Face Full of Pathogens: Shower Heads and Your Health

This morning I woke up, desperately flailed my arm against my alarm clock, streched, brushed my teeth, and then jumped in my shower to remove all the diverse microbial communities that had built up on me since my last shower.  As soon as the water is hot I stick my face under it and let it massage my face for a few seconds before I begin my cleaning routine.  What I did not realize was that I was getting a face full of morning pathogens, many of which I inhale along with the steam clouding the inside of the shower.

In a recent publication from the University of Colorado, and as reported by futurity.org, your shower head could contain massive amounts of Mycobacterium avium in biofilms inside of it.  M. avium, a pathogen linked to pulmonary disease, can exist in aggregates up to 100X the normal "background" levels of your municipal water supply.

I highly recomend the article on futurity and also the video posted below.  The article is a cliff-hanger, though, since it doesn't give you any good method of cleaning your shower head and eradicating the pathogenic colonies that reside in it.  The bacteria seems to have a resistance to bleach and chlorine (and since it is in our water supply I would assume flourine as well), and when they did clean the shower in a different study with bleach, a similar pathogen Mycobacterium gordonae actually increased 3 fold!  I would guess due to the elimination of competing microbes.