They had a professional cleaning lady of sorts who gave the place little more than a lick and a promise once a week. You could not tell much more than six hours later if she had been there or not. The amazing thing I now recall from the years that I observed and participated in that milling microcosm, is that there was never a sick person among us, never more than a mild dose of the sniffles. Above the nearly always full kitchen sink, there hung a framed motto: “Our home is clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy.”
There is apparently greater scientific wisdom in this saying than keepers of the hearth ever knew. A peek beneath the sink in many American homes today reveals a battery of bacteria bashing cleansers. Hand soap, body wash, disposable wipes and a slew of other hygiene and cleaning products touting antibacterial labels line bathroom vanities. Increasingly, home medicine cabinets also make room for protective masks and latex gloves. Our culture has succumbed to the genius marketing that promises to eradicate our ancient enemies: Germs. According to the hygiene hypothesis, this hyperconsciousness about cleanliness is not without cost to our immune system.
The hygiene hypothesis contends that if during early childhood, an environment does not provide exposure to particular infectious microorganisms, an individual’s immune system will be deprived of a valuable education. The expansive term “bacterial lipopolysaccharides”, refers to a bacterial module that acts as the immune system’s educator, stimulating certain immune system cells into protective action. Simplistically put, the hygiene hypothesis suggests that our increasing fixation with antibacterial sprays, wipes and soaps is removing too many of these important bacterial modules that need to be present to trigger the child’s antibodies into developing.
Despite a recent spike in the sale of latex gloves and disposable masks with the media’s attention on H1N1 developments, there is a small grassroots movement among parents across the country determined to get their kids exposed to some ‘healthy dirt’. They scour the grocery shelves for soaps that don’t have the antibacterial label and rely on old fashioned lathering for adequate clean up. This still is a reasonable way to reduce bacteria count to most humans’ coping levels and remains an uncomplicated truth about our primary line of defense against infection.
Thorough hand washing with just plain old soap may quite possibly be what the doctor will specifically order some day not too long from now. For the moment, it may not be all that easy to locate those simple soaps and cleansers on store shelves. But it could well be that a good degree of our health will depend on it.
Believing we are mutating many of our own future biohazards, author Shelby Morrison regularly stalks the grocery aisles looking for antibacterial-free soaps. She does however admit to using latex gloves on the rare occasion, mainly to deal with “pet accidents” in the family room. She is human after all.
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