New Scientist‘s microbiological reporting really makes you scared to ever go in the shower again:
“Run your shower for a minute or so before you get in, otherwise you’ll get a face full of bacteria.” That’s the advice of microbiologist Norman Pace, who has had the unenviable task of analysing the film of microbes that builds up within shower heads at 45 sites in the US.
Pace and his team from the University of Colorado, Boulder, found significant loads of nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM), particularly Mycobacterium avium, at levels 100 times as high as those found in drinking water.