16
votes
US study discovers toothbrushes and showerheads covered in viruses new to science
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- Title
- Toothbrushes and showerheads covered in viruses 'unlike anything we've seen before' - new study
- Authors
- Primrose Freestone
- Published
- Oct 21 2024
- Word count
- 705 words
Point of the article is that theres such a healthy microbiome on these items that the colony includes things that infect bacteria.
Our skin always has bacteria on it. It could turn out that an unclean shower head provides your skin with bacteria that competes against staph.
TL;DR is no your shower head does not contain covid or any flu virus and neither does your toothbrush. Its just bacteria and things that prey on bacteria.
Bottom line advice from the article is not to share toothbrushes as my friendly microbe might be harmful to you.
... People share toothbrushes??!
At one point I was sharing an electric toothbrush with my wife, but we both had our own "heads" for it. Good electric toothbrushes are over $50 so I don't blame people who do it.
Checking in as the gross couple that have a $120+ electric brush that often just forgot which head was which and just started using the same toothbrush all the time. We've been together 17 years at this point though, so a lot of pretenses about hygiene get dropped.
I mean, we put each other's mouth parts and genitals in each other's mouths on the regular, fart on each other in our sleep, drink out of each other's cups, take bites off of each other's dinnerware....what's one more shared disease vector?
You have become one, one biome.
We accept her, we accept her. One of us, one of us. Gooble-gobble, gooble-gobble.
Have you seen this economy?!? ;)
In all seriousness I also hope that's not a wide spread practice. Terrifying thought.
Not as a mega regular thing, but as folks have noted, if you're sharing food and drinks etc with folks.... Why not share brushes?
My most frequent lil group of buddies don't go out of our way but if we're at eachother's places and there ain't easy spares about....
I mean, you're supposed to replace your own toothbrush (or toothbrush head) on a regular basis. I think if I completely forgot mine and there were no spares, I'd just rinse my mouth out with water and brush harder when I had my own toothbrush back.
There was a whole gag about this in How I Met Your Mother. I still refuse to believe that anyone shares a toothbrush.
The showerhead part is news to me. The article references concentrations over 100x tap water, is that considered the source for the these bacteria?