In 2013 I talked about "How Effective Are Those Antibacterial Soaps?" and in 2005, U.S.A. Food and Drug Administration also highlighted "no medical studies that showed a link between a specific consumer antibacterial product and a decline in infection rates." Overusing antibacterial products would lead to the breeding of super-bacteria that can't be killed easily.
Now, scientists have found another disadvantage of using antibacterial products. The chemical compounds contained inside antibacterial products have found their way into pregnant women and their fetuses, and this poses potential health risks.
“We looked at the exposure of pregnant women and their fetuses to triclosan and triclocarban, two of the most commonly used germ-killers in soaps and other everyday products,” says Dr. Benny Pycke, researcher from Arizona State University, U.S.A. “We found triclosan in all of the urine samples from the pregnant women that we screened. We also detected it in about half of the umbilical cord blood samples we took, which means it transfers to fetuses. Triclocarban was also in many of the samples.”
The problem is that there is a growing body of evidence showing that the compounds can lead to developmental and reproductive problems in animals and potentially in humans. Some research even suggests that the antibacterial additives could contribute to antibiotic resistance, a growing public health problem, says Pycke.
Good news, bad news: Our bodies are good at removing these compounds from our systems, but if you are constantly exposed (and these things are everywhere, including 2,000 everyday consumer products), you could be topping up, so to speak, and keeping your exposure roughly constant.
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