Researchers Find Fusarium Fungus in More Than Half of Home Sink Drains

For the most part, besides the obvious function of the bathroom, people go there to clean themselves. They shower or bathe, or wash their hands or brush their teeth at the sink, so it's likely to come as a shock to a lot of people to learn that sometimes when they go to clean themselves, they are actually putting themselves at risk of contracting a type of fungal infection from a colony of Fusarium living in their drain. This news has come about as a result of research done by a team of microbiologists from Penn State University, who have published the results of their extensive testing in homes, businesses and other public places, in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.

Fusarium, a type of fungus, can cause infections in people, which in most cases, show as a painful swelling around the finger or toenails, though they can also cause difficult to treat skin ulcers. Worse, some have been implicated in widespread infections of the eye in people who wear contact lenses.

To find out how widespread the problem might be, the team fanned out and took samples from the sinks in people's houses, dorm rooms, places of business and other building. To their astonishment, they found that out of 500 drains tested, roughly sixty six percent of them had a colony of Fusarium living in them, in eighty two percent of buildings tested.

Fungal colonies create what are known as biofilms, or surface areas that literally covered with a sticky, gooey film of fungus. Such biofilms can live and grow in other types of drains as well, such as those in the kitchen or shower. Also, most are able to live and survive due to the S shape of drains that allow fungus and bacteria to reside on surfaces that are not flushed when water or cleaning chemicals are poured into them.

The research team says that it's quite possible that many seemingly mysterious fungal infections in people develop after being splashed with water in their sink that has back-washed from areas in the drain. And while they acknowledge that such fungus has likely been with us since people began using drains and that fungal infections are rare compared to bacterial infections, they do suggest that the source of many fungal infections that do occur can now likely be traced to the drain in the home.

Fungal infections are notoriously difficult to cure due to the small numbers of drugs developed that can fight them. Unfortunately, it appears the only way for people to clear their drains of such fungus, is to remove it and clean it out manually.