Shower Or Not

I always loved my bath. Now I have a shower and no bath. It is nice according to my friends who visit me. "Ahhhh a walk in shower", they say. What people do not realise is the shower head can get infested with My­co­bac­te­r­ium avium, a germ linked to lung dis­ease that most of­ten in­fects peo­ple with weak­ened im­mune sys­tems but oc­ca­sion­ally al­so the healthy. The sci­en­tists found that some M. avi­um and re­lat­ed path­o­gens were clumped to­geth­er in slimy “biofilms” that clung to the in­side of show­er­heads at more than 100 times the nor­mal lev­els in mu­nic­i­pal wa­ter. Nice one, slimy and all.

Symp­toms of lung dis­ease caused by M. avi­um can in­clude tired­ness, a per­sist­ent, dry cough, short­ness of breath, weak­ness and “gen­erally feel­ing bad,” said Pa­ce. Immune-compromised peo­ple like preg­nant wom­en, the eld­erly and those who are fight­ing off oth­er dis­eases are more vul­ner­able, said Pa­ce, a pro­fes­sor in the mo­lec­u­lar, cel­lu­lar and de­vel­op­men­tal bi­ol­o­gy de­part­ment at the un­ivers­ity.

The researchers bleach-cleaned one show­erhead from Den­ver in at­tempt to kill its pro­fu­sion of the My­co­bac­te­ri­um gor­donae bac­teria, said Pa­ce. Tests on the show­erhead sev­er­al months lat­er showed the bleach treat­ment iron­ic­ally caused a three-fold in­crease in the germ, in­di­cat­ing a gen­er­al re­sist­ance of myco­bac­te­ria spe­cies to chlo­rine, he noted.

So is it dan­ger­ous to take show­ers? “Probably not, if your im­mune sys­tem is not com­pro­mised,” said Pa­ce. “But it’s like an­y­thing else—there is a risk.” Pace said since plas­tic show­er­heads ap­pear to “load up” with more path­o­gen-enriched bio­films, met­al show­er­heads may be bet­ter.

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090914_shower




I am a selfish person.
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