The Best Interesting Random Facts
Although you might not think of the flu as a killer disease, an average of 20,000 Americans die of it every year, that’s about four times as many people as die from the diarrheal illnesses caused by eating contaminated food. Yet many people who are sure they are going to suffer an agonizing death from […]
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek loved to look at stuff through his microscope. One day in 1681, he was closely examining a sample of his own feces and described a parasite that was probably the one we now know as Giardia lamblia. It got its name, however, in 1859 from a biologist named Lambl. It is the […]
Alliance, Ohio, is a town of about 25,000 people southeast of Akron. It is famous, if we use the word loosely, as the site of a yearly carnation festival every August and the home of the particular variety of carnation that President William McKinley favored as a lapel decoration. But one day in June 2001, […]
Shigellosis is another disease kids risk contracting in day care centers and passing on to their families. In 1991 there was an outbreak of Shigella sonnei infection in Lexington-Fayette County, Kentucky, that involved 14 licensed day care centers, making a lot of people sick but, every cloud has a silver lining, giving researchers a chance […]
On August 12 and 13, 1994, three kids from Pompano Beach came into the emergency room of the same hospital in Broward County, Florida, with a sudden onset of seizures, coma, and respiratory depression. Each of them needed a breathing tube to stay alive. All three, they were 5, 6, and 11 years old, had […]
Viruses are parasitic. They can only live and reproduce inside the cells of other animals or plants, in scientific terms, they are called obligate survive in one environment (if a germ can survive in more than one environment, it is called facultative); they are intracellular because they must live inside cells; they are molecular parasites […]
Hand washing is unquestionably a good idea, and we’ll have more to say about that below, but at the same time, personal hygiene may not be all it’s cracked up to be. Bathing and showering, for example, are generally pleasant activities, but as far as infection control is concerned, they probably don’t do much good. […]
The Italians call it the French disease; the French call it the English disease. Russians blamed the Poles, the Poles blamed the Germans. At least since the sixteenth century, Europeans have been blaming each other, if it isn’t English, French, Polish, Russian, or German, then it’s Venetian or Neapolitan. Some believe Columbus brought it back […]
This is actually a more common OCD experience than people would think: You saw a story on the news about a hit-and-run accident in the town next to yours. You called the police to tell them you might have done it, and they came to your house and questioned you. When you told them you […]
Gluten is a funny-sounding word, but it will become one of the most important words in your vocabulary. It sounds like glue, and it acts like glue. Most people, unless they are a chef or baker, don’t know what gluten is. So, if you have never heard of gluten before, you’re not alone. But this […]
The Contaminant Candidate List sounds like it might be a registry of anti-environmental office seekers published by the Sierra Club. But it’s actually a list of the contaminants in public drinking water that may require regulation, and the Environmental Protection Agency is required to issue such a list every five years. The last one came […]
Swenson’s Wild Midwest Exotic Petting Zoo is apparently a popular attraction in Clermont, Iowa, and in August 1999 they featured a bear cub. It was really cute, and it let people touch it and wrestle with it. Occasionally it would nip at people, but it never really hurt anyone. The cub was also brought to […]
We all know it’s healthy to go to the gym regularly, but did you ever wonder what’s in the sweat of the guy who used the exercise machine just before you? Sure, he wipes off the machine with that towel, but that’s not exactly sterilizing, is it? Are you supposed to touch that stuff, and […]
We often speak of the possibility and desirability of eradicating diseases, and it does seem that it should be possible to eradicate at least those whose causes we know and for which we have good and effective treatments. This would seem to apply to most of the sexually transmitted diseases. But in all of history, […]
The company that makes Lysol announced in a television commercial that they are now selling a kind of paper towel soaked in liquid disinfectant, “kills 99.9 percent of germs”, the same percentage that Tide with Bleach claims to wipe out. There are all sorts of products, hundreds of them, that are advertised as antibacterial, including […]
Dirty laundry, as you might have guessed, certainly contains plenty of germs, including many that are pathogenic. Any cloth that touches your body is likely to become contaminated with whatever organisms are on your skin, and we know what can happen in the special case of underwear. But the Centers for Disease Control agrees with […]
While resistant strains of the potentially deadly S. aureus bacterium have been known for some years to occur in hospitals, it is only recently that these strains have made their way into the community at large. In 1997, a seven-year-old girl from an urban area of Minnesota was admitted to a hospital with a temperature […]
On November 8, 1999, a company in Anchorage, Alaska, threw a party for their 500 employees, a nice catered lunch. On November 10, employees started calling in sick, not just a few, but hundreds of them. On the same day, the company notified the Alaska Division of Public Health that they had some kind of […]
