# Are we all just far too interested in "clean"? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 2, 2005, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369 "2005-04-02T05:20:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![alice\_in\_wonderland](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alice_in_wonderland/32/176_2.png) [@alice\_in\_wonderland](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alice_in_wonderland)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2005, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/21 "2005-04-03T05:32:10Z")
> [@eleanorigby](#): > > IMO, anti-bacterial soaps just breed drug-resistant microbes. Use good ole Dial or what have you. But - isn’t Dial anti-bacterial? It certainly is around these parts. (I tend to use Ivory as my hand soap because it matches my bathroom decor (ie, pure white.) ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Stilettos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/fbc32d/32.png) [@Red\_Stilettos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Stilettos)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2005, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/22 "2005-04-03T06:16:48Z")
All soap is antibacterial. Lipid membranes are not happy in detergents of any kind. However, having said that, AFAIK soaps labeled as antibacterial do have specific antibacterials added. I’m a microbiologist and I am firmly in the camp of too much cleaning is a bad thing. There is currently a backlash against the antibacterial proliferation. As has been alluded to, lack of exposure to normal microbes is thought to be at least partially responsible for the rising incidences of asthma and allergies. Not eating undercooked meat is a reasonable protection. Wanting your bathroom to be sterile is not. **Ivylass** , [here](http://knitty.com/ISSUEspring04/PATTbonbon.html) are directions to knit a bath pouf. ---
**Author:** ![calm\_kiwi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc348/32.png) [@calm\_kiwi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/calm_kiwi)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2005, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/23 "2005-04-03T12:19:43Z")
> [@Lissa](#): > > I have the issue with taps and doorknobs, myself. My problem is that people touch the taps with their dirty hands before washing, then touch them again to turn off the water, picking the germs right back up. > > I would no more touch a doorknob in a bathroom than I would a dead rat. People do not always wash their hands. (I use a paper towel, or, if having no other option, my sleeve, to open the door.) > > In fact, I do not use public bathrooms at all unless the situation is desperate. I am sorry but I just don’t understand this, you would rather touch a dead rat then a door knob with traces of pee and poo? People have mananged to live with traces of pee and poo forever. We shake hands often, we pick up telephones, we open mail, we touch trolleys at the supermarket, we open many non-loo doors, we touch money daily (I remember reading once that most money was VERY contaminated…no cite, just me speaking out of my arse 😉 ). Why is that only loo/bathroom doors are questionable? We are surrounded by germs ALL day, EVERY day. Yes we need to be a bit careful about food (and that varies depending on where you are…NZ does not refridgerate eggs at point of sale, no need) but turning the world into a biohazard zone just doesn’t seem to be a good thing. calm kiwi, survivor of toilets in Eygpt and South East Asia that would make you want to give up peeing with never a day sick…I even drank the water! **Case Sensitive** the 30 second rule is a good one. The child is 13 and never had more then a bad cold. ---
**Author:** ![ParentalAdvisory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@ParentalAdvisory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParentalAdvisory)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2005, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/24 "2005-04-03T13:23:58Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > …so that not one piece of skin comes into contact with the seat. If I didn’t know any better, I would say that these people have OCD if it were not for the fact that it’s so common. I lace the seat with toilet paper at work. Not because of germs, but because I don’t want someone elses ass sweat on my ass. It’s really a personal preference, and I don’t see what the big deal is if I do this. I don’t feel that I’m contributing to the strengthening of germs by doing this. I think you’re confusing OCD with something else. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2005, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/25 "2005-04-03T13:24:58Z")
> [@eleanorigby](#): > > You all need to scrub–not the polite finger dipped in tepid water and barely touch the guest hand towel like you were taught. You can wash your hands with sand, if circs demand it, you just need to generate enough friction to mechanically rid your hands of the germs. So, is this why evil people live so long? Because they’re constantly wringing their hands while going, “MUA HA HA HA!” or, “Eeeeeexxxellent,” or whatever? ---
