—DONALD TRUMP, 2006
THERE‘S TRICLOSAN IN my garden hose.
Of all the chemicals we’re writing about in this book, triclosan was the only one that I was feeling smug about. If you look hard enough, its presence as the active ingredient in many “antibacterial” products is usually labelled, and my family and I have been shunning it for years. So I was pretty sure I had completely banished it from the house.
But there I was one evening, watering our little vegetable garden and looking down at the hose. I noticed for the first time that there were words printed on it. The letters were very small and the words were repeated the entire length of the hose, so at a glance they blended together into a solid stripe. But as I wiped off the grime and stared hard, I could just make out the phrase “Microban Protection.” Microban is a producer of antibacterial products that most often contain triclosan as the active ingredient.
Unbelievable! I looked up at the tomato plants that I was unknowingly dousing with germicide, courtesy of my decidedly un-green green rubber hose. As I watched the triclosan water soaking into my backyard soil, I felt a wave of exasperation. Were consumers really suffering from a plague of germy garden hoses in need of a laboratory-engineered solution?
Dr. Stuart Levy, a professor of microbiology at Tufts University, chuckled sympathetically when I told him about my hose. He agreed that the craze for “antibacterial” products has got out of hand; triclosan has indeed crept into some ridiculous places. “We have antibacterial chopsticks here in Chinatown….Toyota advertises antibacterial steering wheels and certain other features. You’ve got a hose. I’ve seen a hot tub. I mean, come on, already. If you’re really going to advertise it as a product for health, then put it in something where it’s going to work. Microban has succeeded in putting it in everything. You can now get a total triclosan bedroom, complete with pillows and pillowcases and slippers!”
So successful have the purveyors of triclosan been, in fact, that the list Levy quickly rattled off is just the tip of the iceberg. The Environmental Working Group has found the chemical in household items as disparate as toothpaste, underwear, towels, mattresses, sponges, shower curtains, phones, flooring, cutting boards, fabric and children’s toys. One hundred and forty kinds of consumer products in all.1 And this is by no means an exhaustive list.
In 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned use of triclosan in hand soaps, but the chemical remains an integral part of a wide range of commercial products.2
In many ways the history of triclosan resembles that of the brominated flame retardants I talked about in chapter 3. They are both products in perpetual search of new (and increasingly ridiculous) applications. Microban and other manufacturerers of triclosan realized they could take a chemical that had previously been limited to hospital applications, build the term “antibacterial” into a saleable brand, water down the chemical’s concentration and insert it into products as diverse as deodorant and countertops.
The slogans used to sell triclosan extol the many virtues of the germ-free life. “Spread love, not germs,” said the U.S. Soap and Detergent Association (SDA) in one Valentine’s Day press release. An advertisement for pet shampoo says that its “gentle yet effective antibacterial action and the crisp scent of fresh green apples destroys odor and leaves your dog’s coat clean and shining.” And another company tells us to “wipe-out acne bacteria and excess oil with these towelettes. Medicated with antibacterial Triclosan and Salicylic Acid to help to prevent future breakouts.” The growing use of triclosan rang alarm bells for Stuart Levy. In addition to being the director of the Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance at Tufts University, Levy founded and continues to serve as president of the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics (APUA). As explained on its website, APUA’s mission is to “strengthen society’s defences against infectious disease by promoting appropriate antimicrobial3 access and use and controlling antimicrobial resistance on a worldwide basis.”4
This is no easy task. Infectious microbes are wily beasts. And the way they adapt to antibiotics is a constant challenge for doctors. APUA recognizes it has a major job on its hands, given that “antimicrobials are uniquely societal drugs because each individual patient use can propagate resistant organisms affecting entire health facilities, the environment and the community.” As a result “wide-scale antimicrobial misuse and related drug resistance is challenging infectious disease treatment and healthcare budgets worldwide.”
