The chemical triclosan has been linked to cancer-cell growth and disrupted development in animals. Regulators are reviewing whether it’s safe to put in soap, cutting boards and toys. Consumer companies are phasing it out. Minnesota voted in May to ban it in many products.
At the same time, millions of Americans are putting it in their mouths every day, by way of a top-selling toothpaste that uses the antibacterial chemical to head off gum disease — Colgate-Palmolive Co.’s Total.
Total is safe, Colgate says, citing the rigorous Food and Drug Administration process that led to the toothpaste’s 1997 approval as an over-the-counter drug. A closer look at that application process, however, reveals that some of the scientific findings Colgate put forward to establish triclosan’s safety in toothpaste weren’t black and white — and weren’t, until this year, available to the public.
Colgate’s Total application included 35 pages summarizing toxicology studies on triclosan, which the FDA withheld from view. The agency released the pages earlier this year in response to a lawsuit over a Freedom of Information Act request. Later, following inquiries from Bloomberg News, the FDA put the pages on its website.
The pages show how even with one of the U.S.’s most stringent regulatory processes — FDA approval of a new drug — the government relies on company-backed science to show products are safe and effective. The recently released pages, taken alongside new research on triclosan, raise questions about whether the agency did appropriate due diligence in approving Total 17 years ago, and whether its approval should stand in light of new research, said three scientists who reviewed the pages at Bloomberg News’s request.
Among the pages were studies showing fetal bone malformations in mice and rats. Colgate said the findings weren’t relevant. Viewed through the prism of today’s science, such malformations look more like a signal that triclosan is disrupting the endocrine system and throwing off hormonal functioning, according to the three scientists.
Colgate’s application materials also show that the FDA asked questions about the thoroughness of cancer studies, which are partly addressed in recently released documents.
Some questions about triclosan’s potential impact on people are, by nature, unanswerable. Humans are exposed to dozens of chemicals that may interact in the body, making it almost impossible to link one substance to one disease, said Thomas Zoeller, a biology professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who specializes in how chemicals affect the endocrine system.
“We have created a system where we are testing these chemicals out on the human population. I love the idea they are all safe,” Zoeller said. “But when we have studies on animals that suggest otherwise, I think we’re taking a huge risk.”
New York-based Colgate isn’t accused of wrongdoing, and the 35 pages don’t prove triclosan is harmful. It was the FDA’s decision to keep the documents off of its website, Colgate said.
The FDA followed standard procedure by redacting information that had come from a third party, said spokeswoman Andrea Fischer. Some studies were done in the labs of Ciba-Geigy, the first triclosan maker and a predecessor to its current primary maker, BASF SE, according to the documents. The pages didn’t denote which studies were done by an outside party, or who the party was. Fischer declined to identify them.
Colgate said Total’s effectiveness and safety are supported by more than 80 clinical studies involving 19,000 people, and that it gave the FDA 98 volumes, numbering hundreds of pages each, in support of Total. Colgate submits annual reports to the FDA reviewing new science and safety findings, said Colgate spokesman Thomas DiPiazza.
“In the nearly 18 years that Colgate Total has been on the market in the U.S., there has been no signal of a safety issue from adverse-event reports,” DiPiazza said. Colgate also pointed to an independent 2013 review by the Cochrane Oral Health Group, a network of doctors, researchers and health advocates, which found no evidence of harmful effects associated with using Colgate Total.
Total has an important health benefit because it fights plaque and gingivitis, DiPiazza said. Gingivitis can progress to periodontal disease, which affects almost half of Americans 30 and over, according to a 2012 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The FDA reviews all new safety information on ingredients to determine whether a reassessment is necessary, said Jeff Ventura, a spokesman. The agency is revisiting triclosan in hand soaps though not in Total, said Sandra Kweder, deputy director of the agency’s Office of New Drugs. That’s because while triclosan hasn’t been proven superior to soap and water at washing hands, she said, its benefit as an active ingredient in toothpaste was made clear through its FDA approval process.
Colgate removed triclosan from its Softsoap liquid handsoaps and Palmolive antibacterial dish liquid in 2011, citing changing consumer preferences and superior formulations. It said it has no plans to reformulate Total, which is the only triclosan toothpaste approved for U.S. sale.
This article is based on interviews with Colgate, former and current FDA staff and oral biology experts, transcripts of FDA meetings, as well as on the 35 pages, which the FDA shared in January with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a public-health advocate that sued for them. The scientists who examined the pages included Zoeller, a second university-affiliated endocrine specialist, and an environmental toxicologist affiliated with the Environmental Working Group, a public health advocacy.
Of the more than 84,000 chemicals sold in the U.S., few are attracting more scrutiny than triclosan. Used for decades in handsoaps, it is now part of almost 200 products including rugs and pet-food dispensers. Companies including Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble Co. have vowed to remove it from their lineups. In May, Avon Products Inc. announced its plans to go triclosan-free.
