FDA: "Anti-bacterial soaps are BAD!"

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As a chemist, I agree that they are potentially bad, but for a different reason. The problem that I have with anti-bacterial soaps is that they are way overused. People tend to pick them over regular soaps because it "kills bacteria so it must be better"....

Ahh, but there is a catch to this: By constantly using anti-bacterial soaps, it allows bacteria the chance to build up resistance to the anti-bacterial compounds within the soaps. Those bacteria that do not get killed by the active ingredient can pass on their genes to further generations which leads to superbugs - very resistant strains that are quite hard to kill. Some of those can mutate further to become quite deadly, even though the starting bacteria form was not. Plus the fact that not all bacteria are "bad" for us. If we did not have certain "good" bacteria in our systems at all times, we cannot function normally. Anti-bacterial ingredients do not differentiate between the two types.

I have had friends who worked with resistant strains of bacteria in their research labs and they had to go out of their way to get rid of any potential materials that might have come into contact with said bacteria. These types of soaps are not strong enough to kill them alone, they are that resistant. My friends just used good old soap and water in the cleaning process, not with any of the fancy anti-bacterial stuff. Anything that is disposable gets autoclaved. What does do the trick of killing the very resistant ones (so far) is a combination of UV radiation and silver ions. However, it may come a day when even that will not stop them.