When antibacterial dish, body, and laundry soaps emerged in the 2000s, they were an example of how claims like “new, improved,” “more cleaning power,” and “new fresh scent,” drive consumer product sales.
The problem was the products do not get you “cleaner” than soap and water but they do encourage antibiotic resistance and “superbugs” and disrupt endocrine systems in humans and animals, just like pesticides.
Now, the FDA has given industry a year to remove antibiotic agent like triclosan and triclocarban from the thousands of products they are found in. “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. Soap manufacturers will have an extra year to negotiate over other, less commonly used ingredients such as benzalkonium chloride.”
Triclosan, found in Ajax and Palmolive dish detergents and Colgate’s Total toothpaste, breaks down into chloroform with tap water and dioxin in the environment and impairs thyroid function and harbors in human breast milk, urine and blood say experts. Triclosan “has similarities both to thyroid hormone (T4) and to several known endocrine disruptors, including polychlorinated bisphenyls (PCBs), diethylstilbestrol (DES), and bisphenol A (BPA),” says the Breast Cancer Fund. It is a chlorinated aromatic hydrocarbon like DDT or hexachlorophene, banned years ago. Minnesota banned triclosan in 2014; Washington state banned the use of the plastic BPA in baby bottles in 2010.
