Triclosan…a known chemical added to products to prevent growth of bacteria, fungi, viruses, etc.  Many believe that it is a huge contributor to the rise in antibiotic resistant illnesses as bacteria are adapting and becoming more and more resilient.

I posted a little about triclosan a little while ago but it’s been getting a little more media coverage lately.  The FDA has stated that the makers of soaps need to prove that adding triclosan to our soaps is actually more effective or stop using it! Yahoo! It’s a start!

The chemical can enter through the skin and into our blood stream….hence why washing your hands with it frequently may not be the greatest thing.  Additionally, think of the run off.  If this is supposedly killing bacteria on our hands, it will be killing beneficial bacteria within the environment as well.

We’ve stopped using soaps with “anti-bacterial” labels and do not use hand sanitizer either (check out our homemade hand sanitizer recipe here).  Promoting drug resilient illnesses is one reason, but also, when you wash with these soaps it eliminates all the GOOD bacteria on your hands as well.  This good bacteria is what helps your body fight against all the germs within your environment.  Our doctor and I were talking at one point about these soaps and she mentioned that she has seen studies that have demonstrated that people who wash with these soaps have significantly more bad bacteria on their hands shortly after washing their hands than those that didn’t wash their hands at all! Hmm… makes you think, huh?

So in addition to the drug resilient organisms as well as other bacteria killing effects the chemical has, it has had some claims made against it that it is harmful to our health in other ways.  Endocrine and hormone disruption, muscle inhibition, and carcinogenic effects have all been made against the chemical.

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/health/2013/12/17/nr-cohen-fda-antibacterial-soap.cnn.html