So the FDA banned antibacterial soap for consumers partly because it doesn’t work any better than soap and water, but can still cause antibiotic resistance?! But hospitals still use professional grade “real” antibacterial soap.
So why do we wash hands at all? Dirt?
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Most of the benefit of soap is washing off the bacteria, not killing it. Antibiotics are good at killing bacteria, but that's not why soap is effective - which is why it doesn't help.
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Soap is useful because it cleans germs but does not attack them and increase resistance. Antibacterial soap attacks them - only helpful if you are in a hospital and doing a thorough wash of your hands and forearms (a la a full treatment of antibiotics)
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Grease and water are imiscible, but (grease and soap) do mix and so do (soap and water). Soap is a middleman.
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because most of the effectiveness of handwashing is in the mechanics of the technique, not the soap itself. but in hospitals you still want the extra bit of marginal effectiveness (they would probably be legally culpable if they didn't exploit something that was widely available)




