About 20 years ago, I noticed that Triclosan was the active ingredient in the soap I was using. In fact, everywhere I looked, products listed Triclosan in the ingredients and boasted of killing "99.9% of bacteria". Triclosan seemed to be added to everything, for the sake of irradicating the scourge of bacteria.

Since I was curious about this miracle cure, I hopped onto wikipedia to research how it works. The revision from around that time had suspiciously little to say about it:

Triclosan has been shown to be safe through extensive testing and 30 years of experience in personal care products and clinical use and is approved by both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and by the European Union. In the environment, triclosan is removed during normal waste treatment processes as shown by extensive environmental studies, and any that remains after waste treatment quickly breaks down in the environment.

But the article hinted that the chemical may cause anti-bacterial resistance to grow in the environment. I made a mental note to keep track of Triclosan, especially after the news increasingly mentioned deadly MRSA -- anti-bacterial resistant infections.

Fast forward to 2016, when Triclosan was designated a "contaminant of emerging concern" and "not generally recognized as safe and effective". Read the sordid history on the current version of wikipedia's Triclosan page – the pesticide is associated with food allergies, hormonal disruption, cancer, and serious, long-lasting environmental pollution. On top of that, it isn't even effective:

A comprehensive meta-analysis published in 2007 indicated that, in community settings, plain soap was no less effective than soaps containing triclosan for "preventing infectious illness symptoms and reducing bacterial levels on the hands.".

Triclosan is now banned in soap products, but apparently it's still used in many consumer products, and the companies don't have to indicate whether it's used, because they aren't regulated by the FDA.

Learning about this chemical was my first glimpse into the world of environmental toxics. Since then, it seems like new revelations of toxic chemicals are announced every other week. Most recently, throw away your black plastic utensils, or else they'll give you cancer...

If it's not patently obvious by now, I think these examples should cause all of us to be skeptical about claims that any new product (especially if it uses exotic chemistry or biology) is "safe and effective". Recent history is full of miraculous chemicals that were later revealed to be toxic. Often, the manufacturers knew that the products were toxic but used propaganda and corruption to suppress the revelations, until long after the damage was done. Remember when cities routinely sprayed DDT onto children, because it was supposedly harmless?