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Pillows Dangerous for Your Health
Roland Piquepaille writes "I guess we shouldn't be surprised by the fact that our pillows are miniature zoos containing millions of fungal spores, with some species able to cause diseases and even death. Researchers at the University of Manchester have studied the fungal contamination of our pillows for the first time in seventy years and discovered that these pillows were hot beds of fungal spores. After dissecting both feather and synthetic pillows in regular use between several months and 20 years, they've "identified several thousand spores of fungus per gram of used pillow -- more than a million spores per pillow."
As a challenge for my immune system. If I am weak, I shall die... but if I strong, I shall live and reproduce! My genetic information will spread!
And how many spores do I inhale just by walking outside my front door? How many live in the rugs at my place of work? How many may be found in the seats at the movie theater? Millions. Thats why he have an immune system IIRC.
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Goodnight Timmy and don't let the fungal spores cause you respiratory distress.
adopt a dog from the SPCA. Great companions, and great pillows too!*
I used to have a german shep/rot mix. loyal as can be and a great companion to the end. He also made a great pillow too!
Grump
*until it farts or wants to get up and leave.
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
A lot of this comes accross as scare tactics, imo. Fungal spores are very, very small things. So you have several thousand per gram, and a million of em on your pillow. How does this compare to other non-pillow personal objects? Is this unusual? It would have been nice if the reporter commented on data from the negative control such as a pillow nobody sleeps on. Furthermore, what percentage of these million fungi are actually pathogenic?
Health experts are now warning of population explosions of foreign life forms able to subsist upon only sunlight and air. These dangerous beings, dubbed "plants" by leading scientists, pose a grave new threat to humanity.
An excerpt from the Journal of Science quotes Dr. Hys Tarea of the University of New Dehli: "With unlimited energy sources, these plants will cover every corner of arable land and consume large quantities of the earth's atmosphere if left unchecked, expelling only oxygen waste. These life forms have been living among us for millions of years and only now is the danger apparent. We must move quickly if we are to save lives."
What's the deal with the ratcheting up of thread counts lately? I go into Bed Bath and Beyond or some other consumer hell and even the off-brand junk is advertising 1000-2000 threads. It's silly because most of those fabrics are still junk, but junk with a lot of threads. Personally, after going through two expensive sets of name-brand, high-thread bedding that hardly lasted 3 years, I bought a set from a hotel supplier. They don't specify it, but if I had to guess, I'd say the thread count is 250 or so. They feel great and are like-new after years of use.
As for bleach, try hanging your bedding in the sun. It works great and costs nothing.
I was hoping that perhaps the editors had finally broken their unspecified "arraignment" with Roland Piquepaille due to the enormous outcry, but alas, they waited until things cooled-down from his 50 submissions a week, and are now once again accepting anything he submits.
/. reader again.
This time, the only link to his "news" site is the link for his name, but I don't think that will last for long. By his 40th story this time next week we can be assured that a quick paraphrase....er..."overview" will quietly slip in again, and multiply from there.
To think, I almost became a regular
The really interesting thing is that if the editors came clean on a lot of things from the outset, it would allay a lot of concerns, instead they give us a wall of silence except when it comes time to ask for subscriptions.
There are probably other problems in the world to worry about other than fungus in pillows.
You're right.
FUNGUS IN MATTRESSES! OH MY GOD, WE'RE GOING TO DIE! AAAAAAAAA!
Here is a list of contributors to the Fungal Research Trust: Fujisawa Corporation, Oxford Glycosciences, F2G Ltd, Chronic Granulomatous Disorder Research trust, Aventis, Janssen Research Foundation, Roche, Schering Plough Corporation, The Liposome Company, Merck Inc, Imedex Inc, Bristol Myers Squibb, Aronex Ltd, Vestar Inc, Eli Lilly, BioMerieux, Alza Corporation, Pfizer Inc, Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, Novartis, Phairson Ltd, GlaxoWellcome, The Gossett Trust, The Clear Group, British Medical Association, Basilea, Valeant, Orthobiotech.
Question: Are the pharmaceutical companies funding the Trust out of the kindness of their hearts, or is the Trust a way of maximizing shareholder value?