This was the backdrop against which Levy started wondering whether antibacterial products might also be contributing to resistant bacteria. “It was at the very beginning of this [antibacterial] phenomenon and Hasbro was impregnating triclosan into some of their toys and claiming it would protect kids from infectious disease transfer. Then [kitchen equipment retailer] Joyce Chen came out with her impregnated plastic cutting board….Corporate marketers discovered that the use of the term ‘antibacterial’ would be a good marketing ploy; so they started advertising it. I mean, one of the funny parts was when you looked at the Reach toothbrush; the triclosan wasn’t in the bristles, it was in the handle. And yet it was advertised as the antibacterial toothbrush.”
Dr. Philip Tierno, the director of Clinical Microbiology and Diagnostic Immunology at New York University’s Medical Center, also dates his interest in triclosan back to the Hasbro toys incident. Unlike Stuart Levy, however, Tierno is in favour of triclosan in some applications (he personally uses triclosan toothpaste and soap). However, he is withering in his criticism of others. “There are certain products that incorporate triclosan because they want to jump on the microbial bandwagon and make money rather than prevent transmission of infection from one person to another,” he says. “One in particular is a pizza cutter which has a wheel—a metal wheel that you would use to slice pizza—and a plastic handle, and the plastic handle has the triclosan incorporated into it.” Tierno calls this an “example of a useless product,” given that you have to wash the cheese and other pizza bits off the wheel anyway and therefore wash the handle as well. Tierno adds that “many of the formulations of triclosan contain either too little triclosan to be effective or contain it in a ratio that is not ideal for maintaining its germ-killing ability.” He’d like to eliminate these products, he says, “because they are taxing the environment—both the human environment and the environment at large—with unnecessary extra levels of triclosan over and above that which is useful from an antibacterial standpoint.”
Interestingly, even the company that invented triclosan has become queasy at some of the uses to which its chemical is being put. Klaus Nussbaum was global business head of the hygiene division at Ciba Inc., the company that first introduced triclosan for use in hospital surgical scrubs in 1972. Ciba was at that time the dominant manufacturer of the chemical worldwide. I spoke with Nussbaum at length over a crackly speakerphone (a PR rep was sitting in on the interview) from his office in Basel, Switzerland. Not surprisingly, he was quite positive about the chemical. He pointed out that it’s been in use for forty years and rhymed off a number of papers that have pronounced it safe for widespread use. Near the end of the interview, however, Nussbaum made a passing reference to triclosan disappearing “from some applications we’re not in favour of.” When I pressed him on this point and expressed surprise that there were any uses of triclosan Ciba wouldn’t support, given the company’s oft-expressed view that the chemical is not harmful to the environment or human health, he said that it was a “positioning issue for the product.” He singled out “widespread, one-use” items like triclosan-infused garbage bags as being of concern to the company.
Even Ciba, it would seem, can’t justify its invention sitting in landfill sites forever, leaching triclosan into our waterways. Even the chemical industry will acknowledge that bacteria actually belong in some places in this world.
The over-triclosanitization of the planet wouldn’t be such a big deal if it weren’t for a few niggling problems: (1) mounting evidence that, in many products, it works no better than competing products that have no triclosan; (2) increasing levels in people and the environment that have now been linked to health problems; and (3) the biggie, the emergence of a solid case that it’s contributing to bacterial resistance, a.k.a. the rise of “superbugs.”
Let’s look at each of these in turn.
First off, are antibacterial soaps really no better than “normal” products? Well, in household settings, this would seem to be the case. Studies published by the American Medical Association, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s journal Emerging Infectious Diseases come to similar conclusions: that in household settings, there is no evidence to suggest that the use of antibacterial soap is more beneficial than the use of soap and water in reducing bacteria or the rate of disease.5 Another study, of two hundred American households, concluded that people who use antibacterial products have no reduced risk for infectious disease symptoms.6
Recently, another large study of American households found that soaps containing triclosan were generally no more effective (and possibly even less effective) than plain soap at preventing infectious illness symptoms and reducing bacteria on the hands.7 Regardless of where the samples were gathered, there was little benefit associated with the use of soap containing triclosan compared to using plain, regular soap.8
Stuart Levy, one of the authors of this study, points out that “in household products, triclosan is probably somewhere around one-fifth or one-tenth the concentrations that are used in hospitals.” Levy supports the prudent use of triclosan (“it’s great in hospitals”) but objects to its use in lower concentrations in a more widespread way. Enough chemical is being put in the products to tout them as “antibacterial” but not always enough to actually kill the germs on our hands.
