Should you bin your antibacterial handwash and gels?

Need some soap? What could be better than antibacterial handwash that kills 99.9 per cent of bacteria? Well, ordinary soap , says the FDA in the US, which is banning the sale of certain soaps (bars, gels and liquids) containing antibacterial ingredients.

It ruled last week that antibacterial soaps containing any of 19 named ingredients will be banned by 2017. The chemicals most under scrutiny are triclosan (in liquids) and triclocarban (in bars). Triclosan is linked to allergies in children and upsets the hormone levels of rats – reducing those of thyroid hormone and increasing oestrogen . Triclocarban is linked to raised male hormone levels and low birth weights in rats.

Dr Rolf Halden, director of the Center for Environmental Security at the Biodesign Institute in Arizona, estimates about 2,000 products in the US contain triclosan. Although some manufacturers, knowing about the FDA's ongoing investigation, have removed it, and triclocarban, from their products before the ban.

Halden says it’s hard to know which products contain the soon-to-be-banned chemicals. These antibacterial agents are called different names – I couldn’t find triclosan or triclocarban in common antibacterial soaps in the UK, and had no response from manufacturers as to their use of any of the other substances banned by the FDA.

However, the FDA is not stopping at soaps. A little bottle of antibacterial gel has become a handbag must-have – to kill nasty germs in the office, playground or on public transport. If you don’t have time to wash your hands, or are nowhere near a sink, a squirt of some pink hand sanitiser while running out the door, or in the great outdoors, has become a common alternative. But the FDA has asked sanitiser manufacturers to provide evidence that the benefits of their products outweigh any risks. They are focusing on the relative benefits or risks of ethanol, isopropyl alcohol and benzalkonium chloride not already on the banned substance list – which are common ingredients in sanitisers (in the UK as well as America).

Antibacterial agents can also promote antibiotic resistance – it’s not desirable to lay waste to all bacteria.

So should you bin the sweet smelling gels and antibacterial soaps?

The Centers for Disease and Prevention in America says that washing your hands with soap and water is the best way to reduce germs.

There’s a whole science to washing hands – lathering with soap on the back, front, between your fingers and under your nails. You need to scrub them for the time it takes to sing one round of Happy Birthday. Then you rinse and dry. The temperature of the water does not seem to make a difference to getting rid of germs – although warmer water may be more irritating to hands. Honestly, not many of us do this properly.

If you don’t have soap or water to hand, then hand sanitisers are better than nothing . But their alcohol content must be more than 60 per cent to kill germs effectively.

What’s more, sanitisers don’t even work well on dirty hands – they can’t penetrate grime because you need the friction provided by soap. Soap and water are also better than sanitisers at removing germs such as clostridium difficile (which causes a serious bowel infection). Halden says, sanitisers can dry out hands, creating cracks that germs jump into. “In the absence of benefit,” he says, “why take the risk?”

Guardian service