Slashdot Mirror
Who's Behind the Shower Curtain?
Roland Piquepaille writes "No, it's not Norman Bates. Instead, hundreds of millions of yellow, pink and white bacteria are hiding on your shower curtain. According to a study by San Diego and Colorado researchers, it should be enough to push you to turn the water off and to make you grab a towel. After analyzing the vinyl shower curtains from their own bathrooms, the scientists found '...about 80 percent of the organisms they found in the flaky scum were in the same genetic families as those known to infect wounds'. Sorry to leave you here, but I also have to go and buy another shower curtain, preferably a disposable one."
About 80 percent of the organisms they found in the flaky scum were in the same genetic families as those known to infect wounds or cause problems for people with AIDS, cancer or other immune system disorders.
What an absolute load of crap. That's like saying "about 80 percent of Germans come from the same country as Adolph Hitler."
What's sorely missing from this article is any sense of journalism. I know that's a passe' concept. But when a "study" like this comes out, stating the obvious in "OMFG the sky is falling!" terms, you should follow the money.
Who pays for "studies" like this? I predict if you follow the money, you'll find that this fine product is from the makers of Lysol and other fine household products.
These would be the same people that supply "educational, informative" news bits to small-market stations that get run alongside the real news. I remember one in the mid-90s that described the horrors facing your family during the Thanksgiving holiday, and how you'd save their lives by using an antibiotic cleanser. Our old friend Lysol was prominently featured -- over and over -- but the company's likely sponsorship of the ad-in-news'-clothing was conveniently left out.
Or maybe I'm just another paranoid Green.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I'll stick to bathing in the rainbarrel in front of my trailer.
I always wondered if that funky, non-natural, slimy, stuff-that-didn't-come-from-me, slippery, smelly, discolored stuff on my shower curtain wasn't good for me. Now I know!
I spray my shower curtain with bleach every week or so. That should kill our good bacteria friends...
My other car is first.
these things worry not me, the traditional non-showering geek
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Exactly the reason I don't shower.
They have the Internet on computers now?
I don't take showers you insensitive clod!
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
I have an enclosed shower stall. Without a shower curtain, there's no way that I can be exposed to such bacteria!
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
But I've had this nasty itch for a couple months now....
Like geeks shower anyway. Move on everyone, there's nothing to see here.
How on earth is this news for nerds, stuff that matters.
I've been to the coding department.... and trust me, none of them are in danger of going near a shower.
but seriously, this didnt effect me before, its not going to effect me know. I might hit the curtain with some cleaner next time I scrub the walls, but thats about it.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
This is enough to stop me from washing my hair in the kitchen sink and hold off on rubbing the dirt off myself with my PC keyboard. Now I can't use the shower either!
I always wondered why there was no shower curtain in my apartment in Korea. The bathroom was tiled all over, had a sink, toilet, shower head and a drain in the center. Simple enough - my only complaint was that the shower head was directly over the toilet...
It's amazing, how the sciences of epidemiology and microbiology have produced such irrational paranoia in some people. Yes, there are bacteria upon your shower curtain. It's (often) warm and moist. (gasp)
Naturally the rational solution to this is to start throwing away your shower curtain after each use. (!!) But wait, there are bacteria on the trash can... better start throwing the trash out after each use. And that icky dumpster! AAAIEEEEE!
Give it a rest. Unless you have a compromised immune system or are caring for someone who does, this is NOTHING to worry about.
We have a cloth shower curtain, and it goes in the laundry every week or so. They cost more, and washing is a hassle, but there's a lot less grunge to tolerate.
Cleaning Instructions: How to clean a shower curtain to shine like new
Bathers get revenge!
I should probably stop eating it then.
What is this shower you speak of ?
This signature was left intentionally blank.
Wow, jumping right into the Godwin's Law on that reply, ain'tcha?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
1. insert head in toilet bowl.
2. flush.
3. repeat as necessary.
for better results add shampoo/soap to flush tank.
and remember...you heard it first on slashdot.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Hmmm, do bacteria have fingers ?
1. Put a computer in your bathroom
2. Teach your shower curtain to click on pay per click adds
3. ???
4. Profit!
As glass is slower to acquire the scum; I wonder if squeegeeing the glass doors also helps slow down this effect.
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
I sure that 80% of the bacteria in your intestines are from the same families of bacteria that infect wounds. But if you kill all of them off you are asking for some serious health problems.
The skin flakes and semen serenade going on in your unwashed bed linens makes that shower curtain seem downright antiseptic.
Do you even suspect whats in your carpet?, on your mattress(besides stains)?, or especially in the ventilation system of your house or office? Those are really scary. It's enough to keep you from ever going to a hotel or motel again.
Of course we have all been exposed to so much of it the immunities are quite active and most of us won't ever notice.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Gasp! Scientists have found that plastics that live in warm, wet environments contain Bacteria! Oh...my...god!
Seriously, this is about as non-newsy as you can get. Next we're going to find out that there's bacteria of the wound-infecting type just hanging around on people's skin. And telephones! Don't get me started on telephones. We might have to create an army of Telephone Sanitizers to save us from being wiped out by some manner of virulent disease contracted through the receiver of a telephone.
=Brian
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
What a pile of excrement.
We should all go out and disinfect everything in sight.
More media drivel
nothing is real
I've grown quite a tolerance by licking my curtain.
hehe ick.
I dislike shower curtains...too difficult to clean. My shower has a germ infected glass door. As for the germs, the article fails to make a case that exposure to germs on shower curtains cause disease. Personally, I think limited exposure to germs helps keep the immune system in tune. I think I will continue to take showers despite the grave hazard that the exposure to germs entails.
This should, by far, be the most dodgy story on slashdot.
:-)
/. will think of next...
News for Neds. Stuff that matters
Perhaps it was just an attempt to incite ppl to post on a slow day.
If it was, then knowing our nerdy community, it might just work
Though I seriously wonder what these eds at
http://efil.blogspot.com/
You'd think we'd all be dead by now if this was a serious risk.
You're sitting in your own filth!
While this may be a factual study, I find myself more interested in the alarmist reactions people have to news like this.
Life is not about walking from one hermetically sealed clean room to another, there's all sorts of things out there that we interact with on a daily basis. Every time you breath, you inhale pollen, dust mites, various chemical vapors, and all sorts of organic detritus.
Every time you drink water, there's a certain quantity of dead organic material, traces of various excrements, and so on, even if your water is bottled.
We do not live life as individual colonies of humanity, sailing through deserts of sterility, instead we walk through a cloud of sloughed off bacteria, viruses, and other debris, and it's O-K.
Humankind has lived for millenia with these things, and for the most part, we've been O-K.
People lived before pasteurization, people lived before water filtration, people even lived before MOUTHWASH! And they were all... O-K.
The world we live in is much cleaner in terms of organic residue then ever before, and the legions of bacteria on your shower curtain have not spontaneously appeared out of the ether, so calm down, take a deep breath, and stop panicing.
It's just a matter of time before someone figures out that there's a correlation between good health and some non-obvious combination of bacteria and organic waste. In the meantime, let Howard Hughes-style cleanliness craziness pass you by and just live your lives peacefully.
Y'all are O-K.
Does this mean I've been wasting my money on all that anti-bacterial soap? I thought that was the reason we were buying that crap! I suppose it's time pull out the washtub and whip up a batch of good old lye soap. It can't be any worse that what I'm using now.
The shower curtain is still wayyy safer than the keyboards in our Editorial department. No, these are not mahogany keyboards, that is filth.
Crushing my karma one post at a time.
If I took my shower curtain and stuck it in the microwave for about 3 minutes a few times a week?
Or would the bacteria mutate into a super-resistant strain that would eventually kill mankind?
I mean come on, itty bitty invisible creatures that get inside you and make you ill. Sounds pretty damn unlikely to me.
Hands up who's actually seen one of these germs.
Thought not.
