Are Antibacterial Soaps Safe?

The real world can be so confusing and difficult to sort out. There are so many interactions and variables that it is nearly impossible to determine how things are really working. In our age of science and technology we have become a little too proud of our abilities to determine how our world works. After all we (the "BIG" we) sequenced the human genome in less time than estimated and robots are on Mars right now taking pictures of the planet's surface and sending those images millions of miles to us here on planet earth. Studies in research labs on various antibacterial compounds are rapidly being evaluated to see if this new drug or that new drug will be the next generation of medications to help in the fight against microbial diseases.

With this knowledge we have decided that eliminating microbes in our homes is a good thing. Many companies have developed soaps and cleansers that not only remove the dirt but kill the microbes on the surfaces in our home. The biocides (life killers) in these antibacterial products have become household words. In fact the only one not familiar with the term triclosan is the spell checker in my word processor. Needless to say my computer does not appear to get out much.

Some researchers have become concerned with the overwhelming acceptance of these antibacterial soaps and cleansers by the public. They have concerns that the organisms will become resistant to all the biocides making them useless and they also have concerns that the biocide-resistant bacteria might also now resist their killing by antibiotics we use in treating bacterial diseases.

Resistance to biocides has been demonstrated in the laboratory. It is now a common science project for many high school science students. Others have done studies to show that biocide resistant bacteria that cause human infections are also resistant to some antibiotics used in treating these infections (R.J.W. Lambert et. al., J. Appl. Microbiol. 91:972, 2001). This is a concern. The last thing we need to be doing is generate more antibiotic resistant bacteria. Some say the use of biocides in our homes is overkill (no pun intended).

However, what happens when we go out into the real world of the household kitchen. Surprisingly, even though there are many studies talking about the potential dangers of the overuse of household biocides no one has actually gone out into a real kitchen in which biocides are used to look and see if biocide and antibiotic resistant bacteria are present. 

No one that is until E.C. Cole and colleagues at DynCorp Health Research Services, Morrisville,

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