Science has shown over and over again thatbar soap does not transmit infection. It is a powerful, plastic-free, and cheapdisease-fighting tool.
科学已经一次又一次地显示块状肥皂不会传递病菌感染，它是一种功能强大、无塑料并且非常便宜的战胜病菌的工具。
Switching from liquid soap to bar soap isan easy and effective way to reduce one’s plastic use over time. The onlyproblem is, many people believe that using bar soap can transmit infection.There’s a tendency to think that, since everyone is using the same bar of soap,and who knows where their hands might have been, the soap can somehow passaround infections; but the New York Times explains in a recent health column why this is not the case.
从使用液体皂到变为使用块皂可以容易且有效地减少过度地使用塑料。唯一的问题是很多人认为肥皂会传递病菌。有一种倾向认为既然每个人都使用一块皂，谁知道有没有人手上可能有细菌并导致传播。但是《纽约时报》在最近的健康专栏解释了根本不是这么回事。
Several studies have examined thisquestion, with the first and most in-depth experiment happening in 1965. Scientistscoated their hands with approximately 5 billion bacteria, includingdisease-causing strains of E. coli and staph. Dr. Richard Klasco explains:
“The scientists then washed theirhands with a bar of soap and had a second person wash with the same bar ofsoap. They found that bacteria were not transferred to the second user andconcluded: ‘The level of bacteria that may occur on bar soap, even underextreme usage conditions (heavy usage, poorly designed non-drainable soapdishes, etc.) does not constitute a health hazard.'”
1965年第一次开始进行的一项深入试验的几项研究都解释了这个问题。科学家在手上沾染了50亿个细菌，包括大肠杆菌和葡萄球菌。卡拉斯科博士解释到：
科学家们用皂洗了手，并且让第二个人使用了同一块皂，他们发现细菌并未传播给第二个，因此得出结论：块皂肥皂上的细菌存在水平，即使在极端的使用状况下（过度使用、甚至使用沥水状况很差的皂盒等）都不会造成健康问题。
A second major study in 1988 inoculatedbars of soap with pathogenic bacteria to see if it could be transmitted to soapusers, but test subjects had no traces of the bacteria on their hands afterwashing. Subsequent studies have continued to show the same results, whileunderscoring bar soap’s powerful ability to fight serious infections, such asEbola.
第二次在1988年做出的主要研究关于块皂是否能在人之间传播病原菌，使用后并未在使用者的手上发现细菌。后续的研究也显示了同样的结果，我们低估了块状肥皂能够战胜厉害的细菌，包括埃博拉在内的强大的力量。
One commenter on the NYT article givesfurther background as to why the bacteria does not stick to a bar of soap:
“The bacteria can’t evolve high levelsof resistance because the effect of soap depends on a chemical property — thehydrophobic effect, which is the fact that in the absence of a detergent, oilwon’t mix with water — that is essential for the functioning of nearly everythingin a cell: its membrane, its enzymes, its DNA. The only way a bacteria couldevolve high levels of resistance would be to totally restructure almost everycomponent that it is made of.”
《纽约时报》的一篇评论道出了为什么细菌不会粘在块皂上的原因：
细菌之所以无法发展完全是由于皂的化学属性：表面活性，这种活性会改善油水之间不融的情况，对于细胞之内的所有东西都有效，包括：隔膜、生物酶和DNA。如果细菌想抵抗并发展除非它们将构成细菌的全部成分都重新组合一遍。
Liquid soap, to be fair, is not teemingwith bacteria either. The stuff works, even if the dispenser is icky and youcan avoid touching it after washing your hands, but the point is that it’s notany better. So, if you can avoid the added plastic from all those bulkydispensers (a rough estimate of 270 million plastic pump bottles go in thetrash annually and most are never recycled), and the added cost (people use 7times more liquid soap per washing than bar soap, and it’s a more expensiveproduct to begin with), then why not give bar soap a try?
公平地说，液体肥皂也有这样的效果。即使液体皂比较粘稠，并且在洗手后无须再次触碰，但是效果也差不多，并非更好。但是由此造成的塑料垃圾污染（粗略统计，每年会有2亿7000万塑料瓶子被废弃并无法回收）很严重，并且使用成本增加（液体皂的使用量是块皂的7倍以上，而且售价更贵）。
为什么不给块状肥皂一次机会呢？
