triclosan is in more things than I thoutht and more harmful
By stealthy
@stealthy (8181)
United States
June 19, 2012 10:31am CST
I try to avoid products that have triclosan in them. The original reason I had for this was because it contributes to there being more resistant bacteria; that is bacteria that are resistant to drugs. This was even mentioned on the TV show The Doctors when they said it caused genetic changes in the bacteria that led to them being more resistant. This is becoming more and more a concern because of flesh eating bacteria, etc. Well I learned today that triclosan is in many more products than I was aware of. I knew it was in Colgate Total toothpaste and Softsoap(and some other brands of liquid soap). But there are many products that have it ranging from some Farberware products to plastic cutting boards to things you wear like some Fruit of the Loom socks. More recently there has also been concern that triclosan can be directly harmful to humans and not just as something that cause resistant bacteria.
1 response
@Lorden (348)
• South Africa
19 Jun 12
Oh no :( I have used Colgage Total toothpaste before. Didn't know it's a harmful product, although perhaps I've always had my doubts about all the chemical products we use so freely in our lives.
How do you think we can get all the companies to remove triclosan from all their products?
Exatly what is the triclosan for?
@stealthy (8181)
• United States
19 Jun 12
Triclosan is an antibacterial and supposedly anti-fungal additive to many things. But as I said it is quite likely that it contributes considerably to the growing problem of resistant bacteria. I wrote the company that makes one of the products and got back a letter that said they had been using it for 30 years and that it was safe for humans but completely ignored my main concern about it causing resistant bacteria. As a personal observation, I can't remember of ever hearing about resistant bacteria much 30 years ago but it certainly is a growing problem now. And now there are concerns that triclosan does have direct problems for humans.
