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Taking Showers Can Be Harmful To Your Health
TheClockworkSoul writes "According to both the BBC and NewScientist, showering may be bad for your health. Apparently, dirty shower heads can be an ideal breeding ground for Mycobacterium avium, a bug responsible for a type of pulmonary disease more prevalent than tuberculosis in developed countries, cases of which have risen in parallel with the rise in showering. Tests revealed nearly a third of devices harbor significant levels of the critter."
Taking showers 'can make you ill'
Showering may be bad for your health, say US scientists
OMG! OMG! Wait, the article goes on to say:
"These bacteria [â¦] rarely cause disease in healthy people. Further work will need to look at whether finding these organisms is associated with any increased risk of infection."
Thanks, BBC.
That doesn't kill germs. It just helps remove them from your skin.
Besides the concern for pulmonary disease is that you inhale water droplets with these germs inside them. I highly doubt that you use soap + hot water + friction inside your lungs (but if you do, you're more of a man than I).
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Arguably people get staph infections in hospitals because hospitals put so much effort into sterilizing every little thing. It leaves the hardiest, and fastest spreading bacteria and viruses to fill the vacuum rather than the millions of common germs that our body knows how to deal with. They've done studies which show a less rigorous sterilization regiment can actually reduce the rate of infections but the whole 'germs are evil' mindset prevents hospitals from actually changing their behavior.
Not true. You're thinking of antibiotic resistance. Disinfectants usually physically break apart the bacteria and the common methods of antibiotic resistance don't protect against this. The main cause of staph infections is by people not washing their hands.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Metal shower heads are most likely safer due to the Oligodynamic effect.
Disinfecting a shower head is trivial. Pour some bleach in a bag, with enough water to immerse the shower head, put the shower head in the bag, use a twist-tie to hold it in place for a couple of minutes.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
If and when vancomycin resistant Staph. becomes prevalent (I'm aware of 3 documented cases so far), we're in deep shit.
Note quite. There is still Linezolid and when that becomes less effective there are several other Oxazolidones in the drug pipeline. Of course Linezolid is crazy expensive right now, being as it is under patent protection, but that is actually a good thing because it discourages frivolous uses such as anti-bacterial hand soap or animal feed. A few thousand dollars is worthwhile if it saves a life, but not for non-life threatening uses.
Arguably people get staph infections in hospitals because hospitals put so much effort into sterilizing every little thing. It leaves the hardiest, and fastest spreading bacteria and viruses to fill the vacuum rather than the millions of common germs that our body knows how to deal with.
Actually, "hardiest" and "fastest-spreading" are generally mutually opposed. Most mutations to develop antibiotic resistance are costly and inefficient compared to non-resistance. This is why these traits, which spontaneously appear in the population from time to time, do not become dominant without the use of antibiotics or other outside pressures to cull the herd in favor of resistance.
However, you are right in some contexts. Some genes for resistance to antibiotics also aid in resistance to certain disinfectants.
"Compounds such as household disinfectants and other antibacterial agents can also select for antibiotic resistance. Triclosan and pine oil, which are widely used in home cleaning products are able to select for multidrug-resistant mutants, either by mutation in the target genes or in the regulatory mar system, providing a pleiotropic resistance to disinfectants, multiple structurally unrelated antibiotics, organic solvents and oxidative stress agents. Constitutive expression of an MDR efflux pump which confers resistance to triclosan is also reported in P. aeruginosa. Given the increased use of these agents in households, one can imagine dramatic changes in the environmental flora that impact antibiotic resistance."
-- TM Barbosa, SB Levy. The impact of antibiotic use on resistance development and persistence. Drug Resist Update. 2000;3:303-11.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Hey, without a surface fleet, we wouldn't have any targets to kill!
The second link indicates the risk is greatly reduced if you just let the water run for 60 seconds before getting in. I would think that practice is actually more common than not as most folks don't jump into a cold shower. I do often step into the shower stall itself and wait while the water gets warm, but the article also warns against that as well. The reason being the atomized water with high concentrations of bacteria are easily breathed in during that initial blast of water and air even if you are not directly under the flow of water.
In any case, a simple change of habit to simply turn the water on and wait outside of the shower stall for 60 seconds.