This kind of silliness has lead companies to create all manner of anti-bacterial wipes and soaps, and while they may ward off the occasional infection, more likely it is just watering down our immune systems so that when an infection does strike, our bodies are unprepared. To me, this is just another blip on the mass-media Paranoia-meter.
I guess I'm pessimistic, but IMHO we are hell bent as a species on painting ourselves into a biological and ecological corner.
The meek shall inherit the earth, in 3 by 6 plots. - Lazerus Long
That's not all! It's only the top of the iceberg! Just see what I found here! All our bodies are COVERED by millions of these little bacteria and fungi - the same bacteria that KILL people every day!
;-)
We're doomed!
The end is near...
Even BSD is dying...
Don't use shower curtains?
Got a nice and clean door-like system. Very easy to clean, all parts are reachable and if they aren't, they are detachable so you can reach over and clean anyways. The whole system is lovely and when properly sealed up around the edges it's pretty much clean and not a biohazard.
Hate me!
If our shower curtains gather all this scum, wouldn't the body wash puffs that many people use also? Wouldn't this be worse as there is no need to aerosolize the bacteria in case- it gets ground right in? Following that, what is the best way to disinfect a body wash puff? Is there a way? Or should they be treated as disposible items?
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
So what if 80% are from families of infectious organisms? We have beneficial E. coli bacteria living in our stomachs (we are born this way!), but other strains of E. coli (same family) are known to cause severe and sometimes lethal food poisoning. Big deal.
--- "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." ~ Ben Kenobi, 'Return of the Jedi'
This will just add more fuel to the "bacteria hysteria" fire. Our society is petrified by microbes, yet we all merrily ignore the fact that we have evolved hand-in-hand with bacteria over millions of years. Check your local Bath & Body Works - every soap has Triclosan in it to assuage anxious moms. Parents demand antibiotics from pediatricians (who give them in fear of being sued) for viral infections.....oh, the bacteria are winning allright....because in our zeal for sterility, we give them the impetus to evolve around our best defenses.
Humans are designed to survive much dirtier conditions then we live in now, that's what we have an immune system for.
Infact one of the reasons why there's a lot more people suffering allergies these days could be that because we live in such clean conditions our immune system's got nothing better to do then go nuts over minor environmental contaminates.
It must be a real slow day to post this type of stuff.
Looks like an internet scare tactic article. We're surrounded by bacteria all over the place, the bathroom is the one place I'd expect to be perfectly clean
Just like those ads that claim their product kills 99.9% of all bacteria.
This implies that the strongest (most resistant) 0.1% survive to reproduce. Nothing like giving natural selection a helping hand.
We need anti-anti-bacterial soap. Apparently, the stuff we're using now just ain't cutting it! OR, maybe a bacterial soap, one that will introduce friendly bacteria to battle the stuff waiting for us in the shower.
to not rub my shower curtain into all my open wounds... ;)
bacteria are everywhere, that's why we developed
an immune system!
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
News at 11.
How easily laymans get fooled and scared
There is a very nice substance, called chlorine, while maybe not a full steriliser, it is cheap, available in nearly any house, and cheap.
Some heavy chlorine in bucket, curtain in bucket, let it stand for a while, presto
has it occurred to you that the body kills bacteria, but chemical bioaccumlation is forever?
Bacteria likes to grow in warm, humid to moist places!
Be more concerned about the vast amounts of fecal coliforms (poo germs) on your toothbrush (re, a mythbusters episode a few months back).
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
While showering one morning, our hero thinks, "This guy got published for looking at dirty workstations? Huh, I wonder if what's on this shower curtain in my hot steamy shower will get press, too?"
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
S. paucimobilis, which can cause problems for immune-compromised patients or lead to blood stream or urinary tract infections, pneumonia and abscesses in the gut.
I've noticed that my cat often enters the shower (after i'm done) and licks the water droplets. Recently he came down with a pretty sevire urinary tract infection (UTI) which ended up costing me a couple hundered dollars for an emergency vet clinic stay. Now i'm wondering if the shower curtan was to blame.
"In wine there is wisdom. In beer there is strength. In water there is bacteria." --Old German Proverb
Run down the stairwell, to get away
Detective Beachnau's at my door
Wish we were having a mustard fight.
That would keep him off our floor
The things that he don't know.
He knows I locked those ports
He knows that I am guilty,
and he's going to take me to court
for Fitzy's Mistake
(Fitzy's Mistake, Fitzy's Mistake, Fitzy's Mistake, Fitzy's Mistake)
Tell us, oh Beachnau, what do you see?
Cuz we know Fitzy doesn't shower
And you know that you hate Fitzy
Lock him up in Beaumont Tower
This is the San Diego Union Tribune, so chances are good that the "staff writer" is nothing but a glorified reformatter of press releases. Their reporting is so bad even my parakeet won't crap on it.
Tune in at 11 for more news that has no factual basis at all.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
15 minutes of brisk scrubbing with the sandpaper and the spiders are gone! HTH
Let's see..
Slashdot posts a link about how America is losing its dominance in Science, and the same day posts this shitty hack of an article and calls it science.
First off I'll state that I'm a microbiologist. Saying that two bacterium come from the same "genetic family" is totally meaningless. Take E. coli K12 and E. coli 0157:H7 for example. They're the same SPECIES. K12 is harmless while 0157 will give you bloody diarrhea and could potentially kill you. I hate reading crap like this. It helps ignorant people justify their decision to disinfect EVERYTHING, thus inhibiting childrens' development of robust immune systems.
welcome our new infectious shower-curtain overlords.
That is to say, I'll remember not to dress any wounds with strips of my shower curtain.
What a dumb story.
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
... Tell me of one case where someone has had to have their leg amputated because it got infected in the shower. Just one, no more.
There's so much paranoia about all this shower curtain crap, and that's exactly what it is... crap
No one with a good sense of hygiene would let all that crap form on the curtains to begin with, let alone shower with it there.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
if this study/research was sponsored by a large, evil corporation planning to ride the panic buying wave for their all new, shower-curtain cleaner+disinfectant - that they know will be induced after this story is read by the masses?
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Well I guess that this means we shouldn't be eating meals off our shower curtains.
Think about it for a minute. You get into the shower when you're dirty. Water splashes off of your skin. Some of that splash ends up on the shower curtain. Is anyone really surprised by the fact that there are bacteria on the shower curtain.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
There are microbes everywhere, there are microbes in YOU. And most families of bacteria have at least one species the is pathogenic. Until somebody does a real study that shows that dirty shower curtains are linked to disease, I'll refrain from burning my shower curtain after each shower. If somebody did a culture from your toothbrush, dishes, or keyboard I bet you would find pretty much the same thing.
Must be a slow news day...
If God had had a computer it would have taken him 7 months to create the earth...if he even bothered to do it at all.
this article will probably work-up the same people that flip out when you tell them they have e-coli in their digestive system. of course, all they know about e-coli is that the news tells them it's bad bad bad. no mention about the good things those little guys do for us.
According to a news story I heard on the radio, your average keyboard has more bacteria than your toilet seat, which makes sense if you think about it. I clean my toilet seat every week but when was the last time you used Lysol on your kb?
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Why would anyone care if there are bacteria that affect people with aids on your shower curtain? People with AIDS have a very weak Immune System (AIDS indirectly kills by destroying your Immune System) anyways.
Plus those people that don't shower smell because they are covered in bacteria anyways.
Glad I'm not afraid of Bacteria.
I seriously doubt most of the bacteria on slashdotters' shower curtains is "hiding". It's likely boldly screaming, "look at me, look at me!"
I'd not be surprised if someone had full-spectrum bacteria on their curtains, not just white/pink/green.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Bleach breaks down pretty quickly. It dramatically alters the local PH, but doesn't tend to persist.
(1) it took NIH money to culture four dirty shower curtains.
(2) it took two (2) PhDs to figure this out.
(3) these are apparently rather filthy PhDs (RTA - the four shower curtains were all theirs).
You could have found this out for free at the next state science fair. Along with the usual assortment of cultured doorknobs, soap dishes, dishes from the sink, toothbrushes and hairbrushes, TV remotes and telephones.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Who pays for "studies" like this?
