You turn on the shower, and a nice hot water drips out of your tap. It seems that we are cleaning ourselves. And yes, that is true. But it is no less true that there are many things that are rushing into our body in addition to that apparently clean water .
First, after each use, the faucet can retain hot water for several hours, preventing the bacteria from drying out.
Microbes and hot water
Bacteria and other microbes find in the shower faucet an ideal place to settle in biofilms, both in the pipes and in the shower heads. In this environment, in addition, they can collect everything that happens floating in the water, as if they were sea sponges. They are liters and liters of water that pass often .
As Rob Dunn explains in his book Home Alone? :
As a result, the biomass housed in the shower diffusers amounts to twice or more than that carried by the tap water itself. Furthermore, that biomass is made up of a much smaller number of species than tap water, hundreds or even tens, instead of thousands.
Yes, in the water there is more diversity, because it is more difficult to multiply: the easier it is to do the latter, the more difficult the diversity is . These species, then, end up forming very stable ecosystems in which each one of them plays a specific role. There are even predatory bacteria:
Right now, in every home’s shower head, these tiny "pikes" are clinging to other bacteria, piercing their sides and releasing chemicals to digest them. The biofilms also support protisas that eat the "pikes", and even nematodes that feed on the protisas, as well as fungi that carry out their own fungal work. This is the food chain that falls on us every time we shower.
That does not mean that we should avoid the shower. Not much less. It is better to shower than not to do it (and not only because of the probable stink we will come off). Furthermore, despite all that has been said, water saves lives . And it also prevents overcrowding (just as the lack of electricity favors it):