Taking Showers Can Be Harmful To Your Health 431
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."
Sensationalism (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Re:Gentlemen, start your start-ups (Score:3, Informative)
Creation of showerhead disinfection industry in 3...2...1...
Umm, it's called Clorox.
Re:Nothing to see here, move along... (Score:2, Informative)
Germs are EVERYWHERE. Hospitals do all kinds of disinfection that you wouldn't and couldn't do in your own home, and people still get staph infections.
While true there are germs everywhere, this is actually a tad more than nothing. First, this isn't a generic brand germ, it's a pretty well-known lung pathogen (a weakling cousin of TB, actually). Second, it seems to like forming biofilms inside shower heads, so the water that comes out has two orders of magnitude more critters than your average point in "everywhere".
Re:paranoia (Score:3, Informative)
In defense of the article, it's not imbibing these germs, it's inhaling them. The force of the water coming out spreads the bugs around getting them into the air which you breathe in. I'd wager, without bothering to look it up, that either HCl is not a plesent environment for these or they just can't attach to anything in the digestive system as opposed to the resporatory system.
Details? Who needs details? (Score:2, Informative)
Here's a copy of the abstract, for my fellow bio nerds:
The environments we humans encounter daily are sources of exposure to diverse microbial communities, some of potential concern to human health. In this study, we used culture-independent technology to investigate the microbial composition of biofilms inside showerheads as ecological assemblages in the human indoor environment. Showers are an important interface for human interaction with microbes through inhalation of aerosols, and showerhead waters have been implicated in disease. Although opportunistic pathogens commonly are cultured from shower facilities, there is little knowledge of either their prevalence or the nature of other microorganisms that may be delivered during shower usage. To determine the composition of showerhead biofilms and waters, we analyzed rRNA gene sequences from 45 showerhead sites around the United States. We find that variable and complex, but specific, microbial assemblages occur inside showerheads. Particularly striking was the finding that sequences representative of non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) and other opportunistic human pathogens are enriched to high levels in many showerhead biofilms, >100-fold above background water contents. We conclude that showerheads may present a significant potential exposure to aerosolized microbes, including documented opportunistic pathogens. The health risk associated with showerhead microbiota needs investigation in persons with compromised immune or pulmonary systems.
Re:Nothing to see here, move along... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Sensationalism (Score:4, Informative)
and the article glosses over that MOST water supplies in the USA are so heavily chlorinated, that the chance of this happening are nearly ZERO.
So if you have well water, you're hosed.
Re:Suprisingly light on details for the BBC (Score:2, Informative)
I have so many questions that this article doesn't answer.
1) Where was the sample taken? UK showers? World wide? Third world countries? 2) Is there an information on different kinds of shower heads? for example, is this more common on massaging heads, low flow/high pressure heads, etc? 3) Does hot water kill this bacteria? Is it more common for people who take colder showers than people who take hot ones? 4) I always start the shower first before getting under it, since it takes about 5+ seconds to warm up... any ideas if this affects infection? (Thats more of a study question than a question from the article). 5) Any real way to prevent the growth? Someone already asked if CLR kills it. If this is so common, mind telling me how I can help myself?
I've never read a BBC article that left me with more questions.
The original article is here [pnas.org]. TFA does answer a few of these, but some are not addressed.
Re:Nothing to see here, move along... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Oligodynamic effect (Score:5, Informative)
Hot water won't help. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Suprisingly light on details for the BBC (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sensationalism (Score:5, Informative)
and the article glosses over that MOST water supplies in the USA are so heavily chlorinated, that the chance of this happening are nearly ZERO.
Au contraire. Truth is not arrived at by listening to the voices in your head,* but by rigorous scientific study. For example, let's have a look at Chlorine Susceptibility of Mycobacterium avium [nih.gov] and Effect of Growth in Biofilms on Chlorine Susceptibility of Mycobacterium avium and Mycobacterium intracellulare [asm.org], two entirely independent studies.
It would appear that those published, peer-reviewed studies disagree with you. In particular, a quote from the former:
. . . M. avium has been isolated from a variety of sources, including municipal drinking water systems . . .
Whether M. avium is worth any worry is up for debate. Whether it exists in our water supplies is not. It probably isn't a great cause for concern, although it's nice to know that it's being looked into with more thoroughness than someone waving vaguely and going "naaaaah".
* Which I assume also whisper to you that the best way to denote emphasis is by capitalizing words in their entirety. They're wrong about that, too.
Re:Sensationalism (Score:5, Informative)
Uh no. Chlorine is not as effective on that bacteria, and actually that's why it and not other bacteria that tends to be there :).
See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/health/15shower.html [nytimes.com]
"M. avium tends to be a particular problem in municipal water supplies, Dr. Pace said. The reason is that cities treat their water with chlorine, a poison that kills most bacteria but gives avium a selective advantage."
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Bad water... (Score:2, Informative)
...this is only going to be true where the water isn't properly sanitized. Most US systems are designed to have residual chlorine all the way to delivery...
The NY Times version of the same article [nytimes.com] says, "[Mycobacterium] avium tends to be a particular problem in municipal water supplies, Dr. Pace said. The reason is that cities treat their water with chlorine, a poison that kills most bacteria but gives avium a selective advantage."
Re:Nothing to see here, move along... (Score:5, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org] and when that becomes less effective there are several other Oxazolidones [wikipedia.org] 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.
Re:Nothing to see here, move along... (Score:4, Informative)
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. [asu.edu]
Re:does CLR kill it? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:does CLR kill it? (Score:5, Informative)
In any case, a simple change of habit to simply turn the water on and wait outside of the shower stall for 60 seconds.