Second, evidence of the bioaccumulative and persistent nature of triclosan is mounting. It tends to build up in animal and human fat tissues and has been detected in umbilical cord blood as well. Swedish studies have documented high levels of triclosan in breast milk.9 In one paper published in 2002, it was found in three of five breast milk samples. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found triclosan in the urine of 75 percent of the more than 2,500 Americans tested.10
As the use of triclosan becomes more widespread in consumer products, the likelihood of its being emitted into waterways also increases, since approximately 95 percent of products containing triclosan end up going down the drain. Triclosan was one of the most frequently detected compounds in a U.S. geological survey of American streams, likely a result of its presence in discharges of treated waste water.11 While wastewater treatment can remove much of the triclosan and other compounds, not all of it will be removed. And triclosan risks having toxic effects on algae and aquatic ecosystems. Japanese studies of fish have demonstrated androgenic effects in fish exposed to triclosan, causing changes in fin length and sex ratios.12 Studies on frogs have shown that low levels of the chemical can interfere with normal thyroid function, triggering rapid transformation of tadpoles into adults.13 In Scandinavia, government officials have discouraged the use of triclosan as a result of possible endocrine disruption as well as potential bacterial resistance. Concerns have also been raised about triclosan’s interference with thyroid activity. In a study of mice, it was found that triclosan affected body temperature, lowering it, and caused a depressant effect on the nervous system.14
And finally, the superbugs. The question of whether the prevalence of triclosan is causing bacterial resistance is the hottest debate surrounding this chemical. The American Medical Association went so far as to recommend against the use of antibacterial products in the home, citing evidence of antimicrobial resistance.15 More recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned use of triclosan in “health care antiseptics.”16
Not surprisingly, Brian Sansoni of the American Cleaning Institute (the lobby group for the cleaning-products industry) in the United States calls the allegations about bacterial resistance a “common suburban myth.” He points out that the only evidence for bacterial resistance stemming from triclosan exposure comes from the lab and that “there is no real-world evidence linking the use of antibacterial products and their ingredients to antibiotic resistance—none.” Sansoni thinks it unfortunate that “continuing to hype this hypothesis” detracts attention from the major contributor to antibiotic resistance, “which is crystal clear: it’s the overprescription and the overuse of antibiotic drugs. What we’ve seen, unfortunately, is both of these scenarios equated in the same breath—you know, antibiotic drugs and antibacterial products. It’s like comparing Mount Everest to a molehill.”
As one of the primary targets of Brian Sansoni’s criticisms, Stuart Levy is careful with his words. “I have said clearly that the use of triclosan is not the primary reason for the bacterial resistance that we face today. It’s misuse of antibiotics in humans and animals.” Levy continues, “But that doesn’t mean we should complacently say that antibacterials aren’t an issue. We should look at it and evaluate it and continue to evaluate, but better than that we should ask whether there is a benefit to the consumer if in fact there is the threat that it could be harmful.” Levy acknowledges that the existing evidence comes from the laboratory and says, “The word I’ve always used is ‘potential.’ If we can observe this in the laboratory, it’s certainly likely to happen in the outside world. If you use antimicrobials enough, you’ll get resistance.”
West Nile virus. Bird flu. Listeria. SARS. Flesh-eating disease. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. So often, it seems, there’s a new microbe for people to fear.
And not without reason, notes Dr. Chuck Gerba. Gerba, known as “Dr. Germ” in his popular writings, is a professor of microbiology and environmental sciences at the University of Arizona and a noted authority on germs and how they spread. In his book The Germ Freak’s Guide to Outwitting Colds and Flu, Gerba makes the point that a hundred years ago, infectious disease was the leading cause of death. By 1980 it had fallen to number five, but even as of 2017, infectious diseases represented three of the world’s top ten global causes of death, according to the World Health Organization.17
Gerba feels strongly that we need to take stock of the situation and “reinvent hygiene” for this century. We need to do so for two reasons. First, he says, “the population is a lot more susceptible in terms of serious outcomes. One-third of our population falls into this group and these tend to be the elderly, babies, and compromised people—like cancer chemotherapy patients—and pregnant women. We’re an aging population. Common diseases like diarrhea are just a mild inconvenience for most people, but if you’re over sixty-five it can be quite life-threatening.”
