Ingredients
Most liquid hand and body soaps contain antibacterial chemicals. Triclosan is a common ingredient. Since there is a great variety of bacteria, effectiveness against any given type of bacterium does not ensure that it is effective against unrelated types. These are generally only contained at preservative levels unless the product is marked antibacterial, antiseptic, or germicidal. Triclosan, Triclocarban/Trichlorocarbamide and PCMX/Chloroxylenol are commonly used for antibacterial and deodorant effect in consumer products.
Some soaps contain tetrasodium EDTA which is a chelating agent that sequesters metals that the bacteria require in order to grow. Other microbes also require metals and so it is actually an anti-microbial agent that is widely used even as a preservative. It appears to be fairly harmless in the environment.
Read more about this topic: Antibacterial Soap
Famous quotes containing the word ingredients:
“In all cultures, the family imprints its members with selfhood. Human experience of identity has two elements; a sense of belonging and a sense of being separate. The laboratory in which these ingredients are mixed and dispensed is the family, the matrix of identity.”
—Salvador Minuchin (20th century)
“Reading any collection of a man’s quotations is like eating the ingredients that go into a stew instead of cooking them together in the pot. You eat all the carrots, then all the potatoes, then the meat. You won’t go away hungry, but it’s not quite satisfying. Only a biography, or autobiography, gives you the hot meal.”
—Christopher Buckley, U.S. author. A review of three books of quotations from Newt Gingrich. “Newtie’s Greatest Hits,” The New York Times Book Review (March 12, 1995)
“This even-handed justice
Commends th’ ingredients of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)