EPA Considers Banning Triclosan, A Common Anti-Bacterial in Soap

Triclosan is a pes­ti­cide that has become ubiq­ui­tous in con­sumer prod­ucts. It can be found in every­thing from about 50 per­cent of all con­sumer soaps to deodor­ant, cut­ting boards and cloth­ing; basi­cally most prod­ucts labeled “anti-bacterial” or “anti-microbial” (Check the ingre­di­ent list).

Unbeknown to most shop­pers, tri­closan poses seri­ous per­sonal health, pub­lic health and envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns. It is an endocrine dis­rup­tor which research has linked to increased aller­gies, can­cer and repro­duc­tive effects. Doctors worry its increased use is also breed­ing bac­te­ria with increased resis­tance to med­ical antibiotics.

What’s scary is that tri­closan is already found in the urine of 75 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion today. It also gets into our rivers and water bod­ies, throw­ing aquatic ecosys­tems out of whack because it is toxic to algae. Even more frus­trat­ing, in many cases, tri­closan is entirely unnec­es­sary. An expert FDA panel, for exam­ple, con­cluded in 2005 that anti-bacterial soap is no more effec­tive in wash­ing away germs than reg­u­lar soap and water. Rather, it’s an effec­tive­ness is more as a mar­ket­ing ploy in an age of the super flu.

While groups have raised these con­cerns for years, it looks like finally, their con­cerns are get­ting trac­tion with fed­eral regulators.

Almost a year ago, 86 groups, led by Beyond Pesticides and Food & Water Watch, filed a peti­tion with U.S. EPA ask­ing the agency (which shares reg­u­la­tory over­sight with FDA and the Consumer Products Safety Commission) to con­sider ban­ning the anti-bacterial agent for non-medical uses. While both agen­cies do test­ing and reg­u­late mar­ket­ing claims, nei­ther restrict the use of tri­closan in con­sumer products.

Recently, the agency finally decided to con­sider their request. Right now, it has opened up the request for com­ments from the public.

Click here to read the rest of this arti­cle on Change.org and sign the peti­tion to ban triclosan.