Spring Cleaning Carnival - Week 1 - Thursday

Today's article read on triclosan: http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/blogs/green-products-services/antibacterial-soap-55073001

For me, the most interesting thing about this article was that they claim the American Medical Association (AMA) is against use of products containing triclosan in households. Reading this article at the AMA site suggested it would be better to avoid the use of household products in which triclosan is an ingredient, but qualified this statement by including that insufficient research data exists to draw a conclusion. It was interesting to me to note that this was the only article found by doing a search of the term triclosan at the AMA site. The information on household products was found on pp 4-5 of the article, and centered on questions of the effectiveness of antimicrobial agents such as triclosan and the possibility of increased antimicrobial resistance.

I also checked this article at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) site. It was 26 pages long, and no, I didn't read the whole thing. My eyes started to blur in front of all the scientific data. To me, the FDA's findings were not significantly different from that of the AMA. Mostly it seemed that people were not washing their hands long enough with whatever product to make much of a difference in the amount of bacteria left on their hands.

Even though we wore gloves when assisting residents with toileting and bathing at my job, I always washed my hands between each resident served and changed gloves at least once (things could get messy) with and/or in between people. I use the "ABC Song" method to time my handwashing. :O)

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Today's article read on the effects of inhaling bleach: http://www.ehow.com/about_5376626_side-effects-inhaling-bleach.html

The suggestions in this article included:

• wearing protective gear (mask and/or gloves), especially when dealing with full-concentration bleach;
• working in a well-ventilated area;
• diluting the solution;
• vinegar or lemon can help remove bleach that comes in contact with skin;
• high concentrations (more than 500 ppm-which is way more concentrated than household bleach) can cause serious inhalation problems.

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I don't know about y'all, but I want to go outside and breath some semi-fresh air, go wash my hands when I get back in and make sure I have the Poison Control Center toll-free number (1-800-222-1222) readily at hand!