The FDA and Triclosan

Back in February, I wrote a blog post about hand soap. It was a long post, describing in detail the toxic ingredients contained in most hand soaps, one of which is triclosan.

Triclosan is used for its antibacterial properties. But it also has harmful effects on the human body, mainly that it's an endocrine disruptor.

According to Wikipedia, endocrine disruptors "are chemicals that at certain doses, can interfere with the endocrine (or hormone system) in mammals. These disruptions can cause cancerous tumors, birth defects, and other developmental disorders. Any system in the body controlled by hormones, can be derailed by hormone disruptors.

Skin Deep's Cosmetic Database gives triclosan a score of 7 (10 being the worst). Reasons given for the score are that it's an irritant, an endocrine disruptor, and has organ system toxicity. But to top it all off, when triclosan is mixed with the chlorine in tap water, it forms chloroform gas. The Cosmetic Database gives chloroform a score of 10 and it's "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen."

You can read more about triclosan here: PERSONAL CARE PRODUCTS: Triclosan Comes under Scrutiny

Bottom line: DON'T USE ANY PRODUCTS CONTAINING TRICLOSAN

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The FDA

Most Americans are probably under the assumption that all products and ingredients on the store shelves have been thoroughly tested for safety and given a seal of approval by the FDA. Because they are certainly watching our for our health, right?

Well, yesterday I came across an article on the home page of naturalnews.com:

FDA finally gets around to conducting safety review on toxic antibacterial chemical triclosan, already in consumer products for four decades

I encourage you to read the whole article, but I will take a few excerpts from it:

After more than 40 years of complete inaction in evaluating the potential side effects of the antibacterial chemical triclosan, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is finally getting around to conducting a review of this pervasive chemical additive, which is now found in more than 75 percent of all conventional hand soaps. 

A 2007 (University of Michigan) review found that, based on independent data compiled from 30 different academic sources, triclosan is no more effective at preventing illness or reducing bacteria on hands than plain hand soap. "At this point, it's just looking like a superfluous chemical."

...the FDA never actually approved the chemical for use in consumer products. In fact, a draft review compiled by the agency back in 1978 stated that triclosan was "not generally recognized as safe and effective."

Even though it lacked the proper safety data to do so, the FDA did, in fact, approve the use of triclosan in Colgate Total toothpaste back in 1997. But to this day, the agency has never shown that triclosan actually works as claimed, and its website even admits that the chemical still has not been shown to work in soap as an effective sanitizer.

Going back again to the Cosmetic Database, triclosan is in 91 of their products. Good guide has it in over 450 products, including in hand soap, hand sanitizer, body wash, facial cleanser, bar soap, toothpaste, moisturizer, dish soap, lipstick, eye shadow and many others.

Thanks for keeping us safe, FDA. Keep up the good work.