The hand washing ritual is the cornerstone of preventing the spread of communicable diseases. The efficacy of this ritual depends on several factors including: water quality, temperature, time spent scrubbing, but the most important factor in the efficacy of hand washing is soap. In our modern society the choice of soaps is daunting. Parents have to be especially critical of which products they clean their children with. Parents often ask themselves which cleaning products to use on my children? And how do I make sure the products I use to help my children aren't harmful to the environment? Have you ever wondered where parents get their opinions regarding cleanliness? The short answer is a gut feeling. However, this gut feeling is grown out of many factors such as religious customs, economics and geography. Companies put great effort into manipulating consumers’ gut feelings. Popular antibacterial chemicals in soap are no more effective at cleaning, and are a dangerous lingering pollutant in the environment. Yet they remain a popular choice of parents.
"The problem with medicating yourself is that you don't know what you're doing". Anonymous.
Medical knowledge in America is split between two very different sides: the medical establishment and “Popular medicine”. One side of medical knowledge is the medical establishment: the doctors, nurses and scientists. Medical establishments are bound to an institutionalized, scientific base of knowledge. Doctors in the United States make decisions based on their education. Their education is the result of university research which is the result of traditions and learning dating back to Hippocrate in Ancient Greece. Researchers have dichotomized every facet of the human creature. The discipline of epidemiology, beginning in the mid 19th century, has sought to keep people safe from disease. In the last 200 years advances in epidemiology have eradicated most common forms of disease. Scientific research has discovered the mechanics of infection and disease. While there have been advances in the technology of epidemiology, such as pasteurization and the discovery of penicillin and other antibiotics, none has been as important as the discovery that washing prevents the spread of common illness better than any other technology.
The community of medical professionals is relatively small compared to the population at large. Outside the medical community medical knowledge is gathered from the pool of cultural knowledge known as “Popular Medicine”. Popular medicine is the medical knowledge of the untrained. This body of common knowledge is constantly morphing, yet more often than not lags behind established medicine. Every person has a body that we attempt to take care of, or not. The ways we care of our human bodies is endless. Recorded history is full of ideas on how to treat and prevent disease. In the 18th century it was commonly believed that disease was caused by malicious spirits invading a patient’s bloodstream. Popular medicine also includes many folk traditions from across the globe. These folk traditions have been found to have great value such as in the use of herbal medicines, stretching and exercise. Other traditions continue to have adherents for the sake of tradition, such as warding off diseases with elaborate ceremonies to ward off evil spirits.
Parents in modern America tend to find their opinions somewhere in between established medicine and popular medicine. It is important to note that both sides of this equation are constantly in flux.A big part of this confusion stems from the enormous leaps in scientific knowledge in the last two hundred years. Parents have a hard time reconciling the use of time tested folk remedies and running to the local emergency room for advanced antibiotics. Parents attempt to keep up on the latest discoveries, yet it is hard for even experts to keep up on the latest scientific consensus.
In order to attempt to understand American parents we need to understand American society. The cornerstone of American democracy is American capitalism. Corporations exist to create a profit one way or another. A great way to maximize profits is to find an area of popular confusion and sell to both sides. Corporations exist in a grey area of right and wrong, good and bad. If it is profitable it is good, if it is costly it is bad. For instance companies like Standard Oil allowed millions of gallons of oil to leak from their facilities in the late 19th and early 20th century, and lacking public concern they profited handsomely from their sloppiness. That degradation was seen as a corporate good. Fast forward to today, companies spend millions preventing even the smallest of leaks. Changing attitudes have led to regulations, which have made such wastes unprofitable, and therefore bad to corporations.
The only reason corporations attempt to conform to a popular sense of good and bad is in response to legislation. Our nation has attempted to let market forces punish bad business practices, rather than strict legislation. As a result knowing which products contain toxic substances is entirely about where one inquires. The number of dangerous chemicals that are monitored by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is minuscule compared to what modern science has proven we should be aware of.
It is unclear what the long term effects of exposure to Triclosan will be. While it was only introduced in products in 1972, triclosan has become ubiquitous as an ingredient in liquid soaps. Consumers must remember that every product sent down the drain goes somewhere. Therefore it is not surprising that a 2008 Centers for Disease Control report estimated Triclosan to be present in the urine of 75% of American adults.
It is has been well established that hand washing prevents disease, especially in the developing world where unsanitary conditions exist,but should we be paying closer attention to what is in the soaps we use?While no one argues we shouldn’t attempt to wash germs of our bodies, it is important to think of the mechanism we use to do so. Doctor Stuart B. Levy sums up the major mechanical problem with using soaps containing Triclosan in his brilliant book, The Antibiotic Paradox: How the Misuse of Antibiotics Destroys Their Curative Powers (2002).
In other words we put products on our hands to make them clean, before it gets a chance to work we wash it down the drain. From there it finds it way into the environment, and into the systems of many organisms. There is increasing evidence that Triclosan inhibits growth of algae commonly found in waterways. Algae species are the bottom rung of aquatic food chains, many species depend on algae for food."The average person washes his/her hands for 3-5 seconds, which is too brief to remove tightly bound microbes but does remove some viruses and bacteria, and sends them down the drain. In the hospital, the addition of a chemical like triclosan can be beneficial if used for the time period required for its activity - minutes, not seconds. But with suboptimal usage, the chemical additive serves no additional purpose. The effect of washing remains with the soaps ability to physically remove microbes. Used too briefly to be effective, antibacterial chemical products in homes remain as residues on counters and on hands at less than optimal concentrations. In this way, they can select for drug-resistant mutants. In comparing different antibacterial substances, we can distinguish them based on their speed of action and their propensity to remain as residues on the surface. An agent that works rapidly without leaving a residue will produce its effect in seconds, leaving the surface available for the return of natural microbes. Alcohol, chlorinated and peroxide products fill this description"(Levy 265).
