When purchasing products such as hand sanitizers or soap, most consumers would prefer to purchase “anti-bacterial” products claiming to “kill XX% of germs”.
However, anti-bacterial products may not be the safest choice and the conventional use of soap and water to wash your hands would do a better job. It would depend on the methods of hand washing, rather than the products, to wash and disinfect one’s hands thoroughly.
Given the recent ban on most anti-bacterial soaps and body washes by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the premise of the possibility of the products containing compounds that can create potential health risks, would consumers need to re-think their general hygiene habits and be more aware of the ingredients that are used to create the soaps and hand sanitizers that they are buying?
According to Associate Professor Hsu Li Yang of the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, the presence of the compounds and their concentration levels in soaps and body washes are relatively safe over short-term use but there still remains the chance bacterial resistance may develop. He explains further that the exposure to ingredients such triclosan and triclocarban will cause bacteria to develop resistance, and some bacteria may develop resistance to other antibiotics as well.
Prof Hsu states the example of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a common environmental bacteria that also causes infections in people with weakened immune systems. The way that this bacteria develops resistance to triclosan is to pump it out of the bacterial cell but this pump will also remove other antibiotics that are used to treat human infections. Prof Hsu believes that there is no extra benefit in using these compounds (triclosan and triclocarban) in soaps and body washes and the long term safety of these compounds are still relatively unknown, hence the US FDA’s implementation of the ban.
Media Coverage:
- Lianhe Zaobao, 30 May 2017