Water Pipes and Lung Damage

Environment - 8/14/2002 11:45:10 AM

Scientists say bacteria in water pipes can damage lungs ORLANDO, FL — Scientists are urging state and federal health officials to pay more attention to nontuberculosis mycobacteria (NTMs), an obscure type of bacteria that lingers in water pipes, because this state is seeing an increasing number of lung-damaging infections from the bug.

Florida, because of its moist climate, is probably the epicenter of this apparent outbreak, Dr. Michael Iseman, a leader in NTM infections at National Jewish Medical and Research Center, Denver, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

More people are getting the disease, which is becoming resistant to medicines, according to the article. Those with lung defects or weakened immune defenses usually were susceptible.

Doctors often mistake it for other lung infections, an error that can result in major respiratory damage and even death, the newspaper said.

The infections are not contagious, so doctors are not required to report NTM cases to state health officials, but based on hospital discharge figures, the Sentinel said, significantly more Floridians have NTM infections than have tuberculosis, a contagious disease that physicians must report.

The only published national statistics come from occasional surveys done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The latest survey of state health laboratories showed 4,435 NTM cases in Florida in 1996 — the most cases nationwide by more than 3,000 people, according to the article.

Some scientists think cases are rising because of changes in water heating and a shift from bathing to showering, Iseman said in the article.

Mist can act as a carrier of the bacteria, which live in floating slime layers inside water heaters and pipes, according to the article, which said when a shower or jets in a hot tub are turned on, the germs float from pipes onto the bubbles, up into the nose and mouth, and then into the lungs, where microscopic growths begin to form.
Health officials say there is not much Floridians can do to avoid the disease, but Iseman said in the article that he tells his patients to bathe instead of shower or avoid enclosed shower stalls.