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Yay! I've been trying to get people to move away from that stuff for YEARS. Although I was under the impression that hand sanitizer was generally an alcohol gel (it has to be at least 60% to be effective, I think), I still find it creepy and unnecessary unless you've got some kind of immune difficiency.

Triclosan also gets into waterways and can have negative effects on fish and other organisms. As far as that meaning we have to "live with a few germs," the jury is out on whether soap that includes triclosan really works better. Soap is antibacterial as it is, used properly (i.e., later well!).

Careful with your dish soap and sponges too--almost all of them come with triclosan or other antibacterials.

Thanks for the info mAlice.

Tiamet_the_Red is correct that Purell and the like are alcohol gel. That doesn't mean that we should go crazy Purell'ing ourselves, but if you will be away from soap and water and in a germy situation, then Purell is far better than any triclosan-based solution.

Another problem with "antibacterial" soaps is that the soap itself has to be made weaker to avoid destroying the antibacterial agent (like triclosan). So your hands end up getting less-clean, defeating the purpose in my opinion. I'd rather just wash the bacteria off than try to kill them with chemicals (chemicals they're just gonna become resistant to anyhow, over time).

Antibacterials have little to no impact on disease rates. In fact, they're the only cleaning product that is regulated by the EPA and that's because they are classified as PESTICIDES! Yikes. Using essential oils to disinfect doesn't appear to create drug-resistant bacteria, like the synthetic disinfectants and anti-bacterial soaps do. If you need to disinfect because you have an infant or someone is sick, add some lavender or tea tree essential oil to your soaps. They'll do the trick just as well as Purell or Lysol but without the toxic side effects.

I am a middle school teacher. Any suggestions about what I can provide for Sally or Tommy after they've just blown their nose and have germy hands? Sending them to the bathroom to wash up would certainly be best, but during cold season, not only is it totally disruptive to the classroom, the kids would spend more time going back and forth to the bathrooms than actually focused on the curriculum. Right now, the hand sanitizer lives next to the classroom box of tissues. I know it's not great, but I feel stuck for an alternative.

Ditch the antibacterial dish soap too! Even despite the fact that needless antibiotics are totally capital-B Bad if you read the fine print the Triclosan doesn't even remove bacteria from the dishes! It's there to clean your hands of bacteria not the dishes.

I've noticed since switching to natural dish soap without Triclosan that my clothes will come cleaner more easily. I wouldn't doubt that the Triclosan was breeding super bacteria in the cloth resistant to the antibiotic. And I don't put it past makers of said formulations depending on this to improve antibacterial dish cloth and sponge sales either.