Antibacterial soaps sound great-wow! get rid of all those nasty bacteria and have clean counters and hands! The marketing guys of these products found a great way to push products which really aren’t needed and even worse might have some unwanted side effects.

All soaps are antibacterial, but these special cleansers contain the antibiotics triclosan (liquid soaps) or triclocarban (bar soaps). Guess what? There is not a single study out there which shows that such antibacterial products are any better than just plain old soap. They cost more and bring more profit for the companies manufacturing the soaps, but where’s the beef?

It turns out that the antibiotics triclosan and triclocarban have been associated with increased antibiotic resistance. This means that the next time you have a bacterial infection, the prescribed antibiotic might not work as well. Secondly, there’s just not a lot of especially nasty bacteria around you or your house. If there were, regular soap would do just fine to get rid of the bacteria. Finally, the antibiotics, with funny names like triclosan and triclocarban are chemicals, which unfortunately have been shown to effect hormones such as estrogen, testosterone and thyroid.

The FDA will very soon require manufacturers of so called antibacterial soaps to prove that these products work better than well just plain soap. Also, you can bet that side effects of those chemicals in the general population will be monitored as well.

Alcohol based sanitizers work great as well and don’t contain antibiotics.

Bottom line is don’t buy antibacterial soaps!