Hooray, We Can Now (Sort Of) Blame Springtime Allergy Attacks On Antibiotic Soap

I often wonder how the rise in antibacterial cleansers-soaps, dish soaps, laundry detergents, and so on-will ultimately affect our built-to-handle-some-bacteria bodies, and a new bit of research making the rounds would seem to claim that these products are actually responsible for allergies running rampant in the West these past few decades. Cast off your soaps! Liberate your dishwasher! Free yourself of the sniffles!

University of Montreal Cleanliness Researcher Guy Delespesse has more:

‘The more sterile the environment a child lives in, the higher the risk he or she will develop allergies or an immune problem in their lifetime.’

In 1980, 10 per cent of the Western population suffered from allergies. Today, it is 30 per cent. In 2010, one in 10 children is said to be asthmatic, and the mortality rate has increased 28 per cent between 1980 and 1994.

‘It’s not just the prevalence but the gravity of the cases,’ says Dr. Delespesse. ‘Regions in which the sanitary conditions have remained stable have also maintained a constant level of allergies and inflammatory diseases.

‘Allergies and other autoimmune diseases such as Type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis are the result of our immune system turning against us.’

Delespesse has been working out theories of sterility for a while; in 2003, he produced an article claiming that “one yoghurt” would solve the problems of restoring intestinal flora that had been stripped by overly clean environments. (“’A market worth several billion dollars will open up to dairy companies,’ remarks the researcher, who serves as scientific consultant to one of these companies.” Convenient! And not mentioned in the bit of the Mail piece that cites his embracing of these sorts of yogurts.) And it’s likely that there are other factors that are contributing to the rise in allergies, like, I don’t know, the toxins that accumulate gradually thanks to there being billions and billions of people on the earth.

And even though it’s one of those “a new study” articles that newspapers love to run without any attempt at finding an objectivity-satisfying counterpoint, this item is only serving to increase the little bits of paranoia I feel when I see “antibiotic” soaps in public bathrooms and hand-sanitizers in odd places where people might have put their hands. What if this whole move towards “sanitization” is just a way to make us all more sick? You have to admit it would be a hell of a marketing opportunity.