Should I use antibacterial soap? Episode 125

The FDA has announced that it’s going to take a closer look at antibacterial soaps. In today’s show (an encore presentation from 2013) we discuss everything you need to know. What is an antibacterial soap? Soaps that contain antimicrobial or antibacterial agents are actually drugs that are controlled by the FDA (in the US). Since these drugs don’t require a prescription, they are called Over the Counter drugs just like aspirin and antacids. These OTC drugs, as they’re called, are defined in a FDA document called a Monograph which specifies which active ingredients you can use, how much you can use and so forth. OTC drugs are classified in 3 ways: Category I = GRASE. (Generally Recognized As Safe and Effective.) Category II = Not GRASE. (Denotes that an active ingredient has been shown to be unsafe, ineffective, or both. You can NOT use these.) Category III = GRAS or GRAE. Triclosan is Category IIISE which means they’d like to see both safety and efficacy data. Starting in 1978 and ending in 1994 the FDA developed what it calls a Tentative Final Monograph on Antimicrobial products which said only Povidone-iodine at 5 to 10 percent was Category I, several were Category II and some were Category III. Since Triclosan is relatively cheap and easy to formulate with, it became the favorite. So the FDA said as long as you use this ingredient at these levels, you can make these claims but we’re going to keep looking at these ingredients in case there’s any new evid...
Source: thebeautybrains.com - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Source Type: blogs