Washing Our Hands Of Triclosan: Good Riddance

Triclosan has been added to hand soaps as well as other products like toothpaste, deodorants, eye shadows, and moisturizers due to its “antibacterial” action. A concern about the health effects of triclosan has been growing. For example, Walmart Corporaton has a list of chemicals it is pressuring suppliers to remove from products sold at their stores and triclosan was recently added to the list (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-20/wal-mart-asks-suppliers-to-remove-eight-chemicals-from-products). Triclosan was removed from wash products in part because there was no evidence that it worked to clean hands better than plain old soap. In 2004, scientists did the best kind of research study, a randomized, double-blind study, involving over 1,000 persons (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14996673). The question studied was whether home products with antibacterial agents prevented disease better than standard products. What was observed? There was no reduction in illnesses in families using products with antibacterial chemicals. In 2007, researchers reviewed the medical literature up to that time and concluded that “soaps containing triclosan … were no more effective than plain soap at preventing infectious illness symptoms” (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17683018). Recently another investigation of triclosan in soap was published (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26374612). When 20 bacterial strains were exposed to plain soap or soap with triclosan, there was no difference in the killing bacteria in situations that mimicked hand washing.