Microbiology Assignment Question

A closer look at antibacterial soaps and cleansers.

Are antibacterial cleaners better than regular cleaners? With the widespread advertisement of antibacterial soaps and cleansers it’s hard not to buy into the “super clean” theory of these bacteria killing cleaners. After the H1N1 phenomenon many people began to worry about any bacteria infecting their children or family and began searching for a cleaner that wiped out all bacteria, but as most people don’t know, those antibacterial cleaners wipe out the beneficial germs as well as the bad germs. Some experts worry that completely wiping out all traces of germs will mess up a healthy balance of bacteria with humans. Another reason why antibacterial cleaners may not be such a great idea is because their is a theory that antibacterial soaps can lead to bacterial resistance. This is a possibility because when you use antibacterial cleaners it is wiping out 99.9% of bacteria, but what about the other 0.1%? What if some of the bacteria becomes immune to the cleaner, then we would have an unstoppable bacteria on our hands. A “super bug” that could not be cleaned by regular soaps, but could now not even be cleaned by antibacterials either. With this in mind, you must also take into consideration the fault with antibiotics. Antibiotics began to lose their effectiveness over the past few decades because they had been used so often on certain infections that by basic genetics, those viruses began to adapt and gain an immunity to the antibiotics.

My opinion on this controversy is that antibacterials provide no greater benefit than regular soaps and cleaners therefore I feel that we shouldn’t take the risk of killing 99.9% off all bacteria from our hands with a little squirt of soap for the sake of moving humans health in a positive direction rather than risking “super bugs,” but at the same time I feel as if more research is needed to come to any definite conclusions about the risks or benefits of antibacterial products.