Germ Warfare: It's Us Against the Squiggly Things

Many advertisements use fear to get consumers to purchase products they may not need. Bathroom cleaner commercials are particularly good at this. The illustration to the right is what one such company would like you to believe germs look like. You know the one: Mom uses her microscopic vision to see a puddle of squirming hot dog-looking germ dealies on the sink. Mom turns into spray-bottle warrior, zapping the squirmy things, and her smiling family lives happily ever after.

A reality-based look at what comes out of the bathroom would include flushed prescription drugs. Traces of prescription drugs like Prozac, pain killers and steroids have been discovered in drinking water tested all across the United States. In fact, a 2002 study found that 80 percent of streams in the United States were contaminated with man-made chemicals and hormones, and a 2005 Environmental Working Group investigation found that drinking water in 42 states contained 142 unregulated dangerous chemical contaminants. As if this wasn't enough, a 2007 study discovered trace amounts of hormone disrupting contaminants (chemicals used in cleaning products) in human subjects.

The same is true of bathroom cleaners. Each time someone uses bathroom-cleaning products, washing the residual product along with the now-dead germies down the drain, chemicals end up in the fresh water supply and show up in tap water. These chemicals don't go away, they become part of the chemistry of the water supply, affecting fish and other marine life, as well as farmers downstream who use the water to irrigate crops. So the question becomes: Would we rather live with the little germies (which are actually naturally occurring bacteria and part of a healthy environment), or turn our grandsons and granddaughters into a race of gender benders through our use of household cleaning products?