Those moves are coming in part as consumers, armed with toxicity ranking systems such as the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Database, have turned away from chemicals including Bisphenol A and phthalates, even in the absence of firm scientific or regulatory conclusions.
Total, the No. 3 selling brand in the U.S., lost 2 percent of its market share last year, with $189.8 million in sales for the year that ended on Jan. 26, according to market research firm Mintel Group Ltd. Colgate’s Tom’s of Maine line grew 14 percent, to $38.9 million, suggesting shoppers are gravitating toward more natural options, the report said.
Procter & Gamble, which makes Crest 3D White and Crest Pro-Health — the top two U.S. toothpastes according to Mintel — has sought to capitalize. A Google search for “triclosan” and “toothpaste” brings up an advertisement linked to a Procter & Gamble site touting Crest products as “100% triclosan free.”
P&G’s oral-care products have been triclosan-free in the U.S. and several other markets “for a number of years,” said Kristopher Parlett, a spokesman for the Cincinnati-based company. P&G doesn’t produce or market triclosan-containing oral care products anywhere, he added.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc, which once had triclosan in some Aquafresh and Sensodyne toothpastes, has reformulated all of its oral care products that previously contained it, said spokeswoman Joanmarie Goddard. She couldn’t say what year they had been reformulated or whether triclosan versions had been sold in the U.S. The decision was a response to consumer concern that triclosan across a range of products “may have a negative environmental impact in the future,” she said.
From its beginnings as an ingredient in surgical hand scrubs, triclosan — also identified as 5-Chloro-2-(2,4-dichlorophenoxy)phenol — has grown to a $100 million a year chemical globally, according to statistics from the Kline Group. BASF, based in Ludwigshafen, Germany, sells it under the trade names Irgasan and Irgacare. India-based Kumar Organic Products Ltd. and Vivimed Labs Ltd. also make it.
BASF says that 40 years of global studies and publications prove triclosan’s efficacy in oral care and cosmetic products, as well as in hand disinfectants and other health-care applications, according to Thomas Nonnast, a spokesman. Klaus Nussbaum, a spokesman for Kumar, said studies have established triclosan’s safety. Vivimed didn’t respond to requests for comment.
While company-sponsored safety tests on triclosan that would become part of Colgate’s FDA application for Total began as early as 1968, U.S. agencies have yet to comprehensively review it for other uses.
In 1974, the FDA proposed issuing a so-called monograph that would determine whether antibacterial ingredients such as triclosan were considered safe and effective for hand soaps. Two years later, the U.S. Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, which aimed to comprehensively regulate chemicals, grandfathered in existing substances with no safety testing.
The law gave the EPA — which oversees triclosan’s use in durable goods including fabrics and sealants — the power to restrict or test substances. It excluded food, drugs and cosmetics, which fall under the FDA’s mandate. The FDA, four decades after its first promise, has yet to issue a ruling on whether triclosan is safe or effective in soaps.
In the meantime, triclosan made its way into toothpaste.
Colgate spent 10 years and $38 million developing Colgate Total, according to Mintel. Introduced in 1992, it was marketed in almost 100 countries before gaining U.S. approval, according to transcripts of FDA meetings.
Colgate applied to the U.S. four times starting in 1992, according to FDA records, before gaining the FDA’s blessing on July 11, 1997. In a statement at the time, Colgate called Total “the most significant advancement in home dental care since the introduction of fluoride.”
“What I would be concerned about is the amount people are exposed to over time,” said William Bowen, a professor emeritus at the University of Rochester Medical Center, who specializes in oral biology and also served on a subcommittee at the FDA that evaluated dental products in the 1990s.
Meanwhile, triclosan is showing up in humans and the environment. It was found in the urine of 75 percent of 2,517 Americans tested, including children, according to a 2003 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It and a related chemical, triclocarban, were detected in 90 percent of surface water samples from the Great Lakes and in many fish species, according to a July 2014 study by the Canadian Environmental Law Association.
Scientific studies that have raised health concerns include one 2012 study linking triclosan to reduced fertility in mice, and another that year suggesting it could impair muscle function. A study last year linked it to lowered sperm production and changed sperm shape in rats. Triclosan’s core credentials have also come under scrutiny: While some studies have supported its benefit in killing bacteria, others have found it no more effective than soap and water — and in some cases suggested it could support growth of bacteria including the type that causes staph infections.
In 2010, the European Union banned triclosan in materials that come into contact with food. Three years later, the EPA, which reviewed the chemical in 2008, began another review, 10 years earlier than planned. It cited the “rapidly developing scientific database” on the chemical, which includes studies on thyroid effects, according to its website.-Bloomberg
