- SEATTLE -- Beware the microscopic
horrors lurking inside your shower curtain. Billions of germs live in its
folds, waiting to come out and infect you if you have a weakened immune
system.
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- Norman Pace, a microbiologist at the University of Colorado,
Boulder, gave a Hitchcockian account of the danger in the shower to the
American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle
at the weekend. He analysed the microbes living in the "soap scum"
of five domestic shower curtains, including his own.
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- "Soap scum is a lush bed of microbes generally embedded
in a biofilm matrix," said Professor Pace. "When you switch on
the shower, you immediately generate a bio-aerosol."
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- The microbial analysis showed particularly large numbers
of Sphingomonas and Methylobacterium. These can cause respiratory and other
diseases if they reach the lungs of someone whose immune system is depressed.
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- In a second study Prof Pace and colleagues analysed the
air just above an indoor heated swimming pool and hot tub. They found disturbingly
high concentrations of pathogenic bacteria, even though the facility was
well maintained and the pool water cleaned through a combination of filtration
and ultraviolet irradiation.
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- Although the microbes in the air above indoor pools and
hot tubs are particularly dangerous for people who are immuno-suppressed,
they can make healthy people ill too - hence the respiratory disease of
pool workers known colloquially as Lifeguard Lung.
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- © Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2004.
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