March 2005
Dear Paula,
You have a terrific ability to cut through the confusion and get to the truth, so I bring this question to you. Is the antibacterial ingredient triclosan safe to use in shower gels and soaps? I recently did a Web search on "dioxin" because of the news story that the presidential candidate in the Ukraine was poisoned with that chemical. In my research I found references to triclosan being of "the same class" of chemicals. This is all very alarming to the non-chemist!

Here is a quote typical of what I read online: "Triclosan is a chlorophenol, a class of chemicals suspected of causing cancer in humans. Externally, it can cause skin irritations, — [but since] phenols can temporarily deactivate the sensory nerve endings — contact with [triclosan] often causes little or no pain. Internally, it can lead to cold sweats, circulatory collapse, convulsions, coma, and even death. Stored in body fat, it can accumulate to toxic levels, damaging the liver, kidneys, and lungs, and can cause paralysis, sterility, suppression of immune function, brain hemorrhage, decreased fertility and sexual function, heart problems, and coma."

Paula this is scary stuff, so again, is triclosan safe to use or not?

Margaret, via email

Dear Margaret,
The Internet is truly an "agony and ecstasy" mode of gathering information. The ecstasy is the copious amount of legitimate information it provides that would otherwise be hard for the average person to obtain; the agony is the counterpoint to that, with the plethora of outlandish, odious, scam content lurking around every corner. But to be brief, don't worry about triclosan.

I found one of the Web sites you must have encountered with the concerns you quoted and none of its information is sourced, so there is no way to check the assertions. Suggesting that something is dangerous simply because it has some molecular relation to a more potent substance is like saying you should never use salt because part of its makeup is chloride (salt is NaCl, sodium chloride), which is extremely caustic. Further, the risk associated with triclosan is based on its pure form when breathed in large amounts or eaten in large amounts (try breathing in or eating pounds of salt a week and you won't make it very long in life either). None of this relates to the topical use of triclosan in skin-care products.

I was not able to find any published medical or chemistry studies suggesting triclosan causes cancer. If anything, I did find a study published in Carcinogenesis (January 2005, pages 153-157) that actually found triclosan to have some anticancer properties. The study looked at rats with breast cancer that were fed a diet containing triclosan versus the same diet without triclosan, and found that the triclosan-fed rats had a much-reduced rate of the cancer present. Another journal concurred with this finding as well (Source: Cancer Chemotherapy and Pharmacology, March 2002, pages 187-193). Of course, I am not suggesting this means anyone should eat triclosan, but the risks you found on the Internet seem not to have any validity, at least not in the amounts used in skin-care products.

Triclosan is used as an effective antibacterial agent in some skin-care products such as hand washes. Concerns about its use have been argued because there is a risk that overuse of triclosan may produce resistant bacteria strains (Source: Journal of Hospital Infection, October 2003, pages 98-107); but there is also research suggesting that not to be the case, so the debate continues.