There has been an increasing demand for anti-bacterial soaps and cleaning agents. But the active ingredients of those antiseptic soaps now have come under scrutiny by the EPA and FDA, due to environmental and human health concerns.
Two antimicrobials, triclosan and triclocarban, are at the center of the problem. Toxicologists have long worried about triclosan because of its structural resemblance to poisonous dioxin. Triclocarban is one of the chemicals now found most frequently in the environment and in U.S. drinking water resources. Both triclosan and triclocarban function as endocrine disruptors in mammalian cell cultures and in animal models.
New research has shown that antimicrobial ingredients used as long as half a century ago are still present at parts-per-million concentrations in estuarine sediments.