• Question: What is anti-bacteria made out of?

    Asked by bellaswan123 to Anil, Blanka, Cees, Emma, Mike on 28 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Emma Trantham

      Emma Trantham answered on 28 Jun 2012:

      Different antibacterials are made of different things, but a lot of anti-bacterial soaps contain something called Triclosan.
      Triclosan acts on many parts of the bacteria to kill them (which is one of the reasons it is so effective).

      Other antibacterials contain chlorhexidine (this is what is often used by surgeons for scrubbing up before operations). Chlorhexidine disrupts the membrane of bacteria, so killing them.

      Did you know that honey can also be antibacterial? There is a honey that comes from New Zealand called manuka honey (because the bees that produce it feed off manuka bushes) which has been proven to be antibacterial and is sometimes smothered on wounds to prevent or treat infection. (Don’t try this at home – it needs to be special medical grade honey. Some people have tried using regular household honey and ended up more ill than they were to start with!)

    • Photo: Michael Cook

      Michael Cook answered on 28 Jun 2012:

      This was super-interesting! Thanks bella and Emma!

    • Photo: Blanka Sengerova

      Blanka Sengerova answered on 28 Jun 2012:

      And just to add to this, don’t some fungi (slightly more complex organisms than bacteria) produce compounds that act as antibacterials? This is how the antibiotic penicillin was discovered by pure chance – Alexander Fleming didn’t tidy up his lab bench including some agar plates, they got mouldy and he found that close to the mould bacteria wouldn/t grow…

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