FDA Bans 19 Chemicals Used In Antibacterial Soaps (nbcnews.com)

The Food and Drug Administration has ordered "antibacterial" ingredients to be removed from consumer soaps, citing a lack of evidence that they are effective in making soap work any better and that the industry has failed to prove they're safe. The banned chemicals include triclosan, triclocarban and 17 others (PDF) typically found in hand and body soaps. Companies have until late next year to remove the ingredients from their products, the FDA said. "Companies will no longer be able to market antibacterial washes with these ingredients because manufacturers did not demonstrate that the ingredients are both safe for long-term daily use and more effective than plain soap and water in preventing illness and the spread of certain infections," the FDA said in a statement. NBC News reports: "In 2013 FDA gave soapmakers a year to show that adding antibacterial chemicals did anything at all to help them kill germs. It made the rule final Friday. The FDA started asking about triclosan in 1978. Environmental groups and some members of Congress have been calling for limits on the use of triclosan. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) sued and the FDA agreed to do something about triclosan by 2016. There's no proof that triclosan is dangerous to people, but some animal studies suggest high doses can affect the way hormones work in the body. The proposed rule only affects hand soaps and body washes. Triclosan is often used in toothpaste and it's been shown to help kill germs that cause gum disease."

Comments

The Point...

[EmeraldBot]

The point of this isn't to ban a harmless ingredient, but to ban a harmless ingredient that could eventually prove to not be so harmless. Completely putting aside the potential long term interactions on the human body - which is hugely significant, lead and arsenic don't cause their damage in one day either - "antibacterial" soaps are essentially the same thing as "antibiotic" soaps, and you may see where this is going. 99.9% of the time, killing off all these harmless bacteria doesn't yield any benefit, but it will breed stronger bacteria over time, and that can lead tro some very nasty things. Gonorrhea, for example, is an STD that was once easily curable, but is now becoming harder and harder to treat, and I believe there is a new strain popping up for which there is no cure known at the present time. When such a disease appears and is immune to our easiest form of defense, it has the potential to become an unstoppable epidemic, and again, there's no benefit at all to killing otherwise harmless bacteria (which may even help strengthen our immune systems).

Secondly, these soaps are snake oil, and in more ways than one. Antibacterial soaps do absolutely nothing to stop viruses, so if you think this soap will help protect you from the common cold or the flu, think again. It's also no more effective than normal soap, so you're paying more for a completely useless product, and I doubt many people know this - at the very least, stronger labeling is definitely required. Bait-and-switch, along with the false sense of security, is an issue.

And if all that doesn't convince you, than consider this: we already have a product for all of this, and it's known as hand sanitizer. If there is a place or occasion where you really need to disinfect your hands, use this stuff; it's cheap, effective, usable on the go (the places where you probably need it the most), and bacteria isn't going to be adapting to alcohol anytime soon. As a result, you limit bacterial adaptability, you save money, you destroy viruses, and you don't play Russian Roulette with our ecosystem. Common sense, people.