**Author:** ![Agrippina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8797f3/32.png) [@Agrippina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agrippina)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2005, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/26 "2005-04-03T14:18:53Z")
> [@StGermain](#): > > I went over 25 years without taking antibiotics. I’m afraid of doctors, and any minor infections I got my body took care of. I slept with dogs and rode horses and never got sick. I’m the same way. I tend to take very few medicines when I am sick with a cold or flu. I just deal with it. And when I get the cold or flu I usually recover from feeling really bad in a day or two. There was one terrible strain of flu that everybody seemed to get this winter. Everybody I knew got it except for me. ---
**Author:** ![Foible](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Foible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Foible)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2005, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/27 "2005-04-03T14:50:13Z")
> [@Red Stilettos](#): > > Not eating undercooked meat is a reasonable protection. Wanting your bathroom to be sterile is not. Hey, I like rare hamburger! Raw steak is just yummy, room temperature though, not cold. I will also continue to eat raw egg products because the slim chance of getting sick isn’t worth giving up some very tasty foods. Even the nasty strains of E. coli only manage to kill the old, young, and previously sick people, I’ll take my chances. I do avoid undercooked port even though there are only about 12 cases of trichinellosis reported each year in this country. I guess we all have illness worries. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2005, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/28 "2005-04-03T14:53:45Z")
> [@Agrippina](#): > > I’m the same way. I tend to take very few medicines when I am sick with a cold or flu. I just deal with it. And when I get the cold or flu I usually recover from feeling really bad in a day or two. There was one terrible strain of flu that everybody seemed to get this winter. Everybody I knew got it except for me. Most medicine that you can take for a cold or the flu actually does nothing to your immune system or to the course of the illness. It will help relieve symptoms, nothing more. Unless you’re talking about not going to the doctor for antibiotics - which is typically useless since colds and influenza are caused by viruses, not bacteria - all you’re doing is choosing to suffer through the symptoms. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2005, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/29 "2005-04-03T15:02:08Z")
> [@Foible](#): > > I do avoid undercooked port even though there are only about 12 cases of trichinellosis reported each year in this country. I guess we all have illness worries. True, trich is nearly gone from pigs in the US according to the CDC. It’s more common in game meat - venison, elk, etc. My husband is still nervous about too-undercooked pork, however, so I try to cook it until it’s only lightly pink. I wash my hands thoroughly at work, and scrub while doing it, even working the soap under my nails. A hospital is a good place to catch the really rough, resistant germs, so I’ll gladly be careful there. I use the door handles but will use alcohol hand cleanser when I get back to my office. At home, I try to remember to shut the toilet seat when I flush. I definitely do this if I’m using the bathroom as my beer-brewing room (might as well limit how many bacteria get at that wonderfully rich food source that I intend for the yeast) or for other cooking. Typically, though, I just soak the toothbrush heads in a bit of Listerine to take care of anything nasty. My kitchen floor is really dirty, so I’ll rinse off anything that drops if I think it’s salvageable. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2005, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/30 "2005-04-03T20:45:27Z")
> [@Case Sensitive](#): > > I have this theory that the recent fetishisation of hygiene is a quasi-religious “purification” ritual, where germs are equated with evil. Excessive concern with cleanliness, health or diet is coming to be viewed as more a matter of morality than physical well-being. From the book _Religion Explained_ by Pascal Boyer: > [@](#): > > Life in ancestral environments was fraught with danger, not just from the obvious predators but also from a variety of microbes, viruses, and toxins. Ancestral foods obtained through foraging, scavenging and hunting were quite “natural” and therefore far from healthy. Many plants are full of dangerous toxins and so are dead animals. Also, many animals carry pathogens that adapt easily to life in a human body. The danger is especially high for a “generalist” species like humans – that is, one that finds its nutrients in a great variety of sources and adapts to new environments by changing its diet. Being a generalist species requires not only that you have immune defenses like most other species but also that you make specific cognitive adaptations to minimize the danger of contamination and contagion. Rats, too, are generalists; this shows in their extremely cautious approach to novel foods, and in the way they quickly detect the correlation between a new food and various somatic disorders. They