Wednesday, April 20, 2005

When chlorine + antimicrobials = unintended consequences

A scientist friend of mine shared this article with me this morning, and I thought you should all be brought into the know.

I don't know enough about the details it to comment much, but I understand that Antimicrobial soaps (ones with Triclosan) have a very bad effect on the environment which is somewhere in the range of "not good" and "horrible".

Now, it seems, soaps with Triclosan have been found to produce chloroform when they mix with the chlorine in tap water.

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2005/apr/science/kb_chlorine.html