TRICLOSAN

Triclosan is a popular antimicrobial agent with widespread use in common soaps, plastics, toys and other household items. In addition to causing antibiotic resistance, it builds up in the human body, and degrades in the aquatic environment, creating among other things, dioxins, which are known carcinogens and found to mutate DNA and cause birth defects. In August of 2011, the Minnesota Department of Health published a “guidance” related to Triclosan in water, which stated “we currently do not know if Triclosan is present in Minnesota drinking water.” Moreover, they “recommend against using products containing Triclosan at home.” But, went on to say that they think at 50 parts per billion in the drinking water, there should be little health risk.

The fact is that Triclosan is among the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s “contaminants of emerging concern.” A lot of research is being done, to try and discern how harmful this chemical is and at what levels. In 2012, researchers at UC Davis and the University of Colorado found that Triclosan affects muscular strength in mice, swimming in fish and muscular contractions in skeletal and cardiac cells. The researchers reached these conclusions by first exposing living mice to doses of Triclosan similar to that which humans and animals would be in contact with on a daily basis. After 20 minutes of exposure, the mice had a 25% drop in heart function. They also had an 18% decrease in grip strength after an hour of exposure. Yet, the FDA’s official position is that “it is not currently known to be hazardous to humans. But several scientific studies have come out since the last time FDA reviewed this ingredient that merit further review.” According to the EPA, “as rapidly developing scientific database for Triclosan, the Agency intends to accelerate the schedule for the registration review process for this chemical. Currently, the Agency intends to begin that process in 2013, ten years earlier than originally planned. EPA and FDA are collaborating on research projects that will help both agencies to better characterize the endocrine-related effects of Triclosan, including toxicological effects, human relevance, and the doses at which they occur to determine if levels of human exposure are safe or not. The Agency will pay close attention to this ongoing research and will amend the regulatory decision if the science supports such a change.” So, essentially, when we get around to figuring out how nasty this is, we’ll let you know.

It’s important to keep in mind that this is just one of the hundreds of harmful chemicals found in our drinking water, which are still being “researched” by the government. What’s REALLY concerning is that as bad as Triclosan is, the AWWA Research Foundation has found MANY other compounds that require even higher margins of safety.

Gravity filtration will not remove Triclosan from drinking water. However, reverse osmosis is among a select few technologies that are highly effective at removing not only Triclosan, but a wide array of other pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCP’s) and endocrine disrupting compounds (EDC’s).