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Comment by mkane848 | Hacker News Reader

Is there any reason why these companies would include a seemingly ineffective element into their product other than being able to say "antibacterial" on the label? It couldn't possibly have been CHEAPER to add them to soaps when it became the new meta, so it'd be interesting if marketing was the sole reason for it.

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For the same reason it was effective for marketing: It wasn't immediately obvious _to anyone_ that the additives were ineffective.

Very very often human beings have to make decisions based on incomplete data. If it had turned out that antibiotics in soap saved lives what would we be saying if the industry that had waited years for iron clad proof before taking the relatively inexpensive step of putting it in?

Marketing to consumer misinformation is common. And once one company does it, others need to follow, because the cost of educating the consumer far out ways the cost of just following a trend.

As the article mentions, triclosan can be effective in a completely different setting. It reminds me of another recent study that showed phenylephrine HCL gets metabolised too quickly to do any good when taken orally, even though it's very effective as a nasal spray. Many people switched to it when pseudoephedrine HCL/Sudafed went behind the counter, but the pills literally don't do anything they say they do.

It's called "blue crystals" in marketing jargon, after literal blue crystals and other pointless things. Anything that can be used for market differentiation or that creates a "health aura" effect can boost sales.

Do you have a source for this "blue crystals" term? I'm interested.

I think it's from laundry detergent. People will pay more for a white powder with useless colored crystals in it than they would for the plain white powder. Psychologically, the implication is that the crystals are some sort of secret sauce that makes the powder work better, or is responsible for all the brand-linked advertising claims.

Since the actual chemistry is over most people's heads, the "blue crystals" are where they invest all the magic that makes it work just like the ads claim it will.

At the time, a lot of people were regularly using laundry bluing as a whitening agent along with soap (not another detergent agent, real, honest-to-goodness soap, like Sunlight Soap or Ivory Snow); it was difficult to tell those people that a more effective detergent, by itself, could accomplish what soap and bluing together had been doing. Thus blue crystals in detergent.

I wonder if the public policy intent of this regulation could have been met by permitting soaps to label themselves as antibacterial without containing any of the prohibited compounds (or even lie about containing them).

Soap is pretty antibacterial by itself. ... and now I wonder if we'll next see a wave of soaps containing various reactive nanoparticles what whatever potentially not healthy stuff they'll use to address the fact that the public thinks it wants to buy something that is antibacterial.

I saw some funny old ads from the 50s for toothpaste and mouthwash WITH CHLOROPHYLL!

Same thing there, it had probably just entered shared knowledge, it sounded sciency and natural at the same time, so why not add it to toothpaste? It must be good, right?

Completely worthless, pure marketing gimmick, yet people bought it.

Chlorophyll does actually help against bad breath, since it absorbs gases. You can still buy dragees in pharmacies

I have a friend that won't use non antibacterial soap. Marketing is very powerful. It sounds good and that's enough for most people.

The same reason why we see sugar with label "carbon free" and water with label "no GMO". Marketing. Yes, it gets old with time and they have to look for the next gimmick. But if that brings them some income in the meantime, that's what they do.

Sugar contains carbon. Perhaps you're thinking of gluten.

I'm not thinking of anything, it's an actual registered trademark. Of course, they meant "carbon neutral", as in "carbon dioxide emissions neutral", but that's not what it said on the label. It said "carbon free". Yes, I studies chemistry in school and know that carbon-free sugar is water :) But people who are the target audience of this marketing gimmick don't really seem to be bothered with it.

Someone elsewhere made the point that if there was any financial (or practical, since better soap = more money) benefit to the companies from keeping these chemicals in, you can bet they would have lobbied like hell to protect their ingredient list.

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