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archerships...from the Things You Wish You Didn't Know Departmnet:
http://www.nature.com/nsu/040216/040216-2.html
Biohazard lurks in bathrooms
Shower curtains awash with potentially harmful bacteria.
16 February 2004
Peter Aldhous
Soap scum is home to opportunistic pathogens.
If you don't scrub your shower curtain, you're asking for trouble. These plastic sheets are flooded with bacteria that can cause nasty infections says Norman Pace, a microbiologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Pace has long been interested in the microbial communities that live all around us, and one day decided to examine the soapy film that covered his shower curtain. "I scraped a little bit of soap scum, put it under the microscope and went: 'Wooah!'" he says. The sample teemed with bacterial life.
To find out whether the bugs were harmless or not, Pace enlisted an undergraduate student, Ulrike Theissen. She collected scum from five shower curtains: Pace's own, three more from colleagues at Boulder, and one from Berkeley, California.
The bugs' DNA showed that around 80% belonged to one of two groups: the sphingomonads and the methylobacteria. Both contain species that are opportunistic pathogens, able to infect wounds or sicken people whose immune systems are suppressed. These include the elderly, or those taking drugs to combat the rejection of transplanted organs.
Each time you take a shower you are engulfed by an aerosol of bacteria, Pace told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle. In most cases, that will not be dangerous. But if you have an unprotected cut, or your immune system is suppressed, it could be a different story.
The bacteria probably feed on volatile organic chemicals shed from human bodies, says Pace, rather than on soap. "When you cough, belch or fart, you're putting a lot of organic chemistry in there," he says. Chemicals called plasticizers, which make shower curtains more flexible, could also feed bacteria, he suggests.
Pace's findings have caused a change in his personal habits: "I take showers, but since the study, I wash my shower curtain every few weeks."
Shower curtains may not be the biggest hazard we encounter while bathing. Other studies have found that the air just above water level in a typical Jacuzzi, or hot tub, is packed with bacteria that can cause lung infections.
"I would not get into a public hot tub. I would not get into a private hot tub, frankly," says Pace.
© Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004
http://www.nature.com/nsu/040216/040216-2.html
Biohazard lurks in bathrooms
Shower curtains awash with potentially harmful bacteria.
16 February 2004
Peter Aldhous
Soap scum is home to opportunistic pathogens.
If you don't scrub your shower curtain, you're asking for trouble. These plastic sheets are flooded with bacteria that can cause nasty infections says Norman Pace, a microbiologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Pace has long been interested in the microbial communities that live all around us, and one day decided to examine the soapy film that covered his shower curtain. "I scraped a little bit of soap scum, put it under the microscope and went: 'Wooah!'" he says. The sample teemed with bacterial life.
To find out whether the bugs were harmless or not, Pace enlisted an undergraduate student, Ulrike Theissen. She collected scum from five shower curtains: Pace's own, three more from colleagues at Boulder, and one from Berkeley, California.
The bugs' DNA showed that around 80% belonged to one of two groups: the sphingomonads and the methylobacteria. Both contain species that are opportunistic pathogens, able to infect wounds or sicken people whose immune systems are suppressed. These include the elderly, or those taking drugs to combat the rejection of transplanted organs.
Each time you take a shower you are engulfed by an aerosol of bacteria, Pace told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle. In most cases, that will not be dangerous. But if you have an unprotected cut, or your immune system is suppressed, it could be a different story.
The bacteria probably feed on volatile organic chemicals shed from human bodies, says Pace, rather than on soap. "When you cough, belch or fart, you're putting a lot of organic chemistry in there," he says. Chemicals called plasticizers, which make shower curtains more flexible, could also feed bacteria, he suggests.
Pace's findings have caused a change in his personal habits: "I take showers, but since the study, I wash my shower curtain every few weeks."
Shower curtains may not be the biggest hazard we encounter while bathing. Other studies have found that the air just above water level in a typical Jacuzzi, or hot tub, is packed with bacteria that can cause lung infections.
"I would not get into a public hot tub. I would not get into a private hot tub, frankly," says Pace.
© Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004
no subject
Date: 2004-02-17 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-18 12:10 am (UTC)We as a society have become so clean that we've begun to harm ourselves by it. Humanity is not meant to live in a sterile environment; we evolved surrounded by bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens, and have developed a means to cope with them (the immune system). What's more, that means is designed under the assumption that they will be present, and can do some strange things when it finds itself with nothing to attack.
Asthma and allergies are becoming vastly more common in children today -- but only in modern, industrialized nations. The reason is that our children grow up without exposure to common everyday pathogens, living in sterile houses cleaned with hospital-grade disinfectant washing their hands with antibacterial soap and never venturing into the outside air. The immune system, lacking anything to attack, either fails to learn how to operate properly, or becomes overactive, resulting in autoimmune conditions like allergies. It knows it's supposed to attack something.
Those bacteria on your shower curtain will not kill you. Other than specific cases like botulism and salmonella, neither will the germs on your kitchen counter, or the cold you child gets at the daycare center. However, if we make everywhere as sterile as a hospital, when it comes time to sterilize the hospital we find that all the germs are immune to our disinfectant. If we take antibiotics for every infection, the only infections we get are antibiotic-resistant. If we use antibacterial soap and toothpaste (especially in the halfhearted way we do -- triclosan, the antiseptic in most antibacterial soap and toothpaste, takes over 90 seconds to actually kill bacteria, and most of us don't wash our hands that long) all the time, our own bodies become incubators for drug-resistant bacteria.
Essentially, because we're disgusted by dirt, we risk changing it from something merely disgusting to something truly dangerous. We don't need to live in filth, but we don't need to be that clean, either -- or we'll find that we really do need to be that clean, as we've made our environment a very dangerous place.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-18 12:13 am (UTC)But it got him in the news, and got people reading Nature. Their goals are met.
Junk Science
Date: 2004-02-18 02:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-18 12:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-18 12:20 am (UTC)NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Date: 2004-02-18 01:46 am (UTC)Now I DEFINITELY am getting a maid into our apartment.
And I'm the woman who microwaves sponges and random household goods to kill off bacteria.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-18 02:18 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-18 02:38 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-18 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-18 06:42 pm (UTC)