Wed, 13 Apr 2005

Being too clean could be hazardous to your health

Once again the science community misses the mark - chloroform is the least of the problems with antibacterial soaps and cleansers. The real problem lies in speeding the evolution of newer, more virulent strains of bacteria (particularly staph types), resulting in more human infections.

Researchers have discovered that the use of antimicrobial soaps and other products may unnecessarily be directly exposing consumers to significant quantities of chloroform. Researcher Peter Vikesland has shown in his research that when the chemical triclosan, present in many antimicrobial soaps, reacts with chlorine in tap water, chloroform is produced. Chloroform is classified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a probable human carcinogen.

(link) [Science Blog]

/Home | 0 writebacks | permanent link

comment...

 
Notes: If you put a <mailto:> link in the URL field your address will not be mangled: this could be a bad idea as your email address could be easily harvested by bots designed for SPAM. The comments field should now format correctly for line feeds and carriage returns: when you hit the 'Enter' or 'Return' keys in your comment it should break to a new line. The text should wrap cleanly. Please let me know if it doesn't. No HTML tags will pass through - entering links seems to be the main cause of comment SPAM. Also, please be sure that Javascript is enabled in your browser before attempting to post a writeback. Sorry for any inconvenience, but this really helps cut down on the amount of comment SPAM I have to deal with.
 
 Name:
 URL:(optional)
 Title: (optional)
 Comments:  
Save my Name and URL/Email for next time