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

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

Posted by samzenpus on Monday May 20, 2013 @05:40AM from the washing-their-hands-of-it dept.

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."

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I sense a great disturbance in the web... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2013-05-20 05:42 · Score: 5, Funny

As if millions of hypochondriacs cried out in terror and suddenly went to check WebMD.
1. Re:I sense a great disturbance in the web... by 0racle · 2013-05-20 05:52 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Not looking forward to listening to the sister-in-law and father-in-law if they do anything other than give it a huge thumbs up.
  
  Not that SIL and FIL are right, but damn they're loud about being wrong. So damn wrong.
  
  --
  "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
2. Re:I sense a great disturbance in the web... by noh8rz10 · 2013-05-20 05:54 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  there is no purpose for antibacterial soap. it is just a gimmick and fud that has bad implications because bacteria build up resistance over time. regular soap kills bacteria just fine. you know how a drop of soap will break up grease? the outside of a bacteria cell is just lipids, so the regular soap has the same effect on them. Good for FDA for limiting the explosion of antibacterial products. next step, eliminate antibiotics in farm food.
3. Re:I sense a great disturbance in the web... by pjbgravely · 2013-05-20 06:08 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  You are correct that the soaps should be limited. Even though I am dependant on them. I have a long history of skin infections and nothing made it better until my doctor suggested using antibacterial soap. I am now almost free from them now. If they were banned hopefully I could get a prescription for the soap.
  
  As for the farm animals most use antibiotics because of feeding corn to cows, or the crowded way chickens and pigs are kept. This use could be eliminated but food prices would go up.
  
  --
  Star Trek, there maybe hope.
4. Re:I sense a great disturbance in the web... by interval1066 · 2013-05-20 06:52 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  regular soap kills bacteria just fine.
  No it doesn't. Soap just serves to make the surface of your skin slippery enough to shed the little buggars. If we all really felt the need to kill germs sans anti-bacterial chemicals we should be washing with bleach, but since that's not really a good idea for your skin our military-industrial complex came up with "anti-bacterials". By the way- researchers were warning us about the rise of superbugs becuase we started down this stupid path 30 years ago. I guess as usual we all refused to listen. Now we have a huge, hideous, monster of a problem looming. Good job, humanity.
  
  --
  Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
5. Re:I sense a great disturbance in the web... by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · 2013-05-20 06:56 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  For beef last year I split 1/4 of a cow with my father and it came out to just over $4 a pound with processing and the farmer is one of my dad's long time friends. For pork my neighbor's brother raises hogs so I will split a quarter of a hog with him and that comes out to just under $3.50 a pound. Strangely the two farmers live about a mile apart and know each other. In both cases I end up paying the farmers directly and the processor for the bulk processing. Chickens I have to butcher and pluck them myself but they are small enough that it isn't a long job and I can pick one up on the way home from work for $5 as it is only about a mile out of my way. I get my deer processed at the same place as the hogs and cattle as they do a really good job and have won tons of state, regional, and national quality and cleanliness awards. They charge by finished weight $1/lb for steaks, chops, and roasts, and $0.25/lb to grind the trimmings into burger with sausages carrying extra fees depending on what you want done to cover the additional costs. Unlike some places the critter you bring in is the one you get back which seems to happen a lot with places that process venison. The other nice thing is since I know the farmers I have seen what the critters are fed, how the live, and how they are treated and know if they have been given hormones or antibiotics. It seems that there is a much stronger flavor from these critters when compared to the store bought ones probably because they aren't so over processed (treated with ammonia and packed in CO2) and fed a diet of something other than empty calories and hormones.
  
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  Time to offend someone
6. Re:I sense a great disturbance in the web... by Firethorn · 2013-05-20 08:42 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  The point of soap is not to kill the bacteria, but to make it easier to wash things off the skin that would not wash off with water alone.
  Yes, but when serious studies show that antibacterial soap is no more effective than non-antibacterial, why use the one with a chemical that potentially screws with your hormones?
  In addition, it seems that nanoscopic metals can be used for antibacterial purposes as well.
  
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  I don't read AC A human right
the scare the women marketing strategy by alen · 2013-05-20 05:43 · Score: 4, Insightful

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
1. Re:the scare the women marketing strategy by Maximum+Prophet · 2013-05-20 06:11 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
  
  --
  All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
2. Re:the scare the women marketing strategy by dkleinsc · 2013-05-20 06:28 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Sadly, this is a common marketing strategy, for several reasons:
  - Women are a lot more likely to be homemakers than men, so they're easier to bombard with advertising.
  - Women are slightly more likely than men to make decisions using emotion rather than logic (everyone uses both ways of deciding, but where they conflict men are about 60-40 in favor of logic while women are about 60-40 in favor of emotion).
  - Women do most of the shopping in most households.
  - Women are significantly more socialized than men to give presents to each other to cement social bonds.
  All this adds up to advertisers targeting women for common household products, particularly women who grew up before the rise of Second-wave Feminism. And although this is changing a bit, most ads for cleaning supplies, food, diapers, paper towels, etc feature those products being used by women rather than men.
  
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  I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
Re:Toothpaste by guttentag · 2013-05-20 05:48 · Score: 4, Funny

Personally, I find the thought that we put that stuff in our mouths every day much more worrying than the use in soaps.
Perhaps you just need a brand in a shinier box? I suggest you try the new Crest 4D White toothpaste. It has every bit as much fluoride as 3D White, but comes in a new extra-shiny with sparklies box. Those matte boxes will make your teeth rot.
SOAP by stanlyb · 2013-05-20 05:48 · Score: 4, Informative

There is only on kind of soap that works, the one that ALL the doctors are using, the plain, simple, normal SOAP. No artificial ingredients, no strawberry scent (who wanna to eat soap!!!) nothing.
1. Re:SOAP by evilviper · 2013-05-20 06:02 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  There is only on kind of soap that works, the one that ALL the doctors are using, the plain, simple, normal SOAP. No artificial ingredients, no strawberry scent (who wanna to eat soap!!!) nothing.
  While most medical staff do indeed use plain soap, surgeons at least, are required to use antibacterial soap.
  
  --
  Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Re:Shouldn't those kids die? by DarkTempes · 2013-05-20 06:53 · Score: 4, Insightful

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? by tlambert · 2013-05-20 07:43 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.