EM America

Microorganisms cleaned the Earth in its early stages when it was polluted, helped create the oceans, rivers, and soil, and helped maintain an environment in which living things could thrive. But nowadays we are inundated with chemicals (pesticides, chlorine, etc.) and run off water from homes and industry pollutes our rivers and oceans; but what's more, humans, who cannot live without microorganisms, are insisting on a fanatical cleanliness that has led to the production of antibacterial products whose aim is to eliminate microorganisms. It's easy to imagine what the results will be.

Eliminating microorganisms means that microorganisms will find it hard to live in the present environment, the number and types of microorganisms will drop sharply, and the density of microorganisms living in the soil, rivers, and oceans will also drop.

Thus we have seen how microorganisms play a crucial role in the creation of the Earth, the soil, and the oceans, and in creating plant life that is central to the food chain. But this is not all that microorganisms do. In recent years they have played a key role in the production of food.

As is well known, aspergillus is used to ferment soy beans and wheat to produce miso and soy sauce. In addition, microorganisms are used in countless ways to produce delicious foods from organic material: aspergillus can produce sake from rice, yeast and grapes together make wine, wheat and yeast yield bread, barley and yeast creates beer, and milk and an enzyme found in calves' stomachs are used to produce cheese.

An article from Eco Pure Magazine: Raising Objections to Antibacterial Products

Antibacterial products have flooded the marketplace. But what does "antibacterial" really mean? Although these products fight germs and other harmful bacteria, we should realize that there are beneficial bacteria as well that can be used by people in beneficial ways, such as lactic acid bacteria, which is good for the stomach, and make vinegar. If the present trend escalates, the whole human race may end up like the baby chicks used in experiments in totally bacteria-free environments. Something is definitely wrong.

A Message from Microorganisms, Pitfalls of the Antibacterial Boom
The term antibacterial first came into common use about fifteen years ago. A type of antibacterial socks were manufactured to fight the bacteria that causes athlete's foot and the resultant odor. After this the word seemed to have been forgotten until 1996, when a mass outbreak of food poisoning caused by Esceheria coli 0-157 pathogenic colon bacilli created a kind of hysterical reaction to the word "bacteria". Now all sorts of antibacterial goods have appeared from kitchen products to clothes to ATM cards. But can we really trust these antibacterial manufactured goods?