Have any of you seen the new "crazy shows", Obsessed and Hoarding (think Intervention but for OCD)? I think they are on A&E. Anyway, Obsessed follows people through their treatment for OCD, including everything from hand washing to counting to hoarding garbage / books / mementos. For the hand washers and germophobes, I can't imagine how this new study looks to them: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32845180/ns/health/
Your showerhead may deliver more than a refreshing spray of water. New research suggests disease-causing bacteria hide out inside showerheads, hitching a ride to your face and body inside water droplets.
The grimy results come from genetic tests run on samples from 45 showerheads in homes, apartment buildings and public places from nine U.S. cities in five states: New York, Illinois, Colorado, Tennessee and North Dakota.
About 20 percent of the showerhead swabs harbored significant levels of Mycobacterium avium, bacteria linked to pulmonary disease that most often infects people with compromised immune systems, said lead researcher Norman Pace of the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Pace and colleagues found that M. avium and related pathogens were clumped together in slimy biofilms that coated the insides of the showerheads at more than 100 times the levels found in municipal waters that are the origins for the showers' water.
Once the pathogen-laden water spurts from showerheads, the bugs can suspend in the air where showering individuals can easily inhale them into the deepest parts of the lungs, Pace said.
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