Deadly Soap: Antibacterial Chemical Harms Mother's Nursing Offspring

There's nothing wrong with a little antibacterial soap. It cleans your hands and gets rid of those nasty germs--nothing to worry about at all, right? Think again. Scientists have discovered that a mother's exposure to triclocarban, a common antibacterial chemical, while nursing her babies can actually shorten the life of her female offspring.

Triclocarban can be found in a variety of products--from antibacterial soap to other personal care items. Because of this, a large portion of the public is exposed to the chemical almost on a daily basis. In order to investigate how this chemical might affect mammals, the researchers turned to rats.

In previous studies, scientists showed that the chemical actually enhances the growth of sex organs in the adult male rat. In this study, though, the scientists wanted to see if exposure to the same compound, either in the womb or during lactation, would affect rat pups.

In the experiment, scientists had three groups of pregnant rats. The first group had access to chemical-free rat food. The second group had food supplemented with .2 percent triclocarban and the third group had food with .5 percent triclocarban. The scientists found that the doses of triclobarban in the rats' blood corresponded to the levels in humans after a 15-minute whole-body shower using a bar of soap containing .6 triclocarban.

So how did the chemical affect the rats' offspring? By day three, pups nursed by rats that hadn't been exposed were heavier than the other groups. In addition, only four of 30 of the rat pups from the .2 percent group survived. Yet that was still better than the .5 percent group; by day six, none of the rat pups that were nursed from that group were left alive.

"Our study provides supporting evidence for the potential adverse effects of triclocarban exposure during early life, specifically during the lactation period," said Rebekah Kennedy, one of the researchers, in a news release. "The results indicate that a mother's long-term use of this compound might affect the early development of her offspring, at least according to our animal model."

The study highlights the importance of being aware what chemicals you're exposing yourself to in your environment. Something that seems harmless, like antibacterial soap, could affect pregnant women and their children in different ways. Of course, more research needs to be conducted before scientists can definitively say that triclocarban affects humans the same way as rats, but the study does reveal how crucial it is to fully examine the chemicals in our environment.

The results were presented Monday at The Endocrine Society's 95th Annual Meeting in San Francisco.