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I never buy "antibacterial" soap. All soap is antibacterial in the sense that it removes bacteria from your skin. That's all that matters.

Dousing those removed bacteria with chemicals, to which they could become resistant, makes no sense to me.



Bacteria are not completely removed from your skin when you wash.

Resistance is unlikely as these chemicals are a lot more harsh than antibiotics, because they don't have to go through your bloodstream and kill only bacteria without hurting the host's cells. These are also just everyday bacteria, so only a tiny, tiny fraction of the population will ever get on your hands and become exposed to the chemical, so there isn't significant selection pressure for resistance (though to be fair if we are talking about only bacteria which are dangerous to humans, there might be a larger selection pressure.) And so what if they do become resistant? There are other chemicals and we can always go back to just regular soap. Resistant bacteria are also generally weaker than non-resistant varieties.




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