Minwoo’s Right Brain Archive

Scientific American: Strange but True: Antibacterial Products May Do More Harm Than Good

I’ve always believed this was the case, but it’s an interesting read nevertheless. First, did you know how soap and alcohol-based cleaners work?

Soap works by loosening and lifting dirt, oil and microbes from surfaces so they can be easily rinsed away with water, whereas general cleaners such as alcohol inflict sweeping damage to cells by demolishing key structures, then evaporate. “They do their job and are quickly dissipated into the environment,” explains microbiologist Stuart Levy of Tufts University School of Medicine.

And why antibacterial kind might be bad in the long run:

As bacteria develop a tolerance for these compounds there is potential for also developing a tolerance for certain antibiotics. This phenomenon, called cross-resistance, has already been demonstrated in several laboratory studies using triclosan, one of the most common chemicals found in antibacterial hand cleaners, dishwashing liquids and other wash products.

Not only that:

Both triclosan and its close chemical relative triclocarban (also widely used as an antibacterial), are present in 60 percent of America’s streams and rivers, … Both chemicals are efficiently removed from wastewater in treatment plants but end up getting sequestered in the municipal sludge, which is used as fertilizer for crops, thereby opening a potential pathway for contamination of the food we eat, Halden explains. “We have to realize that the concentrations in agricultural soil are very high,” and this, “along with the presence of pathogens from sewage, could be a recipe for breeding antimicrobial resistance” in the environment, he says.
…
“What is this stuff doing in households when we have soaps?” asks molecular biologist John Gustafson of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. These substances really belong in hospitals and clinics, not in the homes of healthy people, Gustafson says.

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