The second reason, Gerba says, is “the lifestyle changes we’ve undergone” that put us in contact with more germs than ever before: “More of our food supply is being imported from the developing world, which is exposing us to more varieties of pathogens than we’ve ever seen before. Eighty percent of us now work indoors in offices, whereas a hundred years ago most of us worked on a farm, in a field, and went into town once a week. Today we spend our days in office buildings, in supermalls, we have cruise ships that have gone from one hundred people to three thousand people, we have stadiums of an enormous size, and basically we’re sharing more space with more people than ever before. When you do that, you are sharing more germs with more people than ever before.”
Germs are tough and adaptable, and “every time we have a lifestyle change, they take advantage of it,” says Gerba. He mentions the SARS virus: “It looks like it came from bats. It got into other animals largely because of the expanding human population and closer contact.”18 Another microbe, the Legionella bacterium, likes warm water; in the natural environment it would have been a problem only “if you sat in a hot spring.” But in a world full of showers, hot tubs and fountains—ready-made artificial habitats—Legionella has thrived and presents a real threat to human health.
So what to do? Unlike Stuart Levy, Gerba is not convinced of the evidence linking triclosan to bacterial resistance. He is sure, however, that it’s just not necessary in many cases. “I have my concerns about triclosan largely because I don’t think it’s been proven to be efficacious in everything it’s been used in,” he says. “I think people shouldn’t go overboard with this….You don’t have to disinfect everything you come in contact with. I mean, even when you go out in public, just washing your hands is a good enough strategy.”
Unfortunately, Gerba’s common-sense approach is too rarely taken to heart.
The target of our modern-day cleaning obsession—the microorganism—was not even widely recognized as the cause of disease until the turn of the twentieth century. For most of human history, people thought that disease was spontaneously generated or was caused by a noxious form of bad air called “miasma.” The miasmatic theory of disease became popular in the Middle Ages and was still being defended in the late nineteenth century by people as prominent as the Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale. People didn’t worry about germs. They worried about nasty smells from things like rotting meat, garbage and putrefaction. In order to combat those, they were obsessed with ensuring good ventilation. It wasn’t until scientists like Joseph Lister (after whom Listerine and Listeria are named) conducted experiments demonstrating the dramatic benefits of antiseptic measures—such as the reduction of hospital infections by hand washing—that people actually believed germs were real.
In the late 1800s soap became cheap enough that the middle class could afford it. Until that point most people had soap for washing clothes and floors but not bodies. And with this new refinement, which included better body soap, broad-scale advertising was born. As Katherine Ashenburg, author of a great book called The Dirt on Clean,19 explains, soap and advertising grew up together. “Advertising by fear”—which targeted the insecurities of the average person—quickly became a staple of the industry. Listerine advertisements in the early twentieth century claimed that “halitosis” was a nationwide epidemic and suggested that bad breath would inevitably upset the natural bond between a mother and child: “Are you unpopular with your own children?” And unmarried women were targeted with lines like “Skin that says, ‘I do!’ ” or “Till BREATH do us part.”
Ads were aimed not only at women but also at men. The Cleanliness Institute, an organization supported by the majority of soap manufacturers in North America, ran an ad in the late 1920s with the line “There’s self-respect in SOAP and WATER” and a graphic of a well-dressed man with a briefcase looking down at an unshaven, dishevelled man. The recent marketing of “antibacterial” products is simply a continuation of the long and beautiful relationship between advertising and soap.
