Don’t Believe These Common Health Myths

Don’t Believe These Common Health Myths
A person applies hand sanitizer gel to their hands in a file photo. Elenathewise/iStock
Martha Rosenberg
Updated:

Antibacterial Cleansers Keep You Healthy

 An orgy of antibacterial dish, body and laundry soaps emerged in the 2000s to help people get “better than clean.” But the bacterial overkill, when soap and water work just as well, fuels antibiotic resistance and possibly childhood allergies by preventing exposure to natural microbes in the environment. But there’s a worse problem with the germ killers in such antibiotic products (called endocrine or hormone disrupters): they are he same compounds that are producing frogs with no penises in polluted streams and actually pesticides.
Studies show that one “antibacterial” pesticide, triclosan, found in Colgate’s Total toothpaste actually breaks down into chloroform with tap water and dioxin in the environment. It impairs thyroid function and lives in human breast milk, urine and blood.

Meat Is Safe If You Cook It

Cooking kills meat pathogens like E. coli, salmonella, listeria and campylobacter but according to government reports veterinary drugs, pesticides and heavy metals like copper and arsenic do not cook out of meat and in some cases become more harmful. In six months, four carcasses with “violative levels of veterinary drugs” were released onto the public dinner plate said one report.
Martha Rosenberg
Martha Rosenberg
Author
Martha Rosenberg is a nationally recognized reporter and author whose work has been cited by the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Public Library of Science Biology, and National Geographic. Rosenberg’s FDA expose, "Born with a Junk Food Deficiency," established her as a prominent investigative journalist. She has lectured widely at universities throughout the United States and resides in Chicago.
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