"Their research was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, the medical research arm of the federal government."
But when a "study" like this comes out, stating the obvious in "OMFG the sky is falling!" terms, you should follow the money.
Kelly and Pace emphasized that the bacteria they found on their shower curtains normally don't cause problems for humans. "We don't want to freak people out, because we're really only talking about immune-compromised people," Kelley said.
***
Hardly the "OMFG the sky is falling!" terms that you describe.
Don't blame the researchers, the article might not be well written but it's not that the researchers were trying to release some life-changing study.
... mold and fungus growing on my shower curtain that if I do get an infection from it, I can just lick it to heal up.
Seriously though, I'd be more concerned about kitchen counters than shower curtains. I don't know about this guy, but I don't exactly spend a lot of time in direct, intimate contact with it. A lot of people, however, stupidly wipe their counter tops down with the same cloth they used to wash the dishes. They take all the bacteria and germs from that cloth, and spread them all over the counter. Then, they prepare food on that same surface. Seems a trifle worse than bumping a bacteria-ridden shower curtain now and then if such inane things concern you (honestly, who cares? How do you think people lived before everything from their hand soap to their hairspray was "antibacterial" anyway?).
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
I can see why they would stress the infectious nature of these bacteria -- I actually just walked out of my bathroom and noticed the telltale pink colonies of Pseudomonas growing on the shower curtain. They also form around the drain in the sink, under the rim of the toilet and anywhere it stays damp most of the time. They haven't caused any health problems yet, but maybe this article will give me the initiative to clean it.
Looks to me like somebody's fishing for their funding for the next year. It must be nice to make a living out of researching the blindingly obvious.
I saw three germs a couple of months ago. They were very small, but yes I could see them... I know also that where there are three...there must be more...probably thousands! GOD DAMNED MOTHERFUCKING GERMS GO AWAY STOP TRYING TO KILL ME!!!!!!
and no, you paranoid fools, I *DON'T WORK FOR THE DISINFECTANT COMPANY*
I'm sick as a dog right now because I'm on day four of a seven day course of some disgusting antibiotic that leaves me nauseous and physically in pain, but it's all that's available to me now because, thanks to abuse of these medicines by our own medical system, this infection in my sinus (that had to be surgically removed) is immune to everything else.
Yeah, "humankind" may adapt, but in the process legions will become sick and die. FYI the infection in my sinus is a staph, and staph can live a very long time on things like shower curtains. So dismiss it if you care, just hope it's not your leg that has to be cut off when you contract a treatment resistant staph from simply brushing against your shower curtain after having scratched that mosquito bite you got last night...
The Wizard of Oz.
OMG, that does NOT go with my bathroom's color scheme at ALL.
Instead of wood or linoleum floors whose dirt can be attached through relatively primitive means (water and cloth), we largely live on carpet. I can run the steam cleaner over my living room carpet apparently indefinitely without it ever failing to yield up more filth.
Instead of baths in porcelain tubs that get scrubbed at least weekly (to remove rings and, as a good side effect, germs), we're taking showers standing next filthy curtains, and neatly aerosoling germs straight to the lungs via the shower steam (if your house is an a high radon area and you take a lot of showers, might as well take up smoking too!).
Just general house cleaning has become both less common and less easy. Rember the phrase "spring cleaning"? Ever participated in one? Before anti-biotics made scratches and other small wounds of no account, keeping your local environment clean was a survival instinct as much as a social nicety.
At least in the case of shower curtains, however, there is a simple solution. Get a washable shower curtain (google for shower curtain washable cotton duck) and wash it in hot water once a week. One germ collector eliminated, and it's nicer brushing up against wet cotton than wet chemically treated plastic. You still need to Comet that tub once a week, though :-).
Some overweight, geeky Linux zealot who pisses on a copy of Windows XP and then proceeds to masturbate on a copy of SUSE Linux 9.1!
Sadly only me....
IIRC there were several studies awhile back where they found children with asthma resulted from "too clean" modern housholds, and folks having pets generall had a far heathier children?
(Lots of allergy-inducing stuff to give the immune system something to work on perhaps?)
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/lenin.html
"Time is an abstract concept devised by carbon-based lifeforms to monitor their ongoing decay." - Thundercleese
Ralphie Wiggum
"I don't understand why some people wash their bath towels. When I get out of the shower I'm the cleanest object in my house. In theory, those towels should be getting cleaner every time they touch me."
"Maybe I could hug you every day so I don't need showers."
"Are towels supposed to bend?"
--Wally and Alice, this Dilbert cartoon
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
If you clean surfaces with water and wasabi (the tubed stuff works just fine) it will kill the bacteria.
If the bacteria researchers bring in their own shower curtains to test, who's to say they didn't bring the bacteria home with them from work and the shower curtain was a growth media.
So the results are tainted. In order for the results to have any validity they need a sample population of people who don't work with specific bacterium all day.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Honestly disposable stuff is shit. You should look into getting a quality shower curtain that may cost a couple times more than a disposable one, but will outlast 20 disposables. I hate to ring the bell of sanity here but we are at the same time seeing more and more waste, high gas prices, and disposable non-biodegradeable items. We are tied to the middle-east oil and we need clean sources of energy- at the same time people are buying more and more throw away convenience garbage. "Swiffer" sweepers, pre-wet dusting wipes, paper-towels, and recently I've seen people using disposable cutting boards? I mean honestly, wtf?
When I was in college I decided that I needed to make my money go further. I got a couple small towels to use as a napkin and paper towel for kitchen stuff. And a few dishes which I washed after I used them by hand (the house didn't have a dish washer). I found that living like this was incredibly cost-effective not only in not requiring me to buy more stuff every couple weeks, but it greatly reduced my trash output- and in doing, my trash collection bills. You can use bleach, ammonia, or soap to clean almost anything, and they're a lot cheaper. Who needs windex which is just blue color added to ammonia and alcohol?
I think people these days are driven by maketing of large companies and have forgotten how to do things the 'normal' way, the way of the past, the way that has always worked. Don't let your TV tell you what you need to clean with, what you need to wipe with, what you need to cover your left-overs with, what you need to buy.
You can get along with much less money, and have much better quality. Disposable stuff is generally shit compared to the non-disposable counterpart. Next time you eat a meal use a regular towel/fabric napkin to wipe your face and clean up. It beats paper anyday. Fabric curtains can be cleaned easily (and plastic, really) instead of throwing it away.
I think we as a people of America or the world are losing our oral tradition, we are losing the knowledge of our elders to knowledge of corporate interests. I am not a hippy, I run my own business and I like the enterpreneurial spirit. I have a problem with people who do not think for themselves and follow the status quo. Think about it.
um, if you're anything like me and don't wash your towel after every shower you take, then getting away from the shower curtain and reaching for the towel takes you away from one nasty thing only to be rubbing your face on another. that towel is covered in bacteria and mold. the more you use it the more get rubbed on there, and the more skin cells are on there for them to feed on. it's especially bad if the towel isn't able to completely dry between showers.
this article just seems like a sensationalized version of what every person who has taken intro microbiology has done in lab. swab some nasty stuff, incubate, identify.
Oz: Pay no attention to that mold behind the curtain.
10 years ago after a fairly simple surgery to relieve pressure from a un-removable spinal cord tumor, I had an unpleasant (read: near fatal) encounter with just such a bug. MRSA (aka Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus. This SOB munches on most antibiotics, burps and asks for more) I woke up two months later with literally 16 different IV bags, 24 hour dialysis, respirator, 60 pounds lighter, suffering initial stages of kidney and liver failure, having swollen sufficiently for my outer skin to break and peel off in paperback sized sheets, blind in one eye and mentally deranged and disoriented from brain damage (insufficient Oxygen to the brain) and two months of bizarro-world type halucinations while I was out.
Ever had to have therapy just to learn to swallow again?
