conscious entities with that potential.

We can afford to keep the "weak" alive as a species and I posit that it's better overall for community emotional, moral, and intellectual health.

I put nature in quotes because it's an idea that we made up and does not necessarily reflect reality (but it might).

Re:Shouldn't those kids die?

[tlambert]

Is it not nature that the unhealthy do not pass on their genes? We evolved too, not just the bacteria... except we stopped. Insensitive? no, realistic - stop living in a dreamworld you can't ever completely win against nature. It is one thing to take precautions by not swimming in your shit pool and quite another to wage an expensive a war against nature.

What about insulin for diabetics? What about glasses for myopic or presbiopic people, or publishing anything at all in Braile, along with the manufacture of white sticks? What about Erucic acid for Adrenoleukodystrophy? What about cyanocobalamin/hydroxocobalamin injections for pernicious anemia? What about iron supplements for women?

There are plenty of us who would be dead now, had we been born in the 1200's; insulin dependent diabetics (type I diabetes) were pretty much dead until the 1920's, and later than that, if they couldn't afford the private manufacturing costs for ongoing treatment - assuming they were even correctly diagnosed in time.

We've been "preventing" natural selection ever since we first started dabbling in medicine in prehistory, and earlier than that, if you include appointing "minders" to keep the tribes near-sighted oral history from walking off a cliff.

Would it be great if we could all be genetically perfect? Yeah. But I'm not willing to buy into the idea of some eugenically managed "naturalist" utopian ideal to get there.

Re:I sense a great disturbance in the web...

[h4rr4r]

Actually I am trying to vote with my dollars, not improve my own health.

I would think it worth it if it improved the lives of my grandchildren.