Antibacterial Hand Soap Not So Helpful?

            After years of the Food and Drug Administration saying that the chemicals in items such as soap and toothpaste are doing more harm than good, they are now requiring soap manufacturers to demonstrate that the substances are safe. If they prove to be unsafe, they are requiring that they have to be taken out all together. Public health experts have been trying to warn that people who use these risk scrambling hormones in children and promoting drug resistant infections. When these tests were run on animals, they were proven to disrupt the normal development of their reproductive systems and metabolism. They say that if these chemicals could do these types of things to the animals, then the possibility that the same effects would be applied to the humans as well. The centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the chemicals were in the urine of three-quarters of Americans. These studies also showed that these harsh chemicals were actually no more effective at killing bacteria than regular soap and water.

          I thought that this article was very mediocre. There was not a lot of information and the article was actually quite vague. There was not a lot of information about the reasons why these chemicals were so bad for the health of people. There was absolutely no information on the specific microbes that can cause these illnesses. I think that specific information such as this would’ve been very beneficial to the impact of this article. I feel like anyone reading this article would not have been very impressed because it really didn’t have an impact on me when I read it and I was actually every interested in finding out more about this topic.

Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/health/fda-to-require-proof-that-antibacterial-soaps-are-safe.html?_r=0

Image: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/16/fda-antibacterial-soap/4038907/