Rather than buying into the common notion that our ancestors didn’t care about cleanliness because they simply didn’t have access to the right technology or plumbing or water delivery systems, Ashenburg flips this argument on its head. She believes that technology follows desire. “The Romans had technology for water delivery and plumbing and heating in their imperial baths. That knowledge was not really lost, but until the nineteenth century, people weren’t interested in it. The English, who were more interested in being clean in the nineteenth century than the French, were able to have plumbing in the majority of London houses by the 1830s. The French knew about this but declined to follow suit. All of this was really about mentality. The French didn’t care to be clean in the 1830s and for some complicated historical and sociological reasons, the English cared more.” Ashenburg’s conclusion is that people could have been clean in lots of countries centuries earlier, but it was not a matter of interest to them. “Cultures that believed more in a communal sense were much less bothered by the fact that they smelled or their neighbours smelled.”
The current unparalleled Western obsession with hygiene—”pretending that we’re not of this earth,” as Ashenburg says—reflects some very recent changes in societal desires. She concludes that our “germ craziness and all these antibacterial things” are connected to fears like “terrorism and 9/11. Germs, like terrorists, are unseen enemies, and you never know when they’re going to strike. I think a lot of the current hygiene thinking is about the American wish to control things.”
The irony being, of course, that the current rate of antibacterial use has unleashed a wave of triclosan on the population in an entirely uncontrolled and largely unmonitored manner.
Looking at the array of highly scented, luxuriously packaged, triclosan-infused toiletry items I had assembled for our experiment—surely the pinnacle of soap evolution—humanity’s former longstanding disregard for bathing and tolerance of stinkiness seemed very remote indeed.
As opposed to the other chemicals dealt with in this book, our triclosan experiment was comparatively easy to organize. Triclosan is well labelled on products, and if “antibacterial” appeared anywhere on a container, the product wouldn’t normally make it into our house. But for the purposes of our experiment, I purchased a variety of off-the-shelf products containing triclosan at local grocery stores and used them in a normal way over a two-day period (see table 4). I felt a little strange deliberately exposing myself to triclosan because, unlike phthalates and bisphenol A—which stay in the body for only a few hours—triclosan sticks around for several days.
In preparing our experiment we had looked at a few studies of triclosan to try to gauge what to expect. Researchers using laboratory preparations of the chemical in skin cream and mouth rinses had demonstrated how easy it was to increase levels in the urine through those single sources.20 But there are now so many triclosan products on the market that people can easily be exposed to multiple triclosan sources simultaneously.
Table 4. Rick’s Triclosan Shopping List.
Bathroom
Colgate Total toothpaste
Clean & Clear foaming facial cleanser
Dial Complete triclosan hand soap
Gillette shave gel
Right Guard deodorant
Dettol pine fragrance shower soap
Kitchen
Dawn Ultra Concentrated dish liquid/antibacterial hand soap
J Cloth (apple blossom scent with Microban)
I used these products for a mere two days, but the effect on my urine level of triclosan was stunning, sending it up from 2.47 nanograms per millilitre (ng/mL) to 7,180 ng/mL. The difference between these numbers is hard to depict visually: because of the huge increase, you can barely see my starting value on the graph (see figure 7). And why, given the fact that we’ve banished triclosan from our home for years, wasn’t my starting value zero? Likely because of the levels of triclosan that are now found in water and food that we all absorb day in and day out.21
Figure 7. Levels of triclosan in Rick’s urine in two 24-hour urine collections before and after deliberate exposure (ng/mL).
My results were very interesting when compared with recent testing by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 2003 and 2004 an analysis of triclosan levels in the urine of over two thousand Americans revealed that the geometric mean was 13 ng/mL, with a range in values from 2.3 to 3,790 ng/mL.22
So after two days, my self-experimentation took me from the very bottom of the heap to far above the highest value recorded to date in the U.S. population. To accomplish this, I used eight different products containing triclosan all at once, a number not likely used by many people. But judging from the hundreds of nanograms of triclosan in the urine of some of the CDC test subjects, the simultaneous use of a few triclosan products is not uncommon.