If a pharmaceutical company wants to do some research that is risky to people, the company can avoid liability by having the work done by a "charitable" trust.
The Trust can even collect money from the public, and use it to fund research that will eventually end in a profitable product.
Especially slashdotters who expect to get a girl into a bed full of filthy pillows that they're using to "boost their immune system"
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Break out the aluminium foil.
Cotton can survive spending an hour at over 100C, fungi and germs cannot. Cover one oven tray with foil, put the second tray at the next lowest position and put your pillows on it. The foil should prevent the cotton from burning due to direct IR exposure.
I never saw the point in high threadcount until I had bedding with high threadcount. I notice a big difference, but being a guy, I'm a bit rough around the edges to start with. Girls notice a HUGE difference though. I think 1500tc is maybe overkill even with good material, but I got a great deal on my bedding. I got like $6,000 worth for $2,000 (comforter, duvet, sheets, pillows). I went from sleeping on a $100 futon mattress tossed on the floor my whole life to sleeping on satin sheets and $400 italian goose down checked pillows. I've never slept so soundly and comfortably. I wish I had spent the money and time investing in high quality bedding (and bed) many years ago. I could have avoided a lot of groggy mornings and painful aching days.
Anyway, I don't care if there's bed bugs in my bed. I figure my pubic lice have to be strong enough to kill them all while I sleep.
Fungus in mushrooms! OMG!
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
For increadibly high thread counts, be careful your bed doesn't fork.
Break out the aluminium foil
Not to worry. If you don't have an oven, you can still use the foil to wrap your pillow or your head.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
On the other hand, I don't think the parent poster wanted to destroy the spores.
He said his wife was asthmatic and AFAIK (im not allergologist, only MD), Acari are much more common allargen causing asthma and therefor I think that's what they targeted in their cleaning method.
Like he said : people are living with all these bacterial spores for ages without much problems. There's no point at all in sleeping in a surgical-grade sterile bed. Only some people have asthma problems and must pay a little attention.
Reasons why sterile bed sheets are stupid :
- There's litteraly millions of bacterial spore around. A few more or less in the bed aren't making change at all.
- Out of the incredible amount of bacterial species, only a really tiny fraction are pathogens. The biggest fraction don't harm the human body at all. Mostly because they just don't reproduce well in "body environnement" (for exemple : most bacteria have an optimal temperature of 20C or less, whereas pathogenes are usually among the few that work better around 37C)
- TFA is about fungal spores (Aspergillus in this case). Normally, fungi *are completly harmless*, except in some very *special* occasion, like reduced immunological function (the article mentions leukemia, AIDS and drugs like steroids and drugs used for transplantations) and/or free sterile niche (we human aren't sterile at all. But most of the time we are covered with completly harmless bacteria, that just sit here and take the place, so there's no more free room for pathogens. - Example : when taking antibiotics that are to strong and not enough specific, too much of the normal harmless bacteria may die and thus leaving place for Candida to proliferate). Healthy people shouldn't care.
- Allergies (and asthma) don't develop just like this by themself. For an allargen to create a new allergy, there must be always some chemical that triggers the immune system, usually an irritating one (in case of Acari, it's the protease that they secrete in their feces. In case of animal fur, it's other enzymes that are present in the saliva and that the animal spreads on his/her fur when cleaning him/herself). But spores are, as you said, an inactiveted form of the bacteria, sleeping and waiting for better time. And thus, they don't secrete much, so they cannot produce irritating chemicals that could trigger an immune reaction. Therefor, they cannot create a new allergy on their one. There's only an allergic reaction if something else has previously created an allergy and if antibodies of this new allergy can also cross-react with the non-irritating stuff.
- Some evidence tend to show that sterile environnement *may* be bad for allergy. Because allergy is a form of immune system malfunction, and in non sterile environnement you keep one's immune system busy with other things, therefor preventing allergy to happen in those people who have such allergic immune system.
Once again, I'm not an allergologist, so maybe there's some revelent detail that I haven't studied.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
1500 thread count is nothing. I recently upgraded to pure plastic sheets, which have practically infinite thread count - perfectly smooth, no detectable weave texture at all.
If chicks dig 1500 thread count sheets, just wait till they see the plastic sheets on my bed. They'll go nuts.
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