When I was a child, there were no such thing as antibacterial wipes.

Well, if there was, I was unaware of it. Call us primitive, but we used soap and water to rub our hands and faces.

Now they are everywhere: in baby changing bags (they weren’t around in the good old days, either), in bathrooms, in kitchens, bedrooms, in give-away sachets in hotels and on planes, and in teenage girls’ handbags.

My daughter took a stack of them on holiday last year, insisting that she needed them to clean her hands at every opportunity.

Mothers with babies in particular are obsessed with them, whipping them out to wipe bottoms, feet, faces and hands.

Every spillage is cleared using one of these little impregnated cloths, every ice cream-coated chin cleaned with one.

But, as I - who was guilty of using them for nappy-related incidents - suspected all along, they are not good for us.

New research has revealed that old-fashioned soap and water is best for babies.

Parents should avoid antibacterial wipes and gels following studies showing that early exposure to bacteria can protect against asthma.

The research revealed that children have a greater chance of developing asthma and other autoimmune diseases during adulthood if they are protected too much from germs while growing up.

This is particularly so in the first two weeks of life, but my guess is that it can be damaging through to adulthood, with overuse leading to a spot on a Channel 5 reality TV show.

I find it odd, when we are apparently striving for a more natural existence, that people prefer to smear themselves in chemicals instead of trusty old soap and water.

No wonder we are erasing all our immunities.

I remember when I used to take my children to the park. Some parents would whip out the wipes at the slightest speck of muck on a toddler’s knee.

Picnics were a wipes paradise, and birthdays parties brought them out in bumper packs.

They are not only damaging our health. To water companies across the country they are the scourge of modern society, blocking drains as people flush them down like toilet paper.

We are, quite literally, too squeaky clean for our own good. I grew up in a farming community and, as I tell my daughters, farmers’ hands were permanently ingrained with dirt - yet most of them lived to a ripe old age.

Miners, sadly long gone, didn’t emerge from the pit- head and pull out a dainty pack of wipes from their bags.

It’s madness. I’ve gone so far as to ban them from my home.

From now on It’s a rock-hard bar of carbolic soap and freezing cold pond water for my family.