Shocking but true: your toothbrush is dirtier than your toilet seat. It is hard to predict exactly which germs are on your toothbrush right now, but staphylococci, coliforms, pseudomonads, streptococci, and at least one fungus, candida, have all been cultured from used toothbrushes. In one Australian study, staphylococci and streptococci were the most commonly found […]
Bacteriologists are quite proud when their name becomes attached to a disease causing organism. This is not true of other people, American Legion members are not at all happy about having Legionnaire’s disease named after them, and homeowners and real estate agents in Lyme, Connecticut, could have done without having their city’s name permanently attached […]
Why do they print directions on the back of your liquid antibacterial hand soap bottle? Do you really need “directions” on how to use soap? Antibacterial products used to clean bathrooms or kitchen sinks are not drugs, and therefore their labeling is regulated by the Federal Trade Commission. Same for ordinary (i.e., non-antibacterial) soap. But […]
Parents of a preschooler know that games are not always fun. A young child often insists on playing by her own rules and gets upset if she loses. This typical preschool behavior can make it difficult for you and your child to genuinely enjoy playing games. It takes time, often not until the kindergarten years, […]
Giardia lamblia is the other common protozoan parasite that infests drinking water. During the 1990s, reports of giardiasis increased all over the country. In 1997–1998, the latest years for which the CDC has published statistics, New York State, including New York City, had the largest number of cases, 3,673. But before you conclude from this […]
On September 3, 1999, 10 children in counties near Albany, New York, were hospitalized with bloody diarrhea, and everyone wanted to know why. Health officials quickly discovered two facts: they were all infected with E. coli O157:H7, the most deadly form of the E. coli bacterium, and they had all attended the Washington County Fair, […]
You go to a hospital to get well, but you have to remember that a hospital is one public place that’s bound to be filled with germs, after all, it’s people with germs who wind up there, all kept close together with a staff of caretakers who are almost inevitably going to transmit germs from […]
The most common cause of serious respiratory tract infections, pneumonia and bronchiolitis (infection of the small vessels in the lungs called bronchioles), in infants and children is a germ called respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. This is another very common virus, so common that by the age of three almost every kid has been infected […]
Kids are unquestionably messy, and the younger they are the messier they seem to be. Growing up involves an incessant series of encounters with germs of all kinds. Babies begin by fouling themselves with germ-laden feces, then as soon as they’re able to they start putting everything they can lift into their mouths. Next they […]
Suffolk County, New York, has beautiful beaches and beautiful people. Rich New Yorkers own elaborate summer houses there, in different neighborhoods from the local year-rounders who serve them, of course. Those who don’t own can rent them, rentals at $20,000 a month and more are common. Some people commute to jobs in Manhattan from Suffolk. […]
Everyone likes to touch interesting and attractive objects. Adults in stores are drawn to gadgets they can manipulate and products they can pick up and feel. Children also want to handle what they see in stores, but many store owners and parents are too impatient or fearful to let children touch. Touching is one of […]
There are dozens of different species of cockroach, and the one probably most familiar in restaurants is the German cockroach. Many people believe that cockroach infestation is one of the burdens of living in a crowded city, but in fact the insects can and do live in the wide open spaces of rural areas just […]
Rubbing on insect repellent and slapping at mosquitoes is a summertime tradition. Just the smell of a spritz of Off! gives some people Proustian recollections of fun-filled days at summer camp. But until the 1920s, mosquitoes were a cause of deadly epidemics in the United States, and everyone now knows that they’re back again carrying […]
OCD is not a new disorder. In fact, OCD has been written about for centuries, as far back as the sixth century. According to Ian Osborn in his book Tormenting Thoughts and Secret Rituals (1999), there are numerous references to what we now call OCD in early religious and Greek writings. Many of the early […]
The answer to this question seems obvious: homework helps children learn. However, this simple answer is incomplete and not exactly accurate. Homework should serve different purposes, depending on your child’s grade level and individual abilities. For primary grades, homework is largely used to improve reading and to review skills taught in class. Intermediate grade students […]
Syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes, papillomavirus, chlamydia, you’d think that would be enough bacteria and viruses to worry about, especially at a moment when you’re preoccupied with something more pressing. But there’s more. The cause of trichomoniasis is neither a bacterium nor a virus. It’s the cause of a microscopic parasite, a protozoan called Trichomonis vaginalis that […]
Rotavirus is a good example of the kind of disease that is easily transmitted in child care settings. There are others as well, most of them considerably less serious in their effects than rotavirus, but nevertheless things to watch out for. Among them is hepatitis A (HAV). Although there is a vaccine for it, hepatitis […]
An antibacterial impregnated in a toy or in some other consumer product must be registered with the Environmental Protection Agency. Companies that manufacture such things have correctly perceived that germs on cutting boards and in children’s toys are among those people worry most about, and they’ve come to the rescue with antibacterial products they claim […]