detect such connections better than other, non-food-related correlations, which shows that the system that produces such inferences is indeed specialized. > > Humans too have special cognitive adaptations in this domain. For instance, very young children are open to a whole variety of tastes as long as the food is given by their caregivers, which helps them adapt to local conditions; later, they become rather conservative, which limits their forays into dangerous foods. Pregnant women develop specific food aversions, mainly to tastes of toxin-rich foods. Morning sickness seems to target precisely those foods that would be dangerous to fetal growth in an ancestral environment. Food is obviously not the only source of danger of this kind. Contact with rotting corpses or with wounded or diseased people, ingestion of feces or dirt: these are avoided for good evolutionary reasons. > > Indeed, the human mind seems to include a specific inference system that deals with such situations and triggers strong emotional reactions to even the mere suggestion of such situations. Psychologist Paul Rozin, who has studied the psychology if disgust, its connections to evolved food preferences and its relation to the risk of contamination, showed, that this contagion system obeys specific inferential principles. First, it assumes that the source of danger is not necessarily visible; what makes a rotting carcass a bad source of food was not detectable before microscopes and microbiology. Second, the contagion system assumes that even _limited_ contact, however brief, with a source of danger transmits the _whole_ of the risk. In other words, there is no “dose-effect” here. Contagious substances do not lose their harmful powers with dilution. Third, the system specifies that _any_ contact with sources of pollution transmits it, although the aversive reactions are especially strong with ingestion. These principles are specific to the domain considered. The contagion inference system may in some circumstances seem overly cautious, as when subjects in Paul Rozin’s experiments refused to drink from a glass that once sheltered a cockroach and that was then thoroughly disinfected. But the system was tuned to ancestral conditions, under which there was no such thing as thorough disinfecting. In other words, we’re hard-wired to react strongly to possible infectious and contagious substances on an non-rational basis. Boyer goes on to connect this inference system with all sorts of other behaviors (e.g., racism, which is partly about not wanting to be “polluted” by “those dirty (whatevers)”), but the point is, the anti-bacterial craze isn’t just a fad, it’s based on a piece of pre-rational behavioral programming. Basically, when the population at large started finding out about how microbes were connected to disease, the presence of microbes everywhere, and the possibility that medicine was capable of interrupting these microbes’ actions, the stage was set for our modern anti-bacterial obsession. It’s probably not news to anybody that we have this inference system and that it causes us to feel strong disgust at the possibility of being tainted by something unseen and unknown. What may be news to people is just how strongly this system influences us, and the pre-rational basis on which it functions. So, cynic that I am, I don’t think we’re going to change. Our instincts in this area are just too strong, and we’re basically going to be like this forever, until we’ve bred ourselves a superbug and wiped ourselves out. Cheerful, huh? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2005, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/31 "2005-04-03T21:28:50Z")
Interesting. Thanks, **Cervaise**. Of course, now instead of prayer, fasting and holy water, we have the burgeoning industry of increasingly stupid and useless hygiene products to ward off the evil of germs, with the men wearing white labcoats in soap commercials as its secular priests. ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2005, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/32 "2005-04-03T21:50:37Z")
> [@calm kiwi](#): > > I am sorry but I just don’t understand this, you would rather touch a dead rat then a door knob with traces of pee and poo? People have mananged to live with traces of pee and poo forever. > > We shake hands often, I don’t. It’s very rare which I am in a situation that calls for it. > [@](#): > > we pick up telephones, I haven’t used a public phone in years. No need. > [@](#): > > we open mail, Mail has never struck me as particularly germy. > [@](#): > > we touch trolleys at the supermarket, Not usually. In the winter, I leave on my gloves, and since I usually wear long-sleeved shirts even in summer, it’s no big deal to slip my sleeve over my hands. > [@](#): > > we open many non-loo doors, Not with my bare hands, I don’t. > [@](#): > > we touch money daily (I remember reading once that most money was VERY contaminated…no cite, just me speaking out of my arse 😉 ). I always wash after handling money. > [@](#): > > Why is that only loo/bathroom doors are questionable? They’re not, as I’m sure you can see. 😃 > [@](#): > > We are surrounded by germs ALL day, EVERY day. And I understand that-- and most are not harmful. However, your hands are particularly vulnerable. You may unwrap a stick of gum and put it in your mouth without thinking after touching a doorknob, for example. Me, I’m a nail-chewer, so I don’t want to put more germs in my mouth than I can help. In flu season, it’s something I’m particularly careful about. I don’t see any problem with being cautious about touching germy things. It’s better safe than sorry, I say. I _don’t have_ a great immune system, and the less time I can spend ill, the better. ---