When I told Klaus Nussbaum from Ciba about the triclosan levels in my urine, he said, “It shows that your body is working very properly in removing triclosan.” When I asked if 7,180 ng/mL was at all cause for concern, he answered, “It’s high for the moment. Your body is working properly, but you should know that the human body usually adapts in the metabolism of triclosan.” I was struck by Nussbaum’s use of the word “adapt.” The concept that our bodies need to adapt to synthetic chemicals is an interesting one, and biologically true. Given that triclosan is a human creation, the metabolic pathways necessary to break it down and excrete it are indeed things that our bodies need to learn how to do.
I don’t know whether the future form of humans is being determined by the chemical soup we’re living in, or whether the definition of our evolution as a species has now changed from “survival of the fittest” to “survival of the chemically immune.” What I do know is that the ubiquity of synthetic chemicals like triclosan in our daily lives and their accumulation in our bodies are an unjustifiable imposition by the industries that manufacture the chemicals and by the government regulators who are supposed to keep such things from causing harm.
And I certainly don’t want any new metabolic pathways for triclosan being activated in my body without my consent.
As if triclosan weren’t a big enough problem, the latest incarnation of the runaway antibacterial train presents an even more complicated challenge: nanotechnology, the creation of super-small particles that are only a few atoms or molecules in size. In recent years—with no fanfare and largely unknown to consumers—brand-new kinds of nanotechnology have become commonplace. According to the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, an inventory of nanotechnology-based consumer products, the number of products increased threefold between March 2006, when the inventory was released with 212 products on the market, and August 2008, when there were 609 products. As of 2016, several “online repositories” listed more than 2,000 commercially available products incorporating some element of nanotechnology.23
According to Dr. Andrew Maynard, director of the Risk Innovation Lab in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University, average consumers will regularly encounter these nanomaterials and not even know it: “There’s quite a range of nanomaterials at present,” says Maynard. “People will come directly in contact with things like nano-sized silver particles that are used as antibacterial agents. They’ll come in contact with nano-sized titanium dioxide and zinc oxide in cosmetics and sunscreens. They will come across some nano-encapsulates that are used in some cosmetics. They will also indirectly come in contact with things like cerium oxides being used as a fuel additive and carbon nanotubes that are usually embedded in a product. So people aren’t going to be directly exposed to them, but they’ll be using products that contain them.”
And what’s the point of nanosilver? As Maynard explains, silver has been known as an effective antimicrobial agent for centuries, but it’s not that easy to use. It’s very difficult to put a large lump of silver into a product. The only other available option is to use it in chemical form, such as silver ions. Over the past few years, manufacturers have discovered that if you melt silver into very small particles—about 20 or so nanometres in diameter—you can effectively incorporate those particles into a wide range of products, thereby giving them some degree of antimicrobial capability. “So now you’re seeing nano-sized silver particles appearing in things like surface coatings, clothing like socks, surfaces of food containers and refrigerators. Almost any product where you can see this foreseeable market for antimicrobials,” says Maynard. According to a report from Global Market Insights, antimicrobial coatings (including those using nanosilvers) created over $1 billion in U.S. revenue in 2015. The same company predicts that the American market will double in size by 2024.24
While nanoparticles may be new, our scientific understanding of silver is not. The EPA classifies silver as an environmental hazard because of its toxic effects on aquatic plants and animals. A study published in 2005 found that nanosilver is forty-five times more toxic than regular, standard silver.25 Another study found that nanosilver has the potential to destroy beneficial bacteria used in wastewater treatment.26According to a paper published in September 2008, nearly one-third of nanosilver products on the market in September 2007 had the potential to disperse nanosilver into the environment. More recent research notes that nanosilvers generate considerable “oxidative stress” in our bodies, damaging the cellular components of DNA, activating antioxidant enzymes and degrading cell membranes.27
In 2006 Samsung introduced a SilverCare washer that released silver ions into the wash. These ions were then released into the waste stream with each load of laundry. Even when socks containing nanosilver are washed, nanosilver is released into the water discharged from the laundry and eventually makes its way into watercourses. The Stockholm Water Authority claimed that households in Sweden using the nanosilver washing machine would emit two to three times more silver than would be emitted without the use of the washing machine.28
In another recent study, the first of its kind, researchers experimented with six different pairs of socks, all of which had been marketed as anti-odour and impregnated with nanosilver. They found that the socks released varying amounts of silver. Some released silver after the first wash, other socks gradually released the silver after multiple washes and others released no silver. More research is needed to find out just how much of the silver particles make their way from the sock into the washing water and ultimately into waste water and the broader environment, including aquatic life and humans. Meanwhile, for the average consumer standing in front of a display of nanosilver socks in a store, there is virtually no way of knowing which socks will release silver and which will not.