Now I'm very particular... perhaps neurotically so... but I use alcohol based hand cleaners constantly, change sheets/shower curtains/air filters etc religiously, and tend to even the most minor of cuts and scrapes with great detail (not to mention my emergency stash of Cipro and Amoxicillin for when I'm out in the wilderness hiking..) I'm sure I'm a statistical abberation, but it was a year long hell of recovery for me. I'm still struck by wierd memory problems and am constantly tested because of long term effects of kidney/liver damage. What suck is that I still need periodic (18-24 months) surgery to remove pressure on my spine. -(
welcome our flaky shower-curtain bacteria overlords.
;-)
Or maybe it's just the scientists that should get a shower from time to time?
This research has been funded by the shower curtain manufactures association of america.
"Buy new, it's good for you!"
I just buy cheap clear plastic ones, bleach them once a week and replace them ever few months. They're great for impromptu oil-wrestling matts too!
Sorry to leave you here, but I also have to go and buy another shower curtain, preferably a disposable one. Why is it that disposal seems to be the new cure-all in our society? What ever happened to cleaning and re-using? We'll end up causing a lot more problems than we solve..
The wizard of oz.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Glass doors on the shower so you can yell "I want to see boobies on the glass!!"
Sig temporarily out of service.
To think that a superior alien species could be defeated by something as simple as... GERMS... Do they really believe that could happen?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Buy a washable, preferrably clear, curtain. Wash it reguarly in the clothes washing machine. Clear is important because you can start to see the areas that get grimed. In addition, don't fold the shower curtain back; spread it out so it has time to dry. Using shower "sprays" also help prevent and even clean the shower.
So now I'm supposed to suddenly be afraid of doing something I've been doing my life without any ill effects so far? Sounds like a marketing ploy.
this goes with the old saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" An interesting article about this at 'http://healthandenergy.com/asthma_&_germs.htm '
The next time you take antibiotics, think about this: Lactobacillus and Streptococcus are two species of bacteria that outcompete many more harmful varieties of microbes. They each have characteristics which help to make the surface of your skin quite inhospitable for other invading microbes.
When you take antibiotics, your susceptibility to get a yeast infection (if your female) increases dramatically, since the acidic environment created by Lactobacillus' metabolic wastes makes life difficult at best for the yeast trying to establish itself.
Yeah, yeah...the shower curtain thing is pretty damn gross, but lighten up. As I am continually trying to convince my wife: living with a little bacteria will only serve to HELP our health rather than diminish it. (I can't believe I'm going to word it this way, but...) The more we work to build commensurate/mutualistic symbiotic relationships with bacteria the more we have to gain.
Watching television, you'd think we lived at bay, in total jeopardy, surrounded on all sides by human seeking germs, shielded against infection and death only by a chemical technology that enables us to keep killing them off. We are instructed to spray dissinfectants everywhere, into the air of our bedrooms and kitchens and with special energy into bathrooms, since it is our very own germs that seem the worst kind. We explode clouds of aerosol, mixed for good luck with deoderants, into our noses, mouths, underarms, priviledged crannies -- even into the intimate insides of our telephones. We apply potent antibiotics to minor scratches and seal them with plastic. Plastic is the new protector; we wrap the already plastic tumblers of hotel rooms in more plastic, and seal the toilet seats like state secrets, after irradiating them with ultraviolet light. We live in a world where the microbes are always trying to get at us, to tear us cell from cell, and we only stay alive through diligence and fear.
We still think of human disease as the work of an organized, modernized kind of demonology, in which the bacteria are the most centrally placed of our adversaries. We assume they must somehow relish what they do. They come after us for profit, and there are so many of them that disease seems inevitable, a natural part of the human condition; if we succeed in eliminating one kind of disease there will always be a new one at hand, waiting to take its place.
These are paranoid delusions on a societal scale, explainable in part by our need for enemies, and in part by what things used to be like.
--Lewis Thomas
Orginally printed in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Reprinted in the Book of the Month Club's "A Long Line of Cells". (Highly recommended)
KFG
I see this article covers pink, white and yellow bacteria. Does anyone know where I can find out if the brown gunk on my shower curtain is dangerous or not?
paintball
Apparently Roland Piquepaille is running out of things to submit to slashdot.
Bravo!
While we're at it, I've always wanted to see a field guide to identifying common household microorganisms. For instance, what (sets of) critters are responsible for the "pink ones", "yellow ones", or "white ones"?
Granted, there's no practical health value to knowing that, I've always been curious as to who's living with me. My curiosity was piqued by moving from one apartment to another, and noticing that where my "old" dish rack and shower used to tell me I was overdue for a full-blown bleaching by accumulating visible yellow stuff in the corner, my "new" dish rack tells me by displaying colonies of whatever the pink bugs were. "Hi! We've got a thick enough protective biofilm here that rinsing with water won't work! Nyaah nyaa-OMFG, IT'S THE SODIUM HYPOCHLAAAaauggh...."
Another bug story - the single-pane windows in my first apartment used to (probably still do) harbor colonies of some green-black mold that would slowly drop spores onto the windows' venetian blinds during winter. Ugh. I hated cleaning those blinds (bleach, paper towels, up-close-and-personal) myself, but there was no way to convince the landlord to do proper remediation of the cracks in the paint around the windowsill, because the landlord didn't want a "mold" claim on the building's record. If it'd been a house, I'd have fixed it out of my own pocket and never breathed a word to the insurance company, but the work required was too extensive for me to DIY and the landlord didn't want to hear of it. Fucker.
Anyways, whatever that mold was, it was badass. I first discovered it because some had dropped off the blinds and set up shop on the metal windowsill behind a pile of boxes that blocked my view of the windowsill for a whole winter. When I found it a few months later, the mold had etched marks into stainless steel. Not only was it badass mold, but weird mold. It ate metal (and presumably dust/skin flakes and other spores) all winter long, but it left the huge pile of yummy cellulose cardboard (the boxes) untouched.
By Cheryl Clark
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
May 2, 2004
Normally when you take a shower, you think you're alone. Now, a study by San Diego and Colorado researchers says otherwise, and it's enough to make you grab a towel.
You've got a lot of company with hundreds of millions of yellow, pink and white bacteria hiding in flaky schmutz on your shower curtain, just waiting to wreak havoc on the health of certain people.
That's according to a study by San Diego State University biology professor Scott Kelley, colleague Norman Pace, a University of Colorado professor, and three others.
The researchers aimed their microscopes at the grunge - or "soap scum biofilm" - a mix of soap, bacteria and bacteria waste products or mucous that forms thin, crusty layers. They examined four vinyl shower curtains from their own bathrooms. And they were amazed by what they saw.
"We were looking for the possibility that there would be pathogenic microbes (bacteria) living on the shower curtain biofilm, and they could be aerosolized and breathed in and cause problems for immune-compromised individuals," Kelley said.
Added Pace, "We were asking, when you take a shower, who are you taking a shower with? Who are you rubbing into wounds and what are you breathing?"
The researchers scrutinized key pieces of genetic material in each bacterium they found. They uncovered a surprisingly large, diverse community of hundreds to thousands of potentially harmful species, which sent them pronto to the store to replace their vinyl shields.
About 80 percent of the organisms they found in the flaky scum were in the same genetic families as those known to infect wounds or cause problems for people with AIDS, cancer or other immune system disorders.
Their paper has been accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology. Their research was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, the medical research arm of the federal government.
The opportunistic culprits were grouped into two families, Sphingomonas and Methylobacterium , which include some unsavory characters.
For example, the Sphingomonas includes S. paucimobilis, which can cause problems for immune-compromised patients or lead to blood stream or urinary tract infections, pneumonia and abscesses in the gut.
Methylobacterium also causes problems for people with AIDS, cancer or other immune system problems, inflammation and infections in the blood.
"Our results suggest that shower curtains harbor potential opportunistic pathogens that can threaten immune-compromised or otherwise ill patients," the researchers wrote. "Exposure can be minimized by regular cleaning or by exchanging shower curtains."
