Jennipher Shaver, Contributing Writer

Germs are scary, there's no doubt. Those creepy crawlies you can only see under a microscope are straight out of a science-fiction movie. Yet, we don't seem to really understand them. Why are they the enemy? Should they even be considered an enemy?

While we keep buying special antibacterial cleaning products to keep us safe, is it all really necessary?

Diane Flores doesn't consider herself a "clean freak." But she's aware of what's out there, and she's prepared.

Flores, a 34-year-old mother of two, stays busy raising and keeping clean her 4-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son. Every weekend, Flores and her husband clean the bathrooms and kitchen counters of their Freeburg, Mo., home with antibacterial cleaning wipes and disinfecting sprays. There's no doubt that germs are the enemy in this weekly ritual.

Outside the home, staying clear of germs is also a priority. Flores and her family routinely use hand sanitizers when going to public places -- especially the doctor's office, where there are sure to be bad germs floating about from all those sick kids. For her weekly trip to Wal-Mart, Flores makes sure to pack the antibacterial cleaning wipes to disinfect the cart. She doesn't want her kids sitting in there with all those germs.

She's not exactly afraid of germs, but she'd rather avoid them than welcome them in. Her husband helped her realize just how important cleanliness is and got her to start wiping down the cart.

"My husband is anal about having a clean house and is very much aware of the serious effects germs have -- especially on his children," she said. "He has a medical technology degree and knows and understands enough to make him worry every time his child gets sick."

Flores is now teaching her daughter how to use a paper towel to turn faucets on and off and to open the door in public restrooms without touching anything. After her children's friends leave from an afternoon of playing, Flores and her husband make sure to spray down the toys with disinfectant.

Ever Heard Of Tricloscan?

A trip to the cleaning-product aisle at grocery stores proves that it's hard to buy anything that isn't antibacterial. Television advertisements sell the latest antibacterial products including hand soap, dish soap, laundry detergent and even toothpaste. In the multimillion-dollar antibacterial soap industry, no germs are good germs.

Seventy-five percent of liquid and 29 percent of bar soaps are antibacterial, as are most other cleaning products for kitchens and bathrooms. Many companies tout the benefits of antibacterial substances -- the most common being tricloscan or triclocarbon.

Reading the back of toilet bowel cleaner isn't the most exciting or glamorous thing to do, but the next time you pick up a cleaning agent, take a second to read the ingredient list. Do you see those scientific-sounding words on the ingredient label? You probably will.

Now you're thinking, so what? Who cares if one of those words that start with a "t" is in my soap? Well, there's quite a bit of conflicting research on whether antibacterial products are really necessary. Some researchers say they do more harm than good. That's probably something we should know if most of us are knowingly or unknowingly using them.

How-To Hand-Washing Steps 1. Wet your hands with warm running water. 2. Add soap, then rub hands together to make a lather. Do this away from running water, so you don't wash the lather away. Wash the front and back of your hands, between fingers and under nails. Continue washing for at least 15 seconds. 3. Rinse hands well under warm running water. 4. Dry hands thoroughly with a clean towel. Source: Soap and Detergent Association

Eugene Cole is an expert on this subject. He's looked at the conflicting research, he's done his own studies, and he has an opinion on the whole germy matter. Cole, a professor at Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City, Utah, teaches classes on environmental health and infectious diseases -- two areas that play heavily in the antibacterial debate.

He says the whole controversy started when scientists started hypothesizing that antibacterial products would work similarly to antibiotics and could therefore create -- cue the Man of Steel's theme song -- "super bugs," or germs that would adapt and develop resistance to antibiotics or, perhaps, antibacterial cleaners. The fear is real with inappropriate and excessive use of antibiotics, but it's still unclear in the antibacterial product sector.

Cole conducted a randomized study that looked at the homes of 30 users of antibacterial products and 30 nonusers in three locations, two in the United States and one in the United Kingdom. Cole and his research team took bacteria samples from various places like hands, mouths and kitchen and bathroom surfaces. Cole excluded people from the study who were not "typical," such as those on long-term antibiotics and those in hospital environments and day cares.

The research, which was published in the Sept. 24, 2003, issue of the Journal of Applied Microbiology, showed that antibiotic resistance wasn't really a problem in homes where antibacterial products were used.

So, that's good news, but of course it's not quite that simple. It never is. Despite his findings that were independent, yet funded by good ol' Lysol, he's not totally sold by the idea of antibacterial products taking over the market. He says some products don't need to be antibacterial, and he hopes people will use them correctly and in a targeted fashion. He uses antibacterial bar soap and hand soap and is proud to wash properly.

Just like your mom taught you: Proper washing involves fully lathering your hands with soap, rubbing them together for at least 15 seconds and drying them. Proper washing allows for physical removal of those pesky germs.

"We shouldn't rely solely on the antibacterial component of hand-washing soaps," Cole said. "Their effectiveness is relative to how well a person physically scrubs with them. The public shouldn't have a false sense of security."

A Situational Cleaner

Cornelius Minor doesn't consider himself a "clean freak," either. It's purely situation and practicality that determine his cleaning habits.

Minor, a graduate student at the University of Kansas, says he frequently uses antibacterial soap and bathroom cleaner because of his contact with students and children. This added contact puts him in harm's way of "zillions of more germs than the average person." His friends classify him as being quite neat.

"Someone was always crying, sneezing, playing in the mud, eating bugs, blowing their nose, etc.," Minor said. "I often had to handle students, serve food, administer first aid -- generally within minutes of one another. That is where I got my fondness for antibacterial."

While he feared sounding like a misplaced Donna Reed, Minor said using the products just makes him feel better. Although it's really not that important, it gives him "some remote peace of mind." Minor also confesses to loving vitamin C and feels that he doesn't get sick with as many colds and the flu as others around him do. He does think the soap helps.

