To Wipe or not to Wipe?

I’ve been thinking for a while about hand sanitizers at the gym. I don’t believe in them. I’ve been getting the stink eye from the one remaining person in the gym. However, I possess an almost religious belief that antibacterial products are unnecessary and could possibly be harmful. Now while I am willing to possess such a belief in a supernatural being, faith isn’t really required when it comes to soap because science can tell us about soap.

So I went off in search of the “truth” about antibacterials. The first thing I found was a piece from the New York Times entitled “Be Sure Exercise is All You Get at the Gym.” The story discussed a position statement from the National Athletic Trainers’ Association that stated (among other things) that athletes should bathe with liquid antibacterial soap immediately after using gym facilities. Somehow, I distrusted this information and dug deeper. A 2007 literature review from the Journal of Clinical Infection Disease found that there was a “lack of an additional health benefit associated with the use of (antibacterial) soaps over regular soap.” Other studies have looked at people washing with regular vs. antibacterial soaps over long courses of time. The result: people who used antibacterial soaps had the same level of bacteria living on their hands as people who used “normal” soap.

However, my big concern- that I would be promoting antibiotic resistant bacteria by using antibacterial wipes- appears to be unfounded. Or at least there is limited evidence in the literature to support this notion. I guess we will have to add it to the long list of problems that merit further investigation.