Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Bacteria! Infections! Shower heads! Never mind?

BBC News brings us the apparently useless news that showerheads can harbor dangerous bacteria. News sources are pretty good at misquoting their sources, but if this quote is accurate, I think we can forget about the whole thing:
Lead researcher Professor Norman Pace, said: "If you are getting a face full of water when you first turn your shower on, that means you are probably getting a particularly high load of Mycobacterium avium, which may not be too healthy."

Now when's the last time you turned your shower on, directly at your face? Didn't you let it run for a few seconds, or do you like to be frozen by cold tap water? I'm going to ignore this invaluable alert.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Don't forget the use of the weasel word... My favorite recent example of a weasel word usage was a conservative pundit saying "*some* experts say that Obama's health plan *may* increase the deficit." Doesn't that mean that *some* experts say that there is *no chance* that O's plan will increase the deficit? We ought to back that plan!!