Nice that people agree with me about this! These "antibacterial spray" commercials are particularly bad because they target women..... "Don't you care about the safety of your child....." etc! As if the child might get seriously ill if the mother didn't constantly use these products.

There was a big study comparing the state of health of Swedish kids, with kids from one of the Baltic states in the early 1990s - it got huge publicity because the findings were unexpected to the Swedish researchers. They found that in many aspects the Baltic kids were much healthier than the Swedish kids -- despite the problems that existed in the Baltics at the time; harder to get fresh vegetables, etc. I don't know what the quality of healthcare was in the Baltic states then, compared with Sweden.

Swedish kids were not in bad health at all, but the Baltic kids were more fit and had less allergies, excemas and asthma. One of the reasons given was that they had more more exposure to bugs. Also, they were more active outdoors, just playing and taking part in organised activities.

As a result of this study, their was an information campaign recommending parents NOT to overdo the cleaning, and make sure that the kids were not loafing around indoors but out, playing or being in a club.

Of course, this is 20 years ago, and nowadays kids play computer games for hours a day and antisceptic products are selling better than ever! In England there are plenty of kids of have early onset diabetes and are so overweight that they have to get their school uniforms from special shops for fat kids!