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/