They also advised hospitals and residential facilities with immune-compromised residents to use disposable shower curtains.
Kelly and Pace emphasized that the bacteria they found on their shower curtains normally don't cause problems for humans. "We don't want to freak people out, because we're really only talking about immune-compromised people," Kelley said.
"If these pathogens get an opportunity to grow in the brain or blood stream of someone who can't fight back, the symptoms can be serious," he said.
It is unclear how many of these bacteria can be swooshed up by circulating air and water droplets and inhaled during a shower, and whether it's enough to cause any harm. It's also unknown whether aggressive use of soap and water at high enough temperatures annihilate the offensive pathogens.
A lot more work is needed to determine the source of the bacteria, which might be brought in through the water system or through dirt that accumulates on peoples' bodies during the day. What role soap plays when it mixes with the bacteria also is unclear.
In the meantime, Pace and Kelley are cautious and they advise others to be so as well.
"I clean my shower curtain more frequently now and change it much more r
how many slashdotters' actually shower?
100% of people come from the same genetic family as shit-throwing chimps.
paintball
Geez, how funny is it that three consecutive posts here are consistently modded "+1, funny" because people don't shower?!
There's actually a guy where I work who doesn't shower, and the smell got so bad I had to bring up the issue with him.
Whatever bacteria's growing on your shower curtain is probably nothing that a little *antibacterial* soap can't handle. Trust me, we'll all be better off for you having showered.
I just love it when these guys roll out and say stuff like this.
"There are more germs in your kitchen then there are on your toilet seat", seeming to imply that a toilet seat has fewer and less dangerous microbes than a kitchen sponge.
And now we have "There are lots of infectious, er, well at least they belong to infectious families, of bacteria on your shower curtain"
I'm sorry, but I can say that I've never gotten a wound infected while washing dishes or taking a shower. I can not say the same about cleaning a toilet. A word to the wise - if you have an open cut on your hand/arm, do not clean the toilet, even if you are wearing rubber gloves.
Anyway, do these guys really have nothing better to do than count bacteria on shower curtains and issue a press release about it? I'm sure whoever provided the grant money for this research is ecstatic.
-R
My body is an awesome machine. I have no interest in over-burdening its already taxed resources with the mental anguish of germ paranoia.
Breakfast served all day!
No more posting of articles that would potentially scare Unix admins from taking thier (weekly, monthly, yearly) bath. Thank you, a concerned citizen.
Do you realize how much of that dangerous shower-curtain bacteria is getting on your clothes when you put them in the washer? Might as well just rub your clean laundry all over your shower curtain.
paintball
Reminds me of the polio outbreak in the US. It actually occured when they fixed the sewer system. In the early 20th century kids would often play in the streets with open sewage, and although polio existed, it never got out of hand. However when they cleaned up the streets and installed a modern sewage system, the infection rate shot up? Why? Because the kids playing in the streets with the open sewage developed an immunity to the disease early, but after the sewers were cleaned up, the kids did not get exposed to weaker forms and thus the contraction rate shot up.
This is why I think young people in America are going to be a lot more susceptible to disease as they grow older. As the germ phobes buy all these "anti-bacterial" products, it tends to make the developing immune systems in the children weaker because they do not have an opportunity to fight diseases at a young age. Sensationalist media like this doesn't help.
Anyways, whatever that mold was, it was badass. I first discovered it because some had dropped off the blinds and set up shop on the metal windowsill behind a pile of boxes that blocked my view of the windowsill for a whole winter. When I found it a few months later, the mold had etched marks into stainless steel. Not only was it badass mold, but weird mold. It ate metal (and presumably dust/skin flakes and other spores) all winter long, but it left the huge pile of yummy cellulose cardboard (the boxes) untouched.
Hopefully you kept a sample of that around.. we might need it when the machines try to take over.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Obviously nobody told him to not wipe his ass with the shower curtain.
I don't use a plastic shower curtain because they exude toxic plastic byproducts called thalates that get in your blood stream where they reak havoc with your immune system. Yes, any type of shower curtain will be a refuge for nasty bacteria mold and fungi. I take a bath.
Bacteria in my shower.... big whoop. Here's a real eye opener:
In 2001 a comet exploded over Kerala, India. For days after the event, it rained red. While this made the news around the world, what didn't make it were the subsequent analyses of the content of the rain. These two papers describe a microbe which was discovered to cause the red tint to the rain. It has no DNA, metabolizes a wide variety of organic and inorganic materials, and actively breeds at 300 degrees C. Is this proof of alien life?
Who cares about bacteria in my shower? This stuff probably came from the stars.
(This story submission was rejected by the editors, insert crack smoking comment here)
"Yes, thereare bacteria upon your shower curtain. It's (often) warm and moist."
Fortunately, most Slashdot readers have never been exposed to a warm, moist area.
paintball
I knew there had to be a valid excuse to stop taking showers.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yeah, that and parents that smoke.
Have a smoker in the house, and all other risk factors are so small to be irrelevant.
Do you realize that as a discussion grows longer, the probability of a random string of characters e.g. "geftsdaktoanflqewer" occuring also approaches 1?
Godwin's law is silly.
Did anyone notice the bottom of the article had the following:
ADVERTISER LINKS
Shower Curtain Hooks
Compare Prices at 40,000 Stores. Cheap Prices at www.(takenout).com!
Shower Curtain Rod
Designer Linen & Towels on Sale Act Fast! Canadian Auction Ends Now
www.(takenout).ca
The article also says this (referring to the scientists) [emphasis added]:
For the rest of us, it's clean the curtain every few weeks, or consider glass, they say.
So taking in the whole article, and especially the quotes by the scientists, I don't see anything to worry about for otherwise healthy people. I certainly don't find anything alarmist in the scientists' statements.
There's no reason to go throwing away a perfectly good shower curtain when you can just wash it in the washing machine. I can't find the original hint from Heloise, but here's the gist of it:
Put your vinyl shower curtain in the washing machine with some laundry detergent, a little bleach, and a few towels. Use the regular wash cycle with warm water. The towels help "scrub" the shower curtain, so it will come out of the machine clean and organism-free. Hang it back up to dry.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
Why not just clean more often?
"...close enough, right?"
That's, "Close enough, Eh" to you!
Vodka will apparently kill germs Vodka Wash
I've been in my apartment for about 2 years. I've had the same shower curtain this entire time. About six months after I got it, it started developing these ugly white bloches.
:-) It works quite well.
Not wanting to buy a new curtain I let it go. About 3 months ago, it was so bad, I felt embarassed to let people use my bathroom. Finally, I went to take it down to replace buy a new one and I noticed a little white tag with washer-instructions. Didn't I feel a little sheepish.
Morale of the story: you can wash your shower current
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
... I thought it was funny. I just hope you weren't serious.
The author's right. What he didn't say however, was that the white bacteria (Staphylococcus) that are nasty infectors are probably not the Staph that is on the shower curtain. I'd expect most Staph there to be Staph epididymus, which occurs superabundantly on human skin. The yellow bacteria (called Sarcina lutea when I went to school) are, after Staph epididymus the most common bugs in inhabited houses. So yes - scratch your head or elsewhere, and you'll leave your bacteria on your shower curtain. But it's not worth having nightmares about at night. BTW, when a bleach compound (Tilex, etc., or a 5% solution of plain old household bleach) is used on a surface, the effect is good for about 3-4 days. I make my living doing indoor air quality studies. Convincing people that they should be clean, etc. is a good first step.
Uh...yeah...like did you read the part where I said "thanks to abuse of these medicines by our own medical system?"
Duh. -1, pointless.
I just take off my glasses. Ta-daa, my shower is always sparkling white*.
*My vision bites the big one.
you can cut yourself shaving tehn hop in the shower, and get a stapf infection from closing the curtain.
/me wonders who he can sue for this outrage
With the advent of anti-bacterial soap, hand sanitizer, etc, etc we are paving the way for our childrens immune systems to be non existent.
Enter bubbleco perveyors of sterile bubble environments since 2004.
