Your showerhead can kill you, Or what we already knew about copper ...

[Agu]

Recent research found that mycobacterium avium lives in the majority of showerheads tested...

http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE58E03U20090916

Heard Dr Pace interviewed on NPR and he found that plastic showerheads/ plumbing harbored a significantly higher level of pathogens than metal showerheads/plumbing. The interesting part to me, as an aquarist, is that copper is an effective antipathogen in aquariums, to the point where it can kill not only parasites but also corals and invertebrates. As aquarists we've been using copper to kill parasites for years. This researcher finds it to be a significant discovery that metal (copper) plumbing has significantly fewer pathogens?

Perhaps copper plumbing is not only efficient, but it also protects our health ?

 

[Reefer Brian]

So what your saying is that all the new homes with Aqua-Pex will be putting people in danger....

 

[Agu]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15731609#post15731609 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Reefer Brian
So what your saying is that all the new homes with Aqua-Pex will be putting people in danger....

I'm not saying/claiming anything. Just pointing out that researchers found significantly fewer pathogens in metal showerheads. Enough to recommend replacing plastic showerheads with metal showerheads in your shower.

The part I find interesting is that copper has been used for years to kill parasites in aquaria and now it's been found to reduce mycobacteriun avium in home water supplies.

 

[jenglish]

I wonder if this will become an issue as more homes go to CPVC and pex. But people won't steal the CPVC or pex out of your house for scrap

 

[KarlBob]

I wouldn't even know where to go to buy a metal shower head these days. Even the ones that look metallic at the hardware store turn out to be a thin coat of chrome over plastic when they come out of the packaging.

 

[lordofthereef]

Sure they slough off pathogens, but is it in any quantity that matters to people? There are always all these studies like chemical XX found in cured bacon causes cancer only to turn out that you need to eat the equivalent of 10 pounds of bacon a day for fifty years to actually make that risk mean anything.

 

[eyesinthedrk]

Is there a way to put pennies in your water heater? 26 to the gallon according to PaulB and we will all be ick free too :rollface:

 

[Jim96SC2]

A good supportive point to that is Ancient Romans used lead pipe. This would have caused the collapse of roman society if it weren't for the limestone scaling that built up on the inside and stopped the lead from seeping in and contaminating the aquaducts.

 

[Paul B]

Is there a way to put pennies in your water heater? 26 to the gallon according to PaulB and we will all be ick free too

That was 14 pennies to the gallon, we don't want to overdose

 

[aninjaatemyshoe]

At our lab we put copper pennies in the water pan of our incubator to keep out bacterial and fungal contamination (although pennies nowadays only have a copper coating). This is the same idea.

Here's the thing about the shower head issue though. Sure, there may be higher levels of certain pathogenic bacteria in plastic shower heads. But, if you're like me and turn on the shower letting it run for a minute or two to warm up, you'll basically have washed the vast majority of bacteria down the drain by the time you step inside anyway. So, are you really getting a significant increase in exposure to the bacteria? It's hard to say, but I would guess not. Now, if you were dealing with something like Legionella, you might be in trouble, but I am not aware of any cases of people getting Legionaire's from a home shower head.

 

[Servillius]

I have a sort of hobby. I'm a scientist by nature and a sceptic. When people quote old wives tales, I'm sceptical. When people tell me old wives tales are wrong, I'm still sceptical. I think there is a lot to be said for the empiricism inherent in passing knowledge from generation to generation. The old wives tales that work tend to get perpetuated and those that don't tend to die off. None of this is to say that I think all old wives tales are right, I'm too sceptical for that. I just don't believe it serves us well to dismiss them out of hand.

The point of all this is that when I hear or see this sort of thing, I like to puzzle away at why we may believe it rather than doing a mythbusters on it and shooting it down.

When, a long time ago, I heard of the anti-bacterial properties of copper, I didn't think much of it. One day I was walking through an old hospital and all the handrails were copper. I thought about it and realised that traditionally copper or bronze is also used for door handles, bar railings, and other high contact areas. I'd be very interested in how much of this is attributable to its benefits.

 

[SeaWeed89]

does that mean it's also in our RO systems? dont know it it would make it past the membrane though.

 

[andrewk529]

shower heads are also the perfect environment for the legionella bacteria

 

[DeathWish302]

does that mean it's also in our RO systems? dont know it it would make it past the membrane though.

Absolutely! That is the reasoning for changing the Carbon and Prefilter every 6 months b/c the environment promotes bacterial growth.

 

[goldmaniac]

any penny minted before 1982 is solid copper.

in 1982, there were pennies made of solid copper, and also pennies made of a zinc core with copper plating, which is solely how they were made since then.

The only way to tell if an '82 penny is solid copper is to weigh it to the 1/100th of an ounce, maybe it's to 1/100th of a gram. Either way the difference is so small that it's hard to measure. OR hit it with a [retail propane] blowtorch, and if it melts, it's not solid copper, it's zinc-core.

Just a FYI for everyone. I'm a numismatist.

 

[Paul B]

and if it melts, it's not solid copper, it's zinc-core.

It never mattered to me, I only used pennies for ich control in the early seventees.
Also, zinc also kills ich. It kills everything else also but at least the ich is gone.

 

[jenglish]

I have anti-microbial silver long johns to limit BO for hunting. THe idea is they stop bacteria from growing on your sweat which produce the odor. I would like to run an experiment to see how long I could wear them without showering

 

[Paul B]

Sounds like a great idea.

 

[Lemeshianos]

What if you treat the showerhead in a QT with copper? And leave the tank fallow for 6 weeks...