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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."
While anti-bacterial soaps are pointless for most people, there is no reason or justification for the FDA to regulate them since these active ingredients are otherwise safe and widely used.
Saponified oils (real soap) are high enough pH to be antibacterial on their own, most normal soaps nowadays are a small amount of SLS (sodium lauryl sulfate) and gelling agent and are only mildly antibiotic at best. If you want antibiotic soap get some sort of saponified soap, no need to contribute to the overuse of antibiotic agents in our environment that build resistance.
There is no reason or justification for the FDA to regulate them
This patented Antibacterial Snake Oil Goat Weed will repel Tigers & Bears, with the added benefits of making you attractive to the opposite sex and give you rock-hard erections.
since these active ingredients are otherwise safe...
Citation needed
the alcohol based hand sanitzers dry my skin out too much.
I work in the 'elder-care industry, I have to wash my hands hundreds of times per shift
Yes, 36 years -- what speed! Thankfully, maybe our grandchildren will be able to grow up in a world without triclosan.
Now, if only I could find a liquid hand soap that doesn't contain moisturizers...
#DeleteChrome
We knew this already.
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
The press, being the idiots that they are, don't realize that the FDA doesn't have jurisdiction over "soap." The FDA isn't helping by trying to broaden their reach.
Their order says "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today issued a final rule establishing that over-the-counter (OTC) consumer antiseptic wash products containing certain active ingredients can no longer be marketed."
That is not soap. In fact, the FDA says it has no jurisdiction over soap, which is confusing because on various webpages they say "Soap," and they do so in the title of said order as well.
Here's the FDA's explanation of Soap:
http://www.fda.gov/Cosmetics/G...
Here's the part that's relevant.
"Not every product marketed as soap meets FDA's definition of the term. FDA interprets the term "soap" to apply only when
the bulk of the nonvolatile matter in the product consists of an alkali salt of fatty acids and the product's detergent properties are due to the alkali-fatty acid compounds, and the product is labeled, sold, and represented solely as soap [21 CFR 701.20].
Products that meet this definition of soap are regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission disclaimer icon (CPSC), not by FDA. Please direct questions about these products, such as safety and labeling requirements, to CPSC. "
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.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
If they allow it in toothpaste, it's fucking stupid to ban it from soaps...
Not at all. There is demonstrably no benefit to using triclosan in hand soap, so there really is no kind of cost/benefit argument you can make justifying its use. The best you might do would be to prove that it's totally harmless, in which case there's no harm to putting it in; but then there'd still be no harm to banning it either.
In the case of toothpaste, there may be demonstrable benefit. That makes it a fundamentally different case. When we study it more we may decide that the costs outweigh the risks, but at present it's still at least possible that banning it may be a net harm.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Story: FDA approves X
Reaction: Waaah the government puts dangerous chemicals in everything!
Story: FDA bans Y
Reaction: Waaah the government is meddling with our harmless chemicals!
You have things backwards. If XYZ having no demonstratable benefit was a valid reason to ban XYZ, our world would be veeeery different from what it is today. Something has to be demonstratably harmful for a ban to make sense.
It's reached FB and HuffPo. Which means (American) mom's read about it. Which means soaps labeled anti-bacterial will sit on the supermarket shelves, as those mom's were the one buying it to protect their little snowflakes.
I read about triclo whatever I think on /. years ago, tried to get my wife to stop buying it. No joy. Now? I'd be surprised if those soaps aren't in the trash today.
The FDA ban
Sense or no sense, the FDA was long ago required by Congress to insist that not only safety, but also effectiveness be proven.
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The toothpaste companies were asked to prove that Triclosan was effective and were able to point out studies showing that it helped to prevent gingivitis.
The hand soap companies were given a year and weren't able point to anything.
Are you being wilfully obtuse? Things have to show a demonstrable benefit if they are advertised as having that benefit.
This doesn't apply to booze and smokes because they don't make such claims (though at one time they did).
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You have things backwards. If XYZ having no demonstratable benefit was a valid reason to ban XYZ, our world would be veeeery different from what it is today.
It's not a valid reason per se. But you don't make decisions based on one factor. You make decisions by balancing factors. If you had read my post carefully you would have seen that I said there's no reason to ban non-beneficial things if there is no harm.
So to recap every combination of demonstrable benefit vs. no demonstrable benefit crossed with reasonably suspected harm vs. no reasonable basis for harm is a different case. And in each case additional data may change the case a product falls under.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Safe is a negative. It's impossible to prove that something is "safe." What they should be doing is testing to see if the product is harmful. That's the bar every other type legal standard is based on.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you ... made of fluoride.
I agree with the government that people keep using products that kill many or most of the germs, the survivors will kill us, because they would have become immune to them.
People lose track of the fact that we are living things, living in an eco system. We are made of germs, and we have germ friends in our gut, and around our body. To listen to marketing spheal, you would think we are inorganic beings that should be separate from the rest of the world.
I disagree with some of the other stated reasons.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
You may have missed the following text from the same page:
If a product....is intended not only for cleansing but also to cure, treat, or prevent disease...it is regulated as a drug, or possibly both a drug and a cosmetic. Examples include antibacterial cleansers.
From the FDA announcement:
Antibacterial hand and body wash manufacturers did not provide the necessary data to establish safety and effectiveness for the 19 active ingredients addressed in this final rulemaking. For these ingredients, either no additional data were submitted or the data and information that were submitted were not sufficient for the agency to find that these ingredients are Generally Recognized as Safe and Effective (GRAS/GRAE).
Having classified these products as drugs, the FDA does have jurisdiction. The ruling was proposed in 2013, subjected to public review, subjected to congressional review and finalized last week.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
From the announcement:
This rule does not affect consumer hand “sanitizers” or wipes, or antibacterial products used in health care settings.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
Antibacterials are antibiotics used to treat surfaces rather than being ingested. This article predates the ruling but the scientific explanation is still relevant. Note the following text:
Additional experiments found that some bacteria can combat triclosan and other biocides with export systems that could also pump out antibiotics. It was demonstrated that these triclosan-resistant mutants were also resistant to several antibiotics, specifically chloramphenicol, ampicillin, tetracycline and ciprofloxacin.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
Let's say you get your hands really dirty, maybe handling rotten garbage, then you wash your hands with regular soap and water, maybe with a nail brush. Afterwards, did you ever look at your squeaky clean hands and worry that there was still bacteria on them? Me neither.
and make-up too. GRAS: Generally Regarded As Safe. In the states food & make-up are innocent until proven guilty. It's why European makeup is so popular and why Mexico bans more food additives than the US. For medicine I think the opposite is true though.
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as soon as the phrase "Active Ingredient" gets involved. e.g. when you're making claims about actual medical effects. Homeopathy has dozens of ways to dance around this which is how they get away with their shenanigans.
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Reading the FDA document, they only plan to ban soaps with :
Phenol (greater than 1.5 percent)
Phenol (less than 1.5 percent)