I was under the impression that bacteria and germs weren't so much bad. Hell how long have people survived without Penecillin and hand sanitizer, or that Lysol that kills 99.9% of bacteria and germs.
I myself refuse to use nor will I allow the use of any of these anti-bacterial cleansers, for fear that by having an environment 99.9% germ free will somehow damage my daughters health.
The moment you are exposed to a germ your sicker than had you eaten rancid meat.
History is riddled with examples.
I'm not saying you should stop cleaning your toilet, but regular cleaning with normal cleansers should be fine.
Lest we not forget that our bodies have bacteria in them to begin with, saliva, stomach enzymes, god knows what lives in our ears (insert q-tip here)
The point is we should not worry about killing 99.9% of germs, for it'll be that 0.1% that does our species in.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
there was no way to convince the landlord to do proper remediation of the cracks in the paint around the windowsill, because the landlord didn't want a "mold" claim on the building's record.
This just sounds like BS:
1. There are lots of tradespeople willing to work for cash.
2. If your landlord was really paranoid about a "mold" claim, threaten to tell his insurance company (and local building inspectors, and city health department, etc). I'm sure he would be amenable to a negotiated solution.
I cannot believe that bacteria actually live in a damp, most of the time warm, and majority of the time lightless atmosphere. This is the greatest scientific acheivement of the 21st century. Noble is rolling over in his grave. They better patent this finding before someone else does. jeez!
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
Scrub those floors, disinfect the tub, vacüum everyday, install those air-purifiers! And amidst all that paranoïa don't forget to ask yourself where that latest allergy came from!
Come on! A body nééds those everyday bacteria to arm itself or it crumbles after the weakest punch it gets.
"About 80 percent of the organisms they found in the flaky scum were in the same genetic families as those known to infect wounds or cause problems for people with AIDS, cancer or other immune system disorders."Yep, most people won't be bothered...by that percentage of microbes found on curtains, which have also been spotted in other circumstances for causing problems to people with immune system disorders.(but that just doesn't sound as sensational, does it?)
fucking neurotic as hell, and twice are hardheaded....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Although not stated explicitly in the article, people being treated by Chemotherapy have their immune system killed or very depleted. Knowing that a shower curtain may contain harmful bacteria growths could be life-saving. Most likely, nothing life-threatening is growing there, but the article does provide more information about one area where people feel safe but might not be.
By the way, we have found that the best disenfectant is bleach, sodium hypochlorite. Better than alcohol or Lysol. Don't apply to cloth shower curtains though. 'Also found that anti-bacterial hand soap is basically worthless.
Did you enjoy your time under Isreali indentured servitude?
I suppose you re-use your toilet paper until you can't find any white areas on it?
I think we as a people of America or the world are losing our oral tradition, we are losing the knowledge of our elders to knowledge of corporate interests
Time for whacky conspiracy theories.
You are forgetting the fact that marketing fails unless it sells something we actually need. Besides, the "old ways that always worked" gave us massive cholera epidemics, flu die-offs, and rotten teeth. If you want to that way because you are imagining things about "corporations" go right ahead. "Don't let your TV tell you what you need to clean with, what you need to wipe with, what you need to cover your left-overs with, what you need to buy."
Why not? Let the TV tell me anything. I am smart enough to decide for myself. Only the weak-minded fear TV.
Please! I'm so sick-and-tired of germophobes! I grew up in a trailer house full of dogsh1t and I swear that I never get sick. If I had grown up with a germophobe for a parent I'd probably need to live in a bubble on account of my underdeveloped immune system.
Thank you for making my day
Time to watch some Python!
Here are things that will affect you more than the shower curtain:
1) Those water filtering pitchers that live in your fridge (e.g., Brita filters). My family seemed to keep getting sick (colds, or sore throat) until we started taking real good care to clean the pitcher out regularly (dishwasher).
2) The pink stuff that can grow on your toothbrush (down at the bottom of the bristles). Yuck! I now *dry* my toothbrush off with a clean towel after use.
3) Razor blades! I used to get "shaving bubbles" under my chin and a rather irritated face until I dipped the double-edged razor in rubbing alcohol after every use.
I'm sure the shower scum isn't too healthy either, but heck, the easiest access microbes have to your body is through the mouth.
I'm sure many people are familiar with seeing mold on their shower curtain. As long as you have a white curtain that is fairly durable, just toss some bleach and some soap into the washer and let it go. Ironically enough, I did this just this last saturday.
:(){
We're already starting to learn that to try and eradicate bacteria and other pathogens in our environment is a tactic that backfires badly.
For millions of years our immune system has evolved to protect us from most of these microbes and until recently a satisfactory balance has developed that allow us to co-exist without too many problems.
Unfortunately (and probably driven by idiotic chemical companies) a new mindset developed in the mid 20th century which suggested we should "kill all germs" using whatever disinfectant or antibiotic was most profitable to sell.
There are a growing number of health professionals who now claim that our immune system is actually becoming weaker -- since it's seeing fewer threats. This would be fine and dandy except that bacteria and new pathogens (prions etc) are on the comeback path -- their ability to adapt/evolve extremely rapdily meaning that many of our chemicals and antibiotics are now largely ineffective.
In effect, they're doing a Borg act and already adapted to become immune to our weapons.
The ultimate example of this are the growing number of antibiotic resistant bacteria that now pose a real threat and can't be killed by even our last line of defence -- vancomycin. If you are infected by one of these, you and your immune system pretty much on your own and death is quite likely.
There is now also evidence to suggest that the dramatic rise in asthma is a result of our "cleaner living" and the reduction in bacterial and mould levels in our homes.
It's about time that we woke up to the fact that, with only a few exceptions, bacteria are our friends and pose little or no threat to us.
Even the deadly staph normally lives quite happily in our sinuses and other parts of the body. It only becomes a threat under unusual circumstances which allow it to grow at a rate beyond our immune system's ability to cope.
So, be friends with your shower curtain and learn to appreciate that by being exposed to its bacteria on a daily basis, you're actually doing yourself a favour by exercising your immune system to make it stronger and more capable for when it's really needed.
Too bad they didn't post a picture, I'd love to post that in my dorm bathroom....
Who's behind the Shower Curtain?
Better be a hot naked woman.
On a related note, do you know if there's any truth to the idea that a too-clean environment can cause our overactive immune systems to develop allergies? (I.e., should I blame mom?)
You know...most people just take up bird watching isntead.
This is just an unclever ploy by some bleach manufacturer to get you to spray more bleach all over your bathroom, which will ultimately end up giving you cancer. Of course there are germs in your bathroom, thats why you don't ever read 'Lovely Eat in Bathrooms' in real estate listings. Take your shower curtain and throw it in the washing machine every once in a while. If your immune system is working at all, and you refrain from licking the shower curtain, you have nothing to worry about.
TallGreen CMS hosting
is this doing on Slashdot? Shouldn't weird PSAs like this belong on other sites?
http://www.walkingtaco.com
Scrubbing. You may have heard of it: take some rough surface, such as a scrubby pad or a brush, immerse the curtain in hot water in your tub and scrub. I know all this newfangled cleansing technology is unfamiliar to most slashdotters, so I thought I would mention it. Scrubbing also works as well as antibacterial soap in removing bacteria from parts of the body such as the hands and face.
Just remember that every time you flush the toilet, a fine aerosol mist of water contaminated with fecal matter is thrown into the air. Best not to leave toothbrushes hanging in open-air holders. Also, toothbrushes are not to be used for cleaning household surfaces such as toilet bowls.
Note also that if left long enough, bacterial colonies may develop into advanced civilizations on your shower curtain, so clean early and clean often unless you enjoy genocide.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Hell I am not concerened with the shower curtain.. I am more concerened with the kitchen sponge... they are proven to contain much more bacteria and we smear this on our plates and silverware? we ingest all of this bacteria and germs.. shesh.. makes me sick to my stomach thinking about that...
Tip use a rag instead of a sponge.. atleast that you can throw in the washing machine...
