Antibacterial Soap

I was doing some online shopping recently and my wife asked me to order some hand soap, so that is exactly what I did. Searching on Google then on Amazon.com, I thought I was buying something she would like, white tea and ginger moisturizing hand soap.

The soap had no sooner arrive than the debate began. “Why did you order non antibacterial soap?” I said, “Soap is soap all soap works the same.” She then told me cold and flu season was coming up and it was important to have antibacterial soap. To me, that was a challenge. I had to Google it! Needing a recent article this is what I found, “It’s Probably Best to Avoid Antibacterial Soaps.” The fallacy about antibacterial soaps is that it leads people to believe regular soaps do not clean your hands properly. The truth “is that there’s no evidence they are (antibacterial soaps) any better at keeping people from getting sick than regular old soap, according to the Food and Drug Administration.” I believe that the reality of the term antimicrobial is that it is a great marketing advertisement. The marketing advertisement does its job and gets us as consumers to pay more for a product that has no benefit for us. The reasoning we use to purchase the soaps is also fallacious. We rely on thoughts that we reason in our minds that if we use this soap it will keep us clean and reduce the risk of getting sick or passing on germs to others. The reality of this is that chemicals inside of antimicrobial items,triclosan and triclocarban, may carry unnecessary risks. Some say there are reasons to believe that long-term use of these products contribute to resistance to antibiotics. Other FDA concerns are that these ingredients may also be linked with unanticipated hormonal effects. We believe that large companies have our best interest in mind, when it is really about the dollar? We need educate ourselves about everything that we choose for our lives and hopefully we can make better decisions that will better ourselves.