"I just keep using my soaps, hoping that when these bugs and germs evolve due to natural selection, the brilliant minds who make my soap will upgrade their product," Minor said.

For him, using antibacterial products is similar to using antivirus protection on a computer: When a new virus comes up, his computer automatically upgrades.

"I pray that our scientists are that smart," he said.

The World Is A Scary, Scary Place

It's a tried and true way of selling products. An advertising agency taps into an already existing fear, amplifies that fear and then presents a product that will diminish or entirely eliminate that fear.

Lately, we seem to have been afraid of quite a lot. Nancy Tomes, history professor at State University of New York at Stony Brook, has been studying the history of medicine for more than 20 years. Her 2000 paper, "The Making of a Germ Panic, Then and Now," was published in the American Journal of Public Health and parallels society's germ anxiety in the 1980s and 1990s to that in the 1940s. Both "panics" reflected worries of mass immigration and transportation and could be seen in many aspects of popular culture, such as advertising, news coverage and entertainment. Tomes believes the same sorts of worries are still around today.

"Emerging diseases continue to emerge, such as SARS," Tomes said. "Those fears are for real. One person on an airplane can spread an epidemic rather quickly -- that's an environmental variable that will be in the forefront of consumers' minds."

Tomes says other fears have been raised since Sept. 11, 2001, with terrorism and bioterrorism presenting real threats. Food handling is another anxiety-ridden topic due to recent mad cow disease outbreaks and other possible foodborne illnesses such as salmonella and E. coli.

Advertising tends to go in cycles, she explained.

"I think that up until Sept. 11, [germ fears] were dying down, and now they're coming back. They're heightened a little bit by the generalized anxiety that you have to take care of yourself," she said.

Tomes, who like Cole recommends good hand-washing practices above all, believes the antibacterial soap development craze was only partially created to help tame these fears. More likely, the developers want to sell more soap. She doesn't think these special soaps are overly important to public health.

"As far as a consumer goes, it's hard to make a good choice." Nancy Tomes, State University of New York

"If you have HIV, then you need to be more careful than the rest of us who don't," Tomes explained. "But the advertising on television isn't aimed at the sick. It's aimed at the normal."

That brings us to the problem of overuse and ineffective amounts of those scientific-looking words that start with a "t" that make a product antibacterial. Cole says that oftentimes, manufacturers label products antibacterial when ingredients like tricloscan are only used as preservatives. Many antibacterial soaps don't have high enough concentrations to fully kill all the germs that may be living in your kitchen sink.

Enter another problem: Soaps don't have to tell you the percent of antibacterial concentration. To get that information, you have to call their 1-800 numbers and ask for a technical service person or request information from the Environmental Protection Agency, with which soap companies must register a "kill claim."

Why isn't this information required to help consumers make informed decisions? Cole said circumstances are a large factor in the killing of germs. Some germs are killed with low concentrations, while others need a big wallop of tricloscan. And the concentration needed to kill a type of germ may vary in environmental conditions.

"As far as a consumer goes, it's hard to make a good choice," Cole said.

A Good Germ Lover

Becca tries to stay away from antibacterial products as much as possible. Old-fashioned cleaning will do just fine, thank you.

"Designer and antibacterial soaps seem to be a waste of money." Becca, Antibacterial-Product Skeptic

Becca, whose name has been changed at her request, has a sister who is afraid of a lot of things, including germs, so sometimes Becca has to use the products when she's at her house. But generally she stays clear unless she accidentally buys one, which is easy to do, or if it's on sale.

"Designer and antibacterial soaps seem to be a waste of money," Becca said. She saves her money for good food and wild vacations to places where "one might actually benefit from antibacterial soap."

Her skepticism comes from a college microbiology professor who suggested being too clean might not be healthy. Scientists generally agree that a little bacteria and dirt is good to build immunity to common microorganisms in the environment.

Becca gets as many colds as the average person, but she hasn't had the flu for about five years. Like many people, Becca has more to worry about than what soap to use, and she doesn't pretend to be an expert.

"There are a lot of more important things in my mind to be afraid of, but if I won a lifetime supply of antibacterial soap, I would probably use it," she said. "Or at least give it to all my friends for them to use if they wanted to.

How To Win The War

Antibacterial soaps may not even prevent you from getting a cold or the flu, even though for many, like Flores and Minor, this is part of the reason why they use antibacterial products.

A March 2004 study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that antibacterial soap users get just as many runny noses, sore throats and fevers as regular soap users. The study looked at more than 1,000 residents of a poor and primarily Hispanic neighborhood in Manhattan. Because of the crowded urban setting, researchers point out that the results may not be applicable to suburban households with smaller family sizes.

These researchers urge better education on the appropriate use and limitations of antibacterial products. Sound familiar?

"We need to emphasize to consumers not to rely on these products when you use it for just a second or two," Cole said.

Consumers should also understand that antibacterial products are only designed to kill bacteria, not viruses, which are the main cause of the flu and colds. Cole says people should use sanitizers or disinfectants if they want to kill a virus. Antiseptic hand gels are primarily used to kill bacteria on skin, but they are often effective against viruses.

Avoiding the antibacterial hype and fear is the way to go. Clean smart, not quick. Use antibacterial products in the places you feel are most important. Good choices are generally the bathroom and kitchen.

"Lots of the basics are things that aren't that expensive," Tomes said of products like bleach that she keeps under her kitchen sink to make solutions to clean her sponges. "It's the water, soap and friction that is important."

By "friction," Tomes means really scrubbing in between your fingers, underneath your nails and everywhere else.

She, like Cole and many other scientists, consider simple and proper hand washing with any soap the key to winning the battle on germs.

"I believe in hand washing," she said. "It's all these special gizmos that are less important."