Main reason I was given was that wounds need to breath to heal and keep them covering them with a petroleum based product completely negates that. The antimicrobial aspect I guess doesn't out way that. If you're working in a wet/dirty environment I could see it being beneficial for short term coverage. I came across some "colorless iodine" that comes in a plastic bottle at a pharmacy. It's a mixture of alcohol, ammonium hydroxide, iodine, potassium iodine and purified water. Kind of an interesting solution.