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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."
they keep dipping the shower heads in that stuff and it's magically shiny! maybe it'll kill bugs too?
I know most people, myself included, run the water for a minute or two before stepping into the shower. (Due to the time it takes for the water to heat up, etc.) Would this help avoid getting sprayed with a build up of bacteria or is the stream of germs constant? Also, hot water + soap + friction can kill a lot of germs, wouldn't the fact that you're already showering help the situation?
Not to be stereotypical here but I don't shower regularly right now, on account of the whole "unemployed, no need to interact with people right now" part of my life.
After a couple "cycles" of only showering once every other/third day, my body acclimated to the different bathing. I found/find that my skin is, overall, much clearer (lifelong acme sufferer) as well as substantially less oily. I no longer feel like there's grease in my eyes by the time I go to bed, and my skin feels 'healthier'.
I wonder if routine shower cleaning would help fix the problem? I'd think that the chlorine in the water would help dissuade bacteria from growing. I wonder if that 1/3rd can be accounted for by low chlorine levels, or well water? We have non-chlorinated well water here, as do both my parents and grandmother, all in different parts of the country.
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Not true, this is an opportunistic bacteria that lives in stagnant water. It can find the stagnant water without being introduced through the water supply (through air or other contamination). Since a person with dirty hair is only inches away from the shower, it's not hard to see how it might get contaminated. In the same way it can get inside your lungs (aerosol), it can also get inside your shower head.
The shower head is sitting idle most of the day, and since the chlorine in the water quickly dissipates in air, the water left remaining when you turn the shower off is quite welcoming to the bug. Yeah, it gets hit with chlorinated water at least once a day (you do shower regularly, right?), but the amount of chlorine in the water at-delivery is way too little to kill entrenched bacteria (that happens at the treatment plant, with much higher concentrations of chlorine, and UV treatments). You might kill a small amount, but the strong survive.
This is a real problem - it's already known that sources of stagnant water can be breeding grounds for Legionnaire's Disease, so why not yet-another lung infection?
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If the shower is run once a day the residual chlorine would sterilize any colony before it could establish. If the shower isn't run once a day and properly drains the environment won't remain wet enough long enough for the colony to establish. The only time a colony could establish such that the residual wouldn't kill it is if the shower isn't used daily and doesn't drain properly. Even then I doubt it could effectively establish because the amount of food in the water for the bacteria is going to be near zero, at least for properly treated water. The BOD (Biologic Oxygen Demand) requirements for potable water are very very low in the US. Only the water systems that are the worst of the worst (no residual chlorine, high BOD) in the US would even have the possibility and then you need a bad shower head and infrequent showering to make this happen. The probability is very low IMO.
There's also talk of health risks due to taking hot showers. Supposedly that releases chlorine and chloroform gas creating a health risk, particularly for those with asthma. I guess that's why there are chlorine filters for shower heads. Then again a filter would likely be a breading ground for bacteria so pick your poison...
"Hospitals do all kinds of disinfection that you wouldn't and couldn't do in your own home, and people still get staph infections."
They also ignore and omit proper precautions, even those as basic as a physician washing his hands between touching patients.
We lose more people to MRSA in the US than we do to murder and the WoT, but it doesn't make much news for some reason...
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In fact, this showcases why it is that little R&D takes place for antibiotics - there isn't much money in them, and when you do come out with one you need to charge obscene rates to make a profit.
The fact is that 95% of people who get bacterial infections will do just fine with pennicilian. 95% of the rest will do just fine with one of a few other super-cheap antibiotics. The only people who need the really exotic stuff are people with really exotic problems. However, there aren't enough of them to pay for making new exotic stuff.
I think that antibiotics are one of those areas where the NIH should probably just contract the development of new classes of treatments. They could place an order for a new drug just like the Air Force places an order for a new plane. Sure, it would be pricey, but it is probably the only way it will happen. Actually - it probably shouldn't even be the NIH, but rather a coalition of first-world governments. The government might license it royalty free to anybody who paid in to the development, and to third world nations.
The thing I'm wondering is, why would you *replace* the shower head, when most likely, can you deal with this problem as simply as soaking the shower head in a bleach-water solution once a month or something (might not even need to do it that often)?
While I generally agree with the point about immune systems, even a perfectly healthy person with a fine immune system could succumb if exposed to a sufficient concentration of these bacteria. Wouldn't an occasional cleaning of the shower head be more than enough to prevent such a dangerous buildup? Wouldn't that be simple, common sense ( I've always been taught that cleanliness is important to remain healthy, and that includes keeping kitchen, bathroom, etc clean)?
Yes, but think of how terrible it will be if bacteria ever do develop resistance to those disinfectants.
Terrible, but unlikely. Disinfectants are very powerful substances and/or processes. It'd be a bit like you developing cellular immunity to being chopped apart with a chainsaw.
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