Sustaining Us

Evolution is a tricky beast. For thousands of years, human beings adapted and changed through natural selection. When faced with extreme adversity, possible outcomes are limited, life or death. As a race we’ve faced adversity, examples include extreme climate change, famine, and disease, but the hazards have made us hardy.

In the same way we persevere, bacteria, viruses, and parasites thrive. Every time an antibacterial agent is deployed, an entire population of bacteria is put to the test, will it live or will it die? With good bacterial agents, 99.99% of the bacteria die, but what about that hardy .01%. In the course of time, the “survivors” divide and conquer (pun intended). Does it make sense to kill 99.99% of a bacterial population when we know most bacteria out there can’t harm us? As we kill off the weaker bacteria, the stronger continue to thrive .01% today becomes 1% tomorrow. Then 1% may become 5%. While human beings face catastrophe type challenges thousands of years apart, we treat bacteria to similar “catastrophic events,” thousands of times a day. The potential for super-germs grows daily.

Luckily we’ve had allies on our side throughout human history. Good bacteria keeps us healthy. Our bodies live peacefully with hundreds of types of outsiders. They help us digest our food, fight disease, and it’s even theorized that body odor was once a defense mechanism against predators (I’m still searching for where I read this). So I ask, does it make sense? If there’s one rabid dog in a neighborhood, do we kill everyone’s pet to flush out rabies? No, much like your pet dog, bacteria is man’s best friend. A good flora will protect us from harm. Every time we wash our hands with anti-bacterial soap, we kill Lassie with Old Yeller.

A combination of clever marketing and our innate fear of illness ushered in the era of antibacterial agents, allowing them to grow exponentially in popularity. In fact 3 out of 4 liquid soaps contain, triclosan, an antibacterial agent. The truth is, plain hand soap, does the same job, without triclosan. Wikipedia has a nice explanation, in its triclosan entry.

triclosan is not actually necessary in soap to kill bacteria. Soap is itself an effective microbicide due to the fact that soap breaks down oils. All bacterial cell walls are based on lipid chains, which are oil-based. The simple act of applying soap to the hands and rubbing vigorously will cause the cell walls of any bacteria on the hands to be ripped apart by the soap, disintegrating and killing any bacteria present.”

Triclosan is good for marketing, but bad for sustainability. “Bad” bacteria become resistant to triclosan rendering it less effective when it may be needed most. Secondly, as triclosan is introduced into the environment, the sun’s UV rays transform this “helpful” chemical into dioxins, a highly potent carcinogen. It’s debatable whether this particular dioxin, from triclosan, poses a threat to human beings, but the same cannot be said of the threat to other plants, animals, and organisms. Bacteria are everywhere. Would you prefer it be man’s best friend, or our worst nightmare?

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