Study About Antibacterial Soap Part II

While the researchers also reported that they found no evidence indicating triclosan-containing antibacterial products work better than soap and water, the key point here is that there’s no evidence that triclosan is contributing to the development of “supergerms” that would be resistant to antibiotics.

The health scare over triclosan-based antibacterial products was kicked off in the 1990s by Tuft University researcher Stuart Levy who, ironically, is one of the researchers on the new study. Levy authored an August 1998 study in the journal Nature reporting that widely used antibacterial consumer products caused genetic changes in bacteria.

Going beyond the scope of his study, however, Levy then speculated that these genetic changes could create dreaded “supergerms.”

By July of 2000, the scare had caught fire to the point that the American Medical Association urged the Food and Drug Administration to expedite the regulation of antibacterial products — even though, as I pointed out in my FOXNews.com column at the time, there was no scientific evidence that antibacterial products had caused any increase in antibiotic drug resistance, much less produced any “supergerms” despite more than 30 years of use in hospitals and homes.

Later that month, I appeared with Levy on CNN’s Talk Back Live, where Bobbie Batista hosted a segment entitled, “Could Too Much Cleanliness Make People Sick?” Levy railed against triclosan-based antibacterial consumer products as unnecessary, improperly used and risky.

After pointing out that no scientific evidence or real-world experience indicated antibacterials were causing the harm alleged by Levy, I offered the audience a potential explanation for Levy’s campaign against triclosan-based antibacterials.