How much should we worry about the hundreds of viruses hiding in our bathrooms?
We like to consider the bathroom as one of the cleanest places – if not the cleanest – in our home. The truth is, it’s a germ pool party. Our tiny guests love a bathroom’s warm, damp environment. A team of scientists from Northwestern University in the United States (US) discovered 614 unique viruses living on the surfaces of two bathroom items we use daily. Many of these viruses weren’t even known to science until now.
Calm down, clean and germ freaks
The viruses are attached to the surfaces of toothbrushes and showerheads! Almost 75 % were found on toothbrushes. The researchers collected samples from showerheads and toothbrush bristles from across the US. Then they sequenced the swabs’ DNA. The findings were published in the journal ‘Frontiers in Microbiomes’. Water is the culprit because it makes an ideal home for microorganisms. Don’t panic, however. There’s no need to break out the strong cleaning supplies just yet. The viruses detected on the two objects are actually mainly bacteriophages – bacteria eaters. This specific kind of virus infects bacteria instead of humans, so they won’t make us sick. “The number of viruses that we found is absolutely wild,” Erica Hartmann, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern, told ‘CNN’. “We found many viruses that we know very little about and many others that we have never seen before. It’s amazing how much untapped biodiversity is all around us.”
Living in a microbial world
Though the idea of us playing host to an assorted collection of viruses may still raise some concerns, Hartmann believes we should get used to them. In fact, tomorrow’s lifesaving antibiotic might be a virus lurking on our toothbrush and showerhead. Imagine harnessing bacteriophages for biotech. “Microbes are everywhere all the time … We wouldn’t be able to digest our food or fend off infection if we didn’t have our microbes,” she added. “As much as we might initially react with a little ick factor, I think it’s really important to approach the microbial world with a sense of wonder and curiosity that these are actually things that do an enormous amount of good and potentially harbor an enormous potential for biotechnology.” “We don’t know exactly which microbes we are exposed to and when, or how they promote health or well-being,” explained Hartmann in ‘TIME’. “If we can figure out what all of the microbes are doing, and how they are doing it, we can be more intentional about how we care for things like toothbrushes—and in turn, care for ourselves and our environments better.”
Keywords
virus, bathroom, germ, toothbrush, showerhead, bacteriophage, bacteria, microbe, microorganism