Showers may be far dirtier than we think
As if we didn't already have enough germs and toxins to deal with in our home environments (the lead in our paint; flame retardants in our furniture; indoor air quality and even the resulting air purifiers; to name a few), we now get to fret over another perpetrator: the showerhead.
Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder have just published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finding that about 30 percent of the showerheads in nine cities (including New York, Chicago, and Denver) carry "significant" levels of Mycobacterium avium, a pathogen that is linked to pulmonary disease.
Moreover, the M. avium pathogen was often clumped together with other pathogens in a slimy biofilm that clings to the insides of showerheads at more than 100 times the levels found in municipal water.