**Author:** ![BiblioCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ed8c4c/32.png) [@BiblioCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BiblioCat)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2005, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/33 "2005-04-03T23:39:52Z")
> [@Ferret Herder](#): > > … I try to remember to shut the toilet seat when I flush. I definitely do this if I’m using the bathroom as my beer-brewing room … Note to self: Don’t drink the beer at **Ferret Herder’s** house. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2005, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/34 "2005-04-04T00:28:48Z")
**Lissa** , please don’t read this as being sarcastic or insulting, because it certainly isn’t meant to be, but have you ever considered that you may have some form of OCD? Your dislike of touching things for fear of contamination seems rather excessive, and a little unhealthy. ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2005, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/35 "2005-04-04T00:32:05Z")
> [@calm kiwi](#): > > It may be what they eat **Owl** but it makes me wonder when you see mothers drive themselves nuts trying to keep everything sterile. > > When I was kid we firmly believed in the ‘30 second rule’, if you dropped anything yummy on the floor you could still eat it providing it hadn’t been there longer then it took you to count to 30. When the foodstuff merited it we counted very s-l-o-w-l-y. > > My best friend’s brother could have been the taste tester for the Fear Factor. That kid would have, could have and DID eat anything for a dare…live bugs were a walk in the park for him. > > My child is a wussy, geeky type chap so he has never tested the boundaries of dirty/germy/grossness himself but as a diligent mum I did it for him :D. I let the dog kiss him often, I let him eat stuff dropped on the floor, I let him crawl about in the dirt (I never even stopped him from eating dirt…maybe I should go to hell) and horror of horrors he has a pouf (he claims flannels or wash clothes are yucky) which is at least 3 months old and has never seen a washing machine, it honestly never occured to me before…it is covered in soap and spends an EON under hot running water everyday. > > Despite all my efforts to kill the child off he remains healthy and allergy free. > > I really should have feed him dairy products before he was a year old…oh that’s right, I did. You know, **Kiwi** , you seem to feel that allergies can all be blamed on bad parenting and germphobia. I must say that I find this really aggravating. Just FTR, I don’t believe in anti-bacterial products. I’m not the world’s best housekeeper, and my child wandered/wanders around in the dirty outdoors plenty. No one could accurately call me a germophobe. And yet, the kidlet manifested food allergies early on–before shoes ever got onto her feet–and, while she outgrew the milk allergy, she is still allergic to certain foods, and always will be. To announce that your kid is not allergic to anything because you’re not _too_ clean is to call those of us with allergic kids bad parents, overprotective and afraid of the big bad filthy world. It’s nice to be able to feel that it can’t happen to you because you’re not like us, I suppose–it lets you feel in control–but the fact is that my kid is allergic to things for reasons unknown, and so are most of the others. Could be genetics, could be effects from the chemicals we’ve poured into the environment for many years now, could be dumb luck. I actually agree with you that too much cleanliness can be a bad thing, but not being afraid of germs won’t give anyone a free pass to good health. Parents are now routinely blamed for their children’s allergies; I see it all the time. I wonder if that will change someday, when we understand it more. Fifty years ago, autism and homosexuality were both blamed on bad parenting, but now we know better. It seems to me that a lot of things that haven’t been well understood have been blamed on parents, until knowledge catches up and it turns out to be something completely different. I think that there are a lot of reasons for the apparent rise in allergies, and that we do not understand them all by a long shot; I hope that will change someday. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2005, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/36 "2005-04-04T01:20:08Z")
> [@BiblioCat](#): > > Note to self: Don’t drink the beer at **Ferret Herder’s** house. > > 😉 Hey, where do you think most homebrewers wash out their carboys? 😉 There sure isn’t room in my kitchen sink! (I keep the actual fermenting beer in my kitchen or basement - carboy sealed with a water-filled airlock so nothing’s getting in - just FYI. 🙂 ) ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2005, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/37 "2005-04-04T03:49:09Z")
