AC

What's in your showerhead? Don't wanna know, do you? Too late, you're reading this — it's disease-causing "mycobacteria" microbes stuck there in their own slime. "Microbes are everywhere, so in fact finding them in showers is not a surprise," says Laura Baumgartner of the University of Colorado, Boulder, an author of the showerhead survey study. "Finding large numbers of (disease-causing) mycobacteria was a bit of a surprise, though." Released Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science journal, the study looked at 45 showerheads in nine cities, including Denver and New York. Using standard genetic tests, the team looked for microbes, expecting to find harmless varieties usually seen in tap water. They did find those, but surprisingly, discovered about 20% of the samples contained mycobacterium, at least 100 times more than expected, according to the study. That is worrisome because strains of the bacteria cause lung disease, and showerheads "aerosolize"...