Soap and water
Here's a case of "if it's not broke, don't fix it."
Antibacterial soaps don't provide any more cleanliness or health benefits than do your regular bars of soap that you've been using for years. They don't have super-magical powers to fight off infectious disease beyond what you'd find in your ordinary bar of Ivory or Dial.
In fact, antibacterial products could prove to be more dangerous for everyone in the long run. The active ingredient usually found in antibacterial soap, called triclosan, could eventually lead to some bacteria becoming resistant to common antibiotics.
Ironic, if you think about it. The idea is to kill these bacteria, and here you've got a product that could potentially strengthen them.
In lab experiments, researchers have found changes occurring in e-coli bacteria after they had adapted, growing resistant when they came in contact with just tiny amounts of triclosan.
Translation: these same bacteria could potentially thrive right there in your antibacterial soap one day.
While this hasn't currently been found to be the case in any households, you have to think that this is a process. Bacteria that become resistant take time to adapt, and we won't know they've done the job until we know they've done the job. And it's a little difficult to put the genie back in the bottle once that happens.
Triclosan kills bacteria by cutting off their biochemical pathway. However, it leaves the cell walls intact. Now the door is open for a mutation to occur, which means the triclosan will become foiled in its attempts to kill off the bacteria because they have changed form.
So, stick with what has worked for so many years: plain soap and water. And don't just give it a quick shake under the faucet. Take your time, sudsing up for a count of 20 and then rinsing with the warmest water you can tolerate.
