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 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!!!
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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'
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.
has it occurred to you that the body kills bacteria, but chemical bioaccumlation is forever?
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
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
Bleach breaks down pretty quickly. It dramatically alters the local PH, but doesn't tend to persist.
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...
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.
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.
Rub some in an open sore and keep it moist for a week. Then come back and tell us!
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.
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.
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.
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.