Given the lack of monitoring of nanosilver and what Andrew Maynard calls the “very complex” behaviour of nanosilver particles in the environment, more research in particular is needed concerning the impact of nanosilver on soils. Bacteria, after all, are what make soils work. So having soils peppered with a potent “space-age” antibacterial agent is a bit of a problem. The few studies that exist suggest that nanosilver is toxic to bacteria that consume inorganic material and thus release crucial nutrients that are essential to the formation of soil.29 Toxicity can also affect a bacteria-driven process known as “denitrification,” in which nitrates are converted to nitrogen gas in some soils, wetlands and other wet environments. This process is critical because excess nitrates reduce plant productivity. They can also result in “eutrophication in rivers, lakes and marine ecosystems, and are a drinking water pollutant.”30 Nanosilver’s toxicity has also been demonstrated in studies that show its effects on mammalian liver cells, stem cells and even brain cells.31
While writing the original edition of Slow Death, I went to an evening panel discussion on nanotechnology in Toronto. It featured some experts in the field and focused on the prospects for properly regulating this new and exploding class of products. I must admit that in my darker moments that evening, listening to the extent to which nanomaterials are entirely unregulated and learning that even many manufacturers admit they do not fully understand what they’re dealing with, I was struck with a feeling that we’re on a sort of toxic treadmill. No sooner do we deal with one chemical that’s harming our health than we see another one coming along. We can’t get off the treadmill and never seem to learn from our mistakes.
I put it to Andrew Maynard that nanosilver is a classic example of this phenomenon, but he was actually more positive than I expected. “It’s good that we’re still at the starting stages of different types of nanotechnologies being developed and already we’re having a fairly broad debate about how you would bring these technologies forward responsibly,” he says. “Even though things seem to be a little bit dicey, we’re doing a lot better with this technology than we have with previous ones.”
The bottom line is that there’s a little of the famous germophobe Howard Hughes in all of us, and the chemical industry preys on this big time.
The avalanche of advertising extolling the (in many cases) nonexistent virtues of triclosan and fomenting a society-wide germ panic is the prime example of this, but the use of fear to peddle chemicals is a theme you’ll find in other chapters of this book as well. Fear of fire sells more flame retardants. Fear of insects sells more pesticides. Fear of the odours of daily life sells phthalates.
The irony in all this is that environmental advocates, including yours truly, are frequently accused of “fearmongering” by the chemical industry. “Our products are safe. Don’t listen to the scare tactics suggesting otherwise” goes their refrain. An industry representative once called me a “chemophobe,” which I thought was a cool word, even though I disagreed with the guy’s premise.
So let me put it on the table: I love chemicals. Most of the chemicals in my daily life, including caffeine and alcohol and even the low-VOC paint on the walls of my home, are just dandy.
In my third year of university, I tried my hand at a summer of tree planting in the wilds of British Columbia. One day the bugs were so bad I thought I was going to lose my mind or scratch my eyes out or both. I pulled my long-sleeved shirt over my head so my face was framed by the neck hole and I doused myself—including my head—with a full bottle of the strongest DEET-ridden insect repellent imaginable. deet is a chemical so strong it actually melts plastic, and you can’t even buy bug dope now in the concentrations I was using twenty years ago. But there was no other option on the cut block that day.
So here’s a message to the chemical industry: I’m no chemophobe. I’m downright chemophilic in some circumstances. What I object to are the chemicals, like triclosan, that aren’t necessary, are possibly dangerous and are foisted on us every day without our knowledge or consent.