Okay, I admit it. I have a reputation for being kind of anal when it comes to the cleanliness of my kitchen and bathrooms, the washing of hands, etc. Some people I know might say I'm a little OCD about the whole thing. But hey, it keeps the house smelling clean and it also wards off sickness. Case in point....Tommy has the flue and neither Scytheboy nor I do. We've all been wiping stuff down, washing our hands, and generally trying to keep those bad flu germs at bay. We might still get the flu, but so far it's been working.

Now, some people I know have bought into the whole idea created by this guy called Levy that basically said if you use antibacterial stuff in your house you will create and environment where some new super-germ will take hold and basically make everyone in the house deathly ill as it is resistant to antibiotics and using the antibacterial products will increase said resistance. I never believed it. But some people I know actually stopped using all the antibacterial stuff and went back to using yucky, wet, germ-filled sponges in their kitchens. Um....ewwwww!

Well, now there's a new study out that disproves the hype. Here is an excerpt from the article I've linked to:

The researchers reported in the October issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases that, “The results from our study do not implicate use of antibacterial cleaning and hygiene products as an influential factor in the carriage of anti-microbial drug-resistant bacteria on the hands of household members.”

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.

I'm SO glad that I've finally been proved right to these people who who think I'm anal, OCD, and possibly even insane for using anti-bacterial stuff in my house. Who knows? If they see this study, maybe they'll jump on board the anti-bacterial train and be as clean as me!

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Posted by: Carmi on September 24, 2005 08:42 PM

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