Is there bacteria lurking in your shower? While plenty of products claim to rid your bathroom of potentially harmful mold growing inside of your fixtures, a new study calls their bluff.
“Showerheads are often wet and so offer a realm in which life can live,” research says. “That life can colonize showerheads either from the water itself (tap water contains many kinds of life, from bacteria to nematodes to crustaceans, as does bottled water), or from those organisms that bounce back up onto the showerhead from your body when you stand and cleanse.”
“They are the desert washes of your home, places of both bounty and hardship. This mix of soaking wet and bone dry provides circumstances that favor unusual sorts of microbes.”
In fact, per the study, conducted by Noah Fierer, Project Lead, University of Colorado, CIRES and his team, “As you sing they settle.”
“When you take a shower there are microbes to which you are exposed, daily. The microbes on your showerhead become airborne as you shower and then fall down onto your body but also into your mouth and nose.”
So, what does shower head sickness look like?
While a healthy person need not be alarmed, experts say…