Cleaning products containing living microorganisms as active ingredients are increasingly being used in household, professional and industrial cleaning applications. Microorganisms can degrade soiling associated with dirt, food residues, and grease by enzymatic and metabolic action and out-compete microorganisms associated with odor problems. Their potential for odor control seems to result in a competitive advantage over conventional chemically-based cleaning products. Moreover, producers of microbial-based cleaning products (MBCPs) claim that their products are less harmful to the environment. These promising prospects have triggered interest from consumer and environmental organizations, professional users, and regulators in understanding if there are also possible negative health and environmental impacts which require attention and how the safety of these products is ensured. Unfortunately, there is little information on these issues in the public domain. Moreover, regulatory oversight in Europe is essentially limited to pathogenic properties in the context of worker protection. Canada, in contrast, has a regulatory framework in place to assess risks to human health and the environment from the manufacture, import and/or use of new microorganisms contained in MBCPs. In the absence of mandatory standards, safety assessment and hygienic practices seem to vary considerably across companies. Recently developed ecolabelling standards are – for the time being - the only option for transparent compliance to minimum standards in terms of safety as well as assessments of manufacturer information by third parties. These standards highlight in particular the need for precise taxonomic information for assessing the pathogenic properties and the need to ensure the absence of potentially harmful microorganisms as contaminants. Ecolabelling standards are, however, voluntary and do not cover all relevant safety issues. In order to develop a more comprehensive set of mandatory standards for health and safety, a number of areas would benefit from further research (e.g. the role in plant pathogenicity and other environmental properties of the microorganisms used; the relevance of chronic exposure to dusts and aerosols containing vegetative cells and spores; the relevance of strains which belong to species known to include opportunistic pathogens and possible hazards for particularly sensitive risk groups). Improved knowledge in these areas will contribute to a predictable level of product safety.

含有活微生物作为活性成分的清洁产品越来越多地用于家庭、专业和工业清洁应用。微生物可以通过酶促和代谢作用降解与污垢、食物残渣和油脂相关的污垢，并在与异味问题相关的微生物的竞争中胜出。它们在气味控制方面的潜力似乎比传统的化学清洁产品具有竞争优势。此外，微生物清洁产品（MBCP）生产商声称他们的产品对环境的危害较小。这些充满希望的前景引起了消费者和环境组织、专业用户和监管机构的兴趣，他们想了解是否还可能产生需要关注的负面健康和环境影响，以及如何确保这些产品的安全。不幸的是，公共领域关于这些问题的信息很少。此外，欧洲的监管监督基本上仅限于工人保护范围内的致病特性。相比之下，加拿大制定了监管框架来评估生产、进口和/或使用 MBCP 中所含新微生物对人类健康和环境造成的风险。由于缺乏强制性标准，各公司的安全评估和卫生实践似乎存在很大差异。最近制定的生态标签标准目前是透明地遵守安全性最低标准以及第三方对制造商信息评估的唯一选择。这些标准特别强调需要精确的分类信息来评估致病特性，以及需要确保不存在作为污染物的潜在有害微生物。然而，生态标签标准是自愿性的，并不涵盖所有相关的安全问题。为了制定一套更全面的健康和安全强制性标准，许多领域将受益于进一步的研究（例如，所用微生物在植物致病性和其他环境特性中的作用；长期接触灰尘和气溶胶的相关性）含有营养细胞和孢子；属于已知包括机会性病原体的物种的菌株的相关性以及对特别敏感的风险群体可能造成的危害）。提高这些领域的知识将有助于提高产品安全的可预测水平。