Bleach is a disinfectant, not an antibiotic, so germs don't really develop resistance to it. It would be like you or I developing resistance to being boiled in acid. Possible? I guess. But orders of magnitude more difficult than evolving resistance to an antibiotic.
Goodness gracious, how pathetic!
Why are you people so concerned about
"potentially harmful species" ? From
reading the article, there are no actual
examples of real people being hurt by
these possibly-harmless bacteria.
Sounds like a potential to develop a capacity to
produce Weapons of Mass Destruction: irrelevant!
-peter.
Seriously. This is a non-issue. We as a society are obsessed with cleanliness, to the point where we are making it difficult, if not impossible, for our bodies to build up a proper immune system.
Case in point: my niece came down with chicken pox. My immediate reaction was to ring up a friend of mine (who has four daughters, all under six years of age) and ask if he'd like to bring them around to meet her, and hopefully catch the disease. Yes, I'm serious. He would've accepted, too, except that one of them was a very young premature baby (and fair enough too).
A little dirt and muck in our lives is a good thing. It's not something to be avoided at all costs. "That which does not kill me", and all that.
>>About 80 percent of the organisms they found in the flaky scum were in the same genetic families as those known to infect wounds or cause problems for people with AIDS, cancer or other immune system disorders.
Let's not forget that potatoes and tomatoes are in the same genetic family (Solanaceae) as [gasp] Deadly Nightshade. And carrots are in the same genetic family (Umbeliferae) as [horrors] Poison Hemlock. And little Fluffy the Cockapoo over there is in the same genetic family (Canidae) as the dreadful Dire Wolf. Little sucker might turn on you at any minute.>Who pays for "studies" like this? I predict if you follow the money, you'll find that this fine product is from the makers of Lysol and other fine household products.
Actually, this one was funded by the National Institutes of Health. That makes it just stupid, rather than nefarious, I guess.Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Just a question. I'm not a biologist. Doesn't this make the "classification of all things" sort of inadequate, since it apparently can't classify all things?
I thought that species couldn't be divided in any scientifically meaningful way, but the fact that these have separate names, "K12" and "0157:H7", suggest that there is a quantifiable difference between these organisms.
"I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
Yes, there are. A German medical journal over 2 years ago did show correlation that children born and raised in very clean environments are more likely to develop allergies and tend to have more allergies than children raised in normal households.
Same holds true for dogs. Mutts living on the streets are usually the healthiest dogs needing the least amount of health care.
I keep mine for a few months, and then get rid of them, as like the article said, they get nasty, even when cleaned regularly. I tend to visit my local Target, and purchase a decent curtain for $10, which is disposable AFAIC. They aren't exactly recyclable, so I'm contributing to the landfill problem, but hell, half of Seattle is build on landfill, and without people like me throwing things away, this town wouldn't exist :)
Fortunately my shower curtain is blue. Those yellow, pink and white bacteria can't hide from me.
To the best of my knowledge wills and the like can't be submitted with password protection.
Some cats swing, and others don't. Don't you be the kind that won't.
Do the bacteria on the wounds grow internally? From our own bodies?
No! They're present in the atmosphere and show activity whenever they find a suitable host. Now what could be a better place for them to live on other than those where there is abundance of food for them? And conditions suited to their multiplication too. The study is just a worhtless use of avaiable money.
STOP THIS BEFORE IT ALL STOPS YOUR NORMAL WORKING
Sometime ago, we had article that Computer Workplaces are hellhole of infestation, more than a public toilet.
Now, we have more on something that we were normal about.
Is is that big that it'd make impact in the public? People have been very much alright using computers or taking a bath in the morning. For god's sake we don't have an immune system for nothing. If anything, it just makes us more strong to microbes. Long time ago, i read that children growing up in homes with pets develop more immunities.
I live in India, and from all my unhygenic surroundings, all i've got so far is a 3 day cold in 18yr life!
Getting exposed to things isn't that bad. (except for radiation, unless you blieve in radioactive man)
I can take a bath without "You do know your bathing in your own filth dont you?"
AAARGHHH
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
Try it on you feet. Kills fungi and other things buy changing the PH. Safe albeit a little stinky; but much less than your feet. Spray a little in your shoes too. Oh and the price is right too.
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
Yeah and everyone's toothbrush is ripe with fecal coliform bacteria also. That doesn't mean I'm not going to brush my teeth every day either.
I got a 100% cotton shower curtain at Target; when it gets stinky I just throw it in the washing machine, snaps back wash after wash.
Oh, and "EEEWWWWW! The Sky is falling! The bacteria are swarming all over me!" Wah wah wah. Roll around in it a bit, you wussies! Jeez people are wimps nowadays.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
People being people, they too often end up using the hand or cloth and not washing it.
"I would much rather wipe my arse with a clean cloth (possibly one moist, and one for drying) than a two-ply toilet paper"
Do you use the long tail of your shirt for this?
"I don't know about you, but I don't need a dry ass."
so it is you! I was wondering who was leaving those brown moist stains on the seat of the bus whenever they got up.
I just got out of the hospital after 2 weeks and 1 major surgery.
Here they are insisting on my showering to keep my wound clean!
Well, isn't that one of the reasons why they sell shower LINERS? You can keep your favorite shower curtain as long as you like, just change the liner once a year or so.
Given that Nerds DON'T shower. How is this News For Nerds. Stuff that matters?
And for those who think I jest - I have friends who's main use for a shower stall is a storage area.
The best way to clean your shower curtain is to throw it away and buy another one :P We have a vinyl inner and a fabric outer, and the fabric one stays, while the vinyl one gets replaced occasionally.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually it makes sense to expose yourself to pathogens, bacteria etc while you're still young and your immune system can cope. When you're old you really should use all that anti-bacterial stuff because your immune system won't be as strong as it once was.
Have these guys checked their own bodies and blood lately. Seems they might be suprised to find lots of bacteria and germs and damn I should be dead already.
we use the 'cloth' shower curtians -- they're washable.
And yes, they do an excellent job of keeping the water in the shower. You can get 'em at Wally World (among other places) relatively inexpensively.
Religion is for people afraid of going to hell.
The post-op anitbiotic is worse than the operation, but it only lasts seven days. There was no pain from the surgery unless I bumped my nose, and the relief in my breathing was immediate from the moment I left the hospital. I had a deviated septum that's had the right side of my head plugged up most of my life - I'd do the entire operation again in a heartbeat and, in fact, if my ear doesn't empty of fluid on its own in another month or so I'll get a tube put in there to drain it.
I've had sinus problems my entire life. I don't think people who don't have chronic sinus problems can understand what a miserable experience it can be, getting infection after infection every time you get a stupid cold. Repeated infections cause polyps (not to mention resistant strains from all the antibiotics) which just plugs it all up worse - that's how they know about the staph. Kinda silly to be second guessing now, as I already made clear I've HAD the surgery.
People who HAVE had chronic sinus problems their entire lives also cannot know what a relief it is to be rid of it. Modern technology is a wonderful thing and, in the long run, the operation was less than all the rest of the money I've spent over the years on doctor visits and lost work.
Please, please don't tell the Marine Corps!!! It'll switch the focus from towelheads to raiding the towels and shower curtains! And if the Army finds out, who knows.......
Honor belongs to those who dare, not to the critic who sits by and stares
cloth curtains? they can be worse than plastic. especially if you're at an enemy's house and you wipe your ass with the curtain.
If it wasn't good for you.... God wouldn't have made it taste so good.
"About 80 percent of the organisms they found in the flaky scum were in the same genetic families as those known to infect wounds or cause problems for people with AIDS, cancer or other immune system disorders."
So these germs can be found absolutely anywhere - even shower curtains. Further, that if you have an reduced immunity, you're even more suceptible to these germs or ones that are related to the ones on shower curtains.
Wow - I'm completely amazed by this breakthrough! Perhaps it is these organisms that cause diseases, and not the humours or the Devil. Here I was blaming my neighbour who be a witch!
