The footnotes to this paper give dozens of links to peer-reviewed studies showing that ethanol is a penetration enhancer that moves stuff from the outside of your dirty hands to the inside of your body.

Soap and water works better so why take unnecessary risks?  Save your risk-taking for things that are fun, like skydiving and extreme sports, instead of wasting it on enriching megacorporations peddling unnecessary nostrums.

This is why antibacterial soaps can make problems such as athlete’s foot worse.

Unnecessary exposure to highly volatile compounds is asking for Parkinson’s disease or worse.  Soap and water works.  And hospitals are probably the worst place possible to get advice on management of surface microorganisms, if history is any guide.

The article is talking about an increase in food allergies, and this can have all sorts of causes. Prominent ones discussed a lot recently include an increase in the use of antibiotics, harming gut flora (see Mark’s next post); changes in how babies are introduced to foods; changes in breast feeding practices (gut flora again, see this week’s Sunday Times), etc.

You (or fusionkitty) seem to be saying that there are a growing number of “canaries” with a hypersensitivity to certain chemicals. That’s fine, but isn’t supported by the article.

And: “Triclosan in my toothpaste?  I’ts more likely than you think.”
http://newyorkorthodontists.net/triclosan-dangers-side-effects-in-toothpastes-and-mouthwash/

In the hospital, higher efficacy industrial cleansing products are appropriate because of the range and higher possibility of bacterial transmission.

In general it is the friction applied during handwashing and the rinsing away by water that is the effective aspect bacteria-treatment. This negates the need for special anti-biotic soaps at home and for geenral use.

Or have I just lucked out and bought the right stuff?

I may be reading a snide implication that isn’t intended in your …

but it wouldn’t hurt to keep an open mind that there may be an environmental change that can be making some people sick, some more than others. 

So, still a bad choice.

Recent criticism of the use of myriad as a noun, both in the plural form myriads and in the phrase a myriad of, seems to reflect a mistaken belief that the word was originally and is still properly only an adjective. As the entries here show, however, the noun is in fact the older form, dating to the 16th century. The noun myriad has appeared in the works of such writers as Milton (plural myriads) and Thoreau (a myriad of), and it continues to occur frequently in reputable English. There is no reason to avoid it.

I mentioned this to one of them and she explained that really they were just rubbing in the antibiotic lotion they’d just put on out in the hall.

That explanation wasn’t any more comforting. 

Triclosan isn’t an antibiotic…

How so? Triclosan is bacteriostatic at lower and kills bacteria at higher concentrations, by interfering with a reductase enzyme they have and humans don’t. That’s the sort of thing antibiotic means.