Which leads one to ask: Aren’t there government agencies tasked with banning such toxic chemicals from entering the environment? The answer is yes and no. The governments of Denmark, Finland and Germany took steps to eliminate domestic use of Triclosan nearly a decade ago, saying that such products “are extremely persistent and highly toxic in the marine environment”(BeyondPesticides.org).
In the United States on the other hand official regulation is the responsibility of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Since the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act the EPA has been tasked with identifying dangerous chemicals in order to protect against unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment. Yet in the last 36 years a mere 0.25% of chemicals on the market have been thoroughly tested by the EPA. As a result of this limited testing only five have been officially banned (Saferchemicals.org).
So why have so few chemicals been thoroughly researched? It is a matter of economics. While the corporations have found ways to profit from selling potentially toxic products, the government agencies in the United States tasked with regulating them have had to weather several presidential administrations laissez-faire policies. At the behest of the presidents who appointed them, EPA administrators have attempted to be more friend than vigilant watchdogs of big chemical companies. This practice leaves it up to parent’s to research what chemical exposures to beware of.
In today’s society parents are often overwhelmed with the myriad facets of life. Few parents have enough time or energy to have an educated opinion on the numerous toxic substances they and their children encounter. Lacking an educated opinion numerous parents, myself included, rely on a gut instinct. In the case of choosing which soap to buy parents often employ the logic of “Truthiness”. The concept of “Truthiness” was first popularized by comedian Stephen Colbert who defined it as "truth that comes from the gut, not books" (Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," October 2005). The American Dialect Society further defined Truthiness as "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true" (American Dialect Society, January 2006).
The truth as it is felt rather than know along with countless contemporary cultural influences forge how parents form opinions in our current culture. Popular medicine is based on one part culture and on one part education. While there is no such thing as an average American, the government census illustrates how broad opinions are formed. Where there are broad opinions, there is a large company selling to that group. That said, all but 15% of Americans have graduated high school, and of those 28% have a college education (census.gov). Therefore, it is relatively safe to assume that most parents have a very bare bones education in biology. They know there are microscopic organisms everywhere and some of them cause disease. They also know children, sick people and the elderly are especially susceptible to infection. Out of this popular medical wisdom parents go nuts attempting to kill all germs.
Antibacterial products have been gaining in popularity in many circles amid industry exacerbated fears of illnesses such as HIV, bird flu, swine flu as well as food borne illness such as salmonella and e. coli.This attempt at all out war on germs resulted in the number of antibacterial products on the global market to grow from 200 in 2003 to more than 1,600 by 2006 (highbeam.com). The manufacturers of these products are eager to capture market share in the cleaning product and sanitizer market, an industry that was estimated in 2005 to be worth $5.12 billion according to Census research (highbeam.com). Considering the giant money found in this market there is little reason for manufacturers to stop selling these products.
One interesting thing about modern capitalism is how mass markets respond to controversy. In the last ten years a group of consumers have become concerned by the presence of potentially dangerous chemicals in home cleaning products, of which Triclosan is a prime example. Instead of responding to such fears by reducing the number of potentially dangerous products, industry has responded by creating new products featuring natural ingredients. Corporations it seems only know how to expand.
So where does that leave parents? The truth is we live in a world where parents are forced to decide everyday between what constitutes a lesser of two evils in regards to caring for their children and households. Few people have the education or resources to make truly informed opinions on the purchasing habits. Instead people are forced to use what information is available. Triclosan is mostly ineffective as a household cleanser, and most of its chemical effectiveness is exerted negatively on marine environments. Yet there is little chance the use of this chemical will be curtailed anytime soon, considering economic forces are far too strong. While our nation has government agencies that are ostensibly in charge of limiting environmental damage from dangerous substances, few of these agencies have resources or clout enough to change the habits of businesses making hundreds of millions of dollars a year. While incredibly daunting in modern society, the choice of products is largely up to the individual consumer. There is little parents can do to prevent large scale environmental degradation. In the face of such confusion parents rely on gut feeling. This leaves the truthiness of soap in the eye of the beholder.
Works Cited
"Antibacterials in Houehold Products." N.p., n.d. Web. <http://www.tufts.edu/med/apua/consumers/personal_home_5_3590195869.pdf>.
"For Consumers." Triclosan: What Consumers Should Know. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2012. <http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm205999.htm>.
Http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0233.pdf. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2012.
Levy, Stuart B. The Antibiotic Paradox: How the Misuse of Antibiotics Destroys Their Curative Power. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Pub., 2002. Print.
N.p., n.d. Web. <http://www.beyondpesticides.org/pesticides/factsheets/Triclosan%20cited.pdf>.
Olsen, Mary. "Cleanliness Is a Middle Class Racist Attitude." Education Vol. 91.Issue 3 (Feb/Mar71): P274-276. Print.
"Triclosan (Endocrine Disruptor)." Triclosan. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2012. <http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/triclosan/>.
"Triclosan: What the Research Shows 2008-2010." N.p., Feb. 2011. Web. Nov. 2012. <http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/triclosan08-10.pdf>.
"What Is TSCA?" What Is TSCA? N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2012. <http://www.saferchemicals.org/resources/tsca.html>.
"Word of the Year 2006." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2012. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/06words.htm>.
No comments:
Post a Comment