Okay, let's live in a sterile environment, and hop we never have to take up a bacteria infested mouse, showercurtain, doorknob,... until we die from a plain ordinary cold... we need those bacteria to build up defenses for the bigger ones...
people were living in caves for many thousand years before they even invented shower curtains. sometimes it's ridiculous all that cleanliness cult ...
I'm sure there's dozens of nerd household tips already and all, but I periodically toss my vinyl internal shower curtain in the washing machine and run it on hot cycle two or three times, taking it out and uncoiling it in between washes as the curtain tends to get all wound up in the machine. I don't know how much energy really goes into making the curtain (and how that compares to the amount of water and electricity being used), so I don't know if it's actually efficient to prolong the life of $4.99 curtains like this... but a few cents in water and detergent works for my budget.
The interesting part was that half the teachers in organic- and biochemistry had nervous tics or outright shivers. They were older guys that had been doing that work for 2-3 decades.
Despite the smells I loved to lab on organic chemistry since there were no need to measure weights to lots of decimal places.
But poisonous stuff that goes through the skin of my ten thumbs is NOT a long time plan... :-)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
One of the rowing team, a tough one, drank this mushroom stuff first. The rest of the guys drank his urine. (After spending a lot of winters without central heating I guess you'd do crazy stuff.)
I think all this stopped with christianity a thousand years ago. (-: Religion, not even xianity, is all bad. :-)
Why do they have flaky scum on their shower curtains? Perhaps it's time they cleaned their showers.
-Rich
I see two problems with your criticism: First, you don't know the difference between science and magazine articles; and second, you only look at the study from your own limited experience - and because you, personally, have had no problem with surface bacteria you conclude that there is no problem.
What's sorely missing from this article is any sense of journalism.
This was a scientific study, NOT journalism. The study, albeit reported in a popular article, reports the facts. YOU are the one who sees a "the sky falling" article. The problem is that you are not imaginative enough to see that the world does not revolve around you. You erroneously conclude that since you don't have a problem then there just must not be one. True, bacteria on a shower curtain will not be a problem for most people, but there are subgroups, perhaps those in hospitals, who could find it a serious problem. It is the same as a day of poor air quality - most healthy people are unaffected but there are some (the very young, the very old or the very sick) that suffer or die.
Knowledge of this possible route of transmission of infection can be important for people with wounds or for people with compromised immune systems. Just because you do not have an open wound on your leg that could become gangrenous does not mean that awareness of high bacteria levels on shower curtains is unimportant to those who do have such wounds. Just because you do not have a compromised immune system from chemotherapy does not mean that the possibility of aerosolized bacteria is unimportant to those who have. Just because you do not have HIV or AIDS does not mean that this potential source of fatal infections is not important to those that do. Burn patients, for example, would be particularly susceptable to this type of contact exposure.
No, this study was not BS at all. Your comment, however, is a different matter.
well... for as long as you know where your towel is
More than 42 uses for a towel
Some people have way too much money. Why not take the offending curtain down and throw it, plastic rings and all, into your washing machine using the warmwash/cold rinse with some bleach and detergent? WARNING: Do NOT use your dryer to dry the curtain. Just re-hang it in your bathroom!
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!
From the article:
Their research was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, the medical research arm of the federal government.
I suggest you read the article before making claims that the whole study is bunk.
Now I know why my wounds keep getting infected!
What crap.
Godwin himself stated that the law accredited to him is a tongue-in-cheek analysis of statistics, not a method of enforcement, and that it was never intended to be used to stop a thread or declare a "winner". So maybe you should stop doing it, perhaps. You Nazi.
Virg
Buy a washable shower curtain. They saty cleaner longer and ultimately cheaper than the smelly vinyl ones.
> do you really want your shower door visibly clean? I thought you slashdotters were concerned about privacy!
Yes, I know it's a joke, but c'mon! Visibly clean doesn't mean transparent. My car is visibly clean after a washing, but that doesn't mean I can see the engine through the hood. The serious point is that it's easy to tell when the soap scum has built up on a glass door, and it's relatively easy to clean correctly. Not so with vinyl, unless you take it down and toss it in the washer.
Virg
The fact that you're missing is how the bacteria get transmitted. Following your example, you basically couldn't go into any kitchen. Could never enter any public bathroom. Could never use any public doorknob. There's tons of bacteria everywhere.
I just make sure that if I've got an open cut on my hand, I don't start wiping it on everything. Oh, and I don't spend time licking shower curtains.
Oh, and the reason that most antibacterial soap doesn't work is that it uses an antibiotic to kill the bacteria. Bacteria will evolve beyond just about every regularly applied antibiotic out there in a fairly short time. You're just helping their evolution along by providing them with regular pressure, with nice breaks to allow for reproduction. This is also what's causing problems in hospitals, since for the longest time, doctors prescribed antibiotics for everything. Bacteria have moved on, but antibiotics haven't.
Be glad life is unfair, otherwise we'd deserve all this.
Chlorine Bleach every few months will solve any bacterial issues you may have with your shower curtain.
Its called 'cleaning the bathroom' - something everyone should do on a regular basis for several reasons:
1. I don't know about you, but I like using a clean bathroom.
2. It would do many people good to do some humble tasks on a regular basis.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
You got it. Anyone who oppose the extermination of the Jews is an ass-liker, and any Jew who dares to fight back is even worse. You tell them, Herr A.C.!
come on!!! think about the children!!!
--- Just say no to negativity.
Do they have shower curtains in gyms? No, the floor is slopy, collecting water towards the egress pipe.
Also, in many Asian cultures too, there is no need for a shower curtain, due to the sloped bathroom floor.
[On a side note, disposable shower curtains - landfill!!]
http://himalayantraveller.blogspot.com/
You're married aren't you?
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Actually, I'm a kidney transplantee and thus continuously immunosuppressed to keep me from rejecting. We don't worry about surface bacteria any more than people with normal immune systems.
I've often wondered about that. I don't know anybody who takes any immunosuppressants; what sort of extra everyday precautions do you take (if any)? Personally I catch a cold or a light flu usually about once or twice a year for a few days. I presume you have to make some extra effort to avoid stuff like that?
Aw crap, ninjas!
Cotton shower curtians solve this non issue since they can easily be washed.
While I think your sig is quite amusing, you might want to change "it's" the contraction to "its" the possesive, which is what you were going for.
Roland said Sorry to leave you here, but I also have to go and buy another shower curtain, preferably a disposable one.
Why would you even consider buying a "disposable" shower curtain (what a tremendous waste--they would fill up landfills if they even existed) when you can buy a washable fabric shower curtain, rig up some sort of quick-release system, and throw it in the washing machine with a capful of bleach once a week.
Just out of curiosity, why are you taking clarithromycin instead of, say, azithromycin, which has fewer unpleasant side effects?
:)
Sorry: I just wrote the exam for my fourth-year pharmacology course and it's still very much fresh in my mind
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
While we're at it, I've always wanted to see a field guide to identifying common household microorganisms. For instance, what (sets of) critters are responsible for the "pink ones", "yellow ones", or "white ones"?
It's extremely tough to do this properly at home, because any group of household microorganisms is actually going to be a mixed population. It can be done, but be prepared to pick up some sterile-wrapped agar plates, a bunsen burner, and a large quantity of straight ethanol.
Back to the task at hand: it's often impossible to tell which bacteria is which based solely on its colour. To properly identify what bugs are crudding up your shower curtain it's best to have it done by a clinical lab where they can check the microorganism's nutritional requirements, motility, and microscopic appearance. There are entire books dedicated to the subject!
It's been two years since I've done any microbiology, so I'm probably pretty rusty. I'd say off the top of my head, though, that you're most likely to find that they're from the following genera (in no particular order): Escherichia, Proteus, Staphylococcus, Klebsiella, Pseudomonas, Neisseria, Bacillis and Streptococcus.
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
trust in your antibodies.
---- Where is my mind?
I'm not a biologist either, but try this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subspecies
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Isn't better than the holel(ordinary ones) ;-)
tables in India ?