> [@Case Sensitive](#): > > **Lissa** , please don’t read this as being sarcastic or insulting, because it certainly isn’t meant to be, but have you ever considered that you may have some form of OCD? Your dislike of touching things for fear of contamination seems rather excessive, and a little unhealthy. Oh, goodness, no! It’s not like I freak if I touch something germy-- it’s just that I don’t _like_ to, and will avoid it if conveniently possible. I mean, I’m sure my house is probably pretty germy. I have two dogs, after all, and let them lick my hands, even though I’ve seen where those tongues have been. 😃 Nor do I disinfect my house the way some people do-- I wipe the counters down, but don’t use antibacterial products. I even dare to use a shower pouf! We have a public bathroom at work, and I’ve _seen_ how filthy people can be-- so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to try to avoid touching the most contaminated surfaces-- taps, dooknobs, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2005, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/38 "2005-04-04T04:50:15Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > It’s probably not news to anybody that we have this inference system and that it causes us to feel strong disgust at the possibility of being tainted by something unseen and unknown. What may be news to people is just how strongly this system influences us, and the pre-rational basis on which it functions. > > So, cynic that I am, I don’t think we’re going to change. Our instincts in this area are just too strong, and we’re basically going to be like this forever, until we’ve bred ourselves a superbug and wiped ourselves out. > > Cheerful, huh? 🙂 Interestingly enough, the notion of “contamination” has to be learned. Children under a certain age will be disgusted by a cockroach, but if you place said cockroach in milk, swish it around a bit and then remove it, the child will happily drink the milk. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2005, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/39 "2005-04-04T10:08:07Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > Interestingly enough, the notion of “contamination” has to be learned. Children under a certain age will be disgusted by a cockroach, but if you place said cockroach in milk, swish it around a bit and then remove it, the child will happily drink the milk. You obviously haven’t met Little Case. His first word was “bug”, and he is happily conducting his formative years in investigating the more insalubrious members of the entomological community. I shudder to think what he would do with a cockroach in his milk - insist on rescuing and rehabilitating it into the household, in all probability. ---
**Author:** ![calm\_kiwi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc348/32.png) [@calm\_kiwi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/calm_kiwi)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2005, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369/40 "2005-04-04T12:00:12Z")
> [@dangermom](#): > > You know, **Kiwi** , you seem to feel that allergies can all be blamed on bad parenting and germphobia. I must say that I find this really aggravating. > To announce that your kid is not allergic to anything because you’re not _too_ clean is to call those of us with allergic kids bad parents, overprotective and afraid of the big bad filthy world. It’s nice to be able to feel that it can’t happen to you because you’re not like us, I suppose–it lets you feel in control–but the fact is that my kid is allergic to things for reasons unknown, and so are most of the others. Could be genetics, could be effects from the chemicals we’ve poured into the environment for many years now, could be dumb luck. I actually agree with you that too much cleanliness can be a bad thing, but not being afraid of germs won’t give anyone a free pass to good health. > > Parents are now routinely blamed for their children’s allergies; I see it all the time. I wonder if that will change someday, when we understand it more. Fifty years ago, autism and homosexuality were both blamed on bad parenting, but now we know better. It seems to me that a lot of things that haven’t been well understood have been blamed on parents, until knowledge catches up and it turns out to be something completely different. I think that there are a lot of reasons for the apparent rise in allergies, and that we do not understand them all by a long shot; I hope that will change someday. I’m sorry **Dangermom** , I didn’t mean to offend you or ayone else.Obviously there are many children with allergies that are not a result of their enviroment. I work with children and have noticed a huge change in the rate of children with allergies. The increase in rate is bound to lead to speculation. Some of that speculation is bollocks and some will hold water. Dairy allergies have become hugely prevalent. I presume America is similar to NZ in dairy consumption. There has to be a reason for increased allergies to what is part of the traditional diet. I don’t know what the reason is, all I can do is sepculate on the changes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-all-just-far-too-interested-in-clean/297369.md?page=3)