Antibacterial products may be harming your immune system function

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" NewsTarget Insider " <insider

NTN: Antibacterial products may be harming your immune system

function

Mon, 3 Apr 2006 09:31:04 -0700

 

 

 

 

NewsTarget Insider Alert (www.NewsTarget.com)

HEALTH WARNINGS / CRITICISM

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(Please forward to others who may benefit)

 

 

Did you know there are more than 700 antibacterial household products,

ranging from dish soaps to pencils to bed sheets? Read today's

NewsTarget feature to discover why antibacterial products are a waste

of money and can harm your health.

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.newstarget.com/019336.html

 

 

 

Originally published April 3 2006

 

Antibacterial pencils: Toxic, useless and hazardous to public health

I think this antibacterial products sham has gone way too far.

Yesterday I was shopping at Office Depot, and guess what I found?

Antibacterial pencils. Yes, it's true. I found some mechanical pencils

made by PaperMate that have an antibacterial coating. Isn't this

fascinating?

 

We've seen antibacterial hand soaps and dish soaps, shampoos and all

sorts of other personal care and cleaning products. And we've seen all

the bad news about this, as well, including the fact that they are

completely and utterly useless at actually protecting people from

germs, viruses or contagious disease. These chemicals basically create

superbugs in your own kitchen. They actually encourage the growth of

antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and they do nothing to make you

healthier because we don't live in a sanitary environment in the first

place.

 

We live with bacteria all around us. In fact, your immune system needs

to be stimulated by some exposure to bacteria in order to be healthy

enough to defend you against those really aggressive ones that might

make you sick. You have to have bacteria in your environment if you

want to be healthy. So, the whole concept of antibacterial products is

actually quite ridiculous to begin with.

 

We also learned that many of these antibiotic products contain toxic

chemicals. What do I mean by toxic? I mean chemicals that are

molecularly similar to Agent Orange -- chemicals that cause brain

cancer and impair the ability of your brain and nervous system to

function adequately. I mean chemicals that have to be detoxified by

your liver, which means that if you touch these chemicals -- if you

even get them on your skin -- your liver has to do all the hard work

to render them harmless. So, not only are you doing nothing to protect

yourself against all those dangerous bacteria, you are actually

harming your health by exposing yourself to these dangerous toxic

chemicals.

 

Antibiotic pencils protect pencils from disease, not people

We know that antibacterial chemicals are not only worse than useless

in an everyday environment; they are actually harmful to human health.

Now, of course, they have a place in a hospital setting -- in

emergency rooms or burn wards, for example -- although there are much

better alternatives, such as colloidal silver. Colloidal silver is a

broad-spectrum antibiotic with none of the toxic side effects of these

antibacterial chemicals. I can certainly see some justification for

using these types of chemicals in emergency rooms or burn wards, but

they have no place whatsoever in the household, and they have no place

on pencils.

 

So when I saw these pencils, I asked myself, " What is the marketing

angle here? What is PaperMate trying to do with this? Is it implying

that people catch diseases by using their own pencils? " If that's the

message, I'm not sure that it carries a lot of weight. Is using your

own pencil a danger to your health? Are people catching AIDS from

sharing pencils?

 

What is PaperMate trying to claim here? What's the message to the

consumer? The label to this product really says nothing that helps me

figure out what the company is trying to claim. It just says:

" Flex-Grip Elite with antibacterial pencil protection. " Well, it's

pencil protection, so it's protecting the pencil, right? So, I look on

the back of this package, and I read the fine print, and here's what

it says: " The antibacterial additive is EPA registered. "

 

Oh, that makes me feel really safe -- EPA-registered technology. The

EPA is the same department that was recently involved in pesticide

experiments on children. It's an EPA-registered antibacterial

technology, designed to protect the pencil's surface but not the skin.

The package is telling me this antibacterial product is designed to

protect the pencil. Is the pencil at risk of contagious disease?

 

I'm really worried about all the pencils I have in my drawer at home.

I think that they could contract bird flu any day now. They might just

keel over dead, and I can never use those pencils again. And every

winter all my pens get the flu and start coughing up ink. What am I

supposed to do about that? How can I write with sick pens?

 

Do we really have a problem in this country with our pencils getting

sick? Do we really have an infectious disease epidemic with writing

instruments? Remember, this PaperMate package says that it's not

designed to protect you or your skin; it's designed to protect the pencil.

 

Just imagine how gullible somebody has to be to believe this stuff and

keep buying these. I only bought them because I wanted to do this

review. I'm not sure what to do with these now, because I certainly

don't want to open the package and actually touch the pencils. And I

certainly don't need a pencil that is, itself, immune to colds,

viruses and the flu. So I'm not sure what to do with these. I don't

want to donate them to some school, because I wouldn't want children

to touch this chemical. I wouldn't want to just throw them away,

either, because I am concerned about the environmental impact of that

chemical. I'll have to take these back and get a refund.

 

Useless products for uninformed consumers

Consider what's really happening here with these antibacterial

chemicals. This is a sales and marketing gimmick, designed to give

consumers a flashy label that sounds really great but has no medical

justification whatsoever. It's just flashy marketing targeted at

uninformed people who are gullible enough to buy this product,

thinking it's going to protect them from getting sick.

 

We've seen the same type of thing in facial tissues. I've seen facial

tissues that say they have a chemical that protects them against 99.9

percent of all viruses and bacteria. Fantastic! So, the facial tissues

won't get sick, either. How does that help a consumer? It doesn't.

It's just a marketing gimmick. It's just part of the insane hype of

antibacterial everything.

 

I was hoping the antibacterial frenzy would fizzle out because we now

have a hefty collection of evidence warning about the dangers of using

antibacterial products. I thought that product manufacturers would

eventually stop using these toxic chemicals, but instead it just seems

to be expanding to all sorts of other areas, now including

antibacterial pencils.

 

How about antibacterial cars?

I'm just wondering how far they could really go with this stuff. Maybe

Ford or GM will start selling antibacterial cars. The door handles,

seat covers and windows all get coated with an antibacterial chemical,

along with a claim that explains, " Your car will never get the flu! "

 

What about antibacterial carpets? Maybe someone will start selling

carpet that is laced with Agent Orange or other chemicals that kill

bacteria. That'll be exciting. That way when you roll around on your

carpet with your children or your pets, you will be absorbing some of

that right into your skin just as if you were using antibacterial soap.

 

Maybe we'll have antibacterial clothes that have been soaked in that

toxic chemical, and the marketers will claim your clothes won't stink,

even if you do. How healthy is that going to be? Let's just wear

antibacterial chemicals and then sweat and absorb all that right

through our skin.

 

Stop using antibacterial products while your nervous system is still

intact

This abuse of antibacterial chemicals is destroying people's nervous

systems. These chemicals are also hazardous to use on dishes because

people eat their food off of those dishes. Hasn't this thought ever

crossed anybody's mind? (Of course not; antibacterial chemicals have

already harmed their nervous systems.)

 

So just in case you're ever concerned that your pencils might catch a

cold, or AIDS, or some other infectious disease, you can now buy

pencils that have been coated with antibacterial chemicals. That way

you can preserve their health and prevent the spread of STDs

(Scribe-Transmitted Diseases).