Think washing your hair is a harmless act of hygiene? Think again! That is, if researchers into the dark sides of shampoo have anything to say about it.
It turns out that a fragrance used in many shampoos is a common allergen that may even cause eczema. Air-oxidized linalool, which is present in up to 80 percent of shampoo products, has been ranked as the third most common eczema-causing substance, falling behind only nickel and cobalt.
And even if you escape the eczema, once you wash and send those suds down the drain, they start spreading drug-resistant bacteria, according to new reports. Sewage sludge collected by municipalities contains antibiotic-resistant microbes that grow faster in the presence of chemicals in shampoo and household detergents.
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Astronauts make plenty of sacrifices to stay alive in space—including drinking their own urine if they have to. But when it comes to underwear, they need to change it every few days or else their briefs could turn into a bacterial mess, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Newcomer astronaut Koichi Wakata will pack 45 pairs of underwear for his trip to space, so he can help JAXA make some upgrades to its space under garments—including making it odor-free and bacteria-resistant in zero-g.
JAXA, Japan Women’s University, and five Japanese companies have given Wakata a week’s worth of underwear and other clothing to test in space. The clothes are easier on the skin, fitted for someone crouched in zero gravity, have Velcro to prevent static, and are made of antibacterial threads.
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Looks like radiation may not be the biggest health concern posed by cell phones. Turns out our trusty phones may be making us sick in a more direct way: by spreading bacteria in hospitals.
Turkish researchers have found that 95 percent of cell phones were contaminated with at least one kind of illness-causing bacteria. They tested the phones and dominant hands of 200 hospital doctors and nurses, and found that almost 35 percent carried two types of bacteria, and more than 11 percent carried at least three types. Perhaps scariest, though, is that one in eight phones were found to carry the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a virulent strain of bacteria that has raised health concerns in hospitals worldwide.
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Have you ever tasted spoiled beer? Twenty-six-year-old Monique Haakensen once did. A few years ago, when the Canadian woman watched her brothers attempt to brew their own beer, the end result smelled like cheese and tasted awful.
To figure out what caused the beer to go bad, Haakensen, a University of Saskatchewan graduate student, bottled the beer and brought it into the lab. Using a technique called polymerase chain reaction, she was able to discover two new genes (hitA and horC) that hastened the growth of bacteria in beer.
Normally, bacteria don’t grow in beer, but when there’s a resistance-associated gene in the brew, certain strains can thrive. The most common bacteria that causes beer spoilage is lactic acid bacteria (LAB). Haakensen looked to see how LAB’s isolates, Lactobacillus and Pediococcus, grew in beer. By using this new form of DNA testing, Haakensen can now tell breweries how quickly their beer will go bad by checking for the presence of either hitA or horC.
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What’s more germy than a public toilet? It’s not a subway car handrail. It’s the shopping carts in grocery stores, according to a study last year that measured saliva, bacteria, and fecal matter on shopping cart handles. Both store owners and customers have sought ways to combat the filthy carts, from disinfectant wipes to cart liners to snap-on handles, with limited success. The latest clean-cart idea looks like a mini-car wash and sprays the entire cart with a mist of peroxide solution. PureCart Systems says their machines kill 99 percent of germs on carts.
More than 20 supermarkets across the country have installed PureCart machines, which cost about $8,000 a year. The machines appear to be popular with shoppers, especially those with young children. And with good reason: Among babies, contact with raw meat packaging is the second leading cause of Salmonella infection. Only reptile exposure is more dangerous. “[Kids] don’t necessarily have the best sanitary habits,” microbiologist Chuck Gerba said. “And you’re putting your broccoli right where the kid’s butt was.”
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It’s been a breakthrough week for office supplies. First came X-ray shooting Scotch tape, and now surgical-grade Sharpies. It’s common practice for surgeons to outline operation sites with Sharpie markers so they won’t cut in the wrong place, but the markers are thrown out after just one use to prevent passing germs from one patient to another.
Now a study by Canadian doctors has concluded that it’s actually safe to reuse Sharpie markers, since the alcoholic base in the ink kills off any lingering bacteria. The finding is huge for hospital administrators , who are thrilled at the prospect of saving thousands of dollars by reusing the markers, which cost $2 each.
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Viruses, those strange, quasi-alive chunks of genetic material, are usually bad news for the cells that they invade. A virus uses its host’s genetic machinery to replicate itself, often sickening or destroying the host in the process. But scientists might have found helpful viruses deep in the ocean, in one of the world’s oddest ecosystems.
Eric Wommack from the University of Delaware was studying the hot waters around hydrothermal vents in the Pacific Ocean when he found that viruses there, rather than replicating and destroying their hosts, often just hang around and cause no harm. When its bacterial host finds itself under stress, the virus comes alive. But while going about its business of replicating itself, the virus can interact and exchange DNA with the bacterium.
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You’ve probably heard that you can’t get tomato on your Big Mac right now—restaurants like McDonald’s have stopped serving them because of the current salmonella scare, in which almost 150 people have gotten sick from eating tainted tomatoes. Federal officials haven’t isolated the source of the outbreak yet, but according to New Scientist, it could have started because the fruits in question—raw red plum, red roma, and round red tomatoes—were cleaned too much.Like our own bodies, tomatoes and other fruits are often crawling with other bacteria that don’t make us (or them) sick. These other microbes, however, are competitors for salmonella, and keep the pathogen from multiplying out of control, according to Keith Warriner, a microbiologist from the University of Guelph in Ontario. He says that overzealous cleaning of tomatoes can kill off the benign bacteria and make it easier for pathogens like salmonella to proliferate. In a lab experiment, he coated tomatoes with another kind of bacteria that doesn’t make people sick, and those fruits tested positive for salmonella less often than regular one. (more…)
In the last two decades, museums have been returning Native American artifacts to their tribes at the demand of the government, but some of the head dresses, masks, and clothes were tainted with toxic mercury from pesticides. At first it sounds like a sick retread of one of the most terrible stories in American history, but it was an awful accident. But now Munira Albuthi, a biologist at the University of Colorado Denver, announced this week at the American Society for Microbiology meeting that she thinks she can solve the problem with bacteria.
After the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, tribes could ask museums to return artifacts taken from their ancestors. But over the years, many museums used pesticides, including DDT before it was banned in the U.S., to prevent bugs from chewing up priceless items in their collections. Often those chemicals contained mercury, and in 2003 scientists said the tainted clothes could pose a threat to tribe members who wear them. So Albuthi turned to a bacteria, Cupriavidus metallidurans, to evaporate the mercury without degrading or destroying the items.
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Wild bacteria may scoff at our attempts at domination—but in the lab, we’re still in charge. Researchers at Emory University, led by Justin Gallivan, are creating bacteria that will hunt down Atrazine—one of the most widely-used herbicides in the U.S. The chemical has been banned in the E.U., shown to cause birth defects (including hermaphrotization) in frogs and made its way into our groundwater.
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