A novel study claims that dishwashers act as breeding ground for potentially slayer viruses. The humid and warm environment of dishwashers serves as an ideal habitation for two types of hazardous fungi which can also be found in other kitchen appliances like washing machines and coffee machines.
More than sixty percent of dishwashers contained the fungi called Exophiala dermatitidis and E. phaeomuriformis. The fungi are found on the rubber band in the door and these two black yeasts are known to be hazardous to human health. Bothe species of fungi exhibited notable forbearance to heat, high concentrations of salt and aggressive detergents.
These species are also tolerant to acidic as well as alkaline water. The fungi can survive even in high temperatures between sixty and eighty C. Exophiala dermatitidis is often stumbled upon as an agent of human disease. This fungus is known to colonize in the lungs of the patients suffering cystic fibrosis.
Rarely, it has caused terminal infections in healthy human beings. According to biologist Dr Polona Zalar from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and team, the invention of this extensive presence of extremophilic fungi in some of the common household appliances suggests these organisms have embarked on an extraordinary evolutionary process that could pose a significant risk to human health in the future.
In the case of dishwashers, high temperatures are erratically created and aggressive detergents and high concentrations of salt are used in each washing cycle. The team investigated the presence of fungus in dishwashers in a sample taken from private homes from more than one hundred cities all over the world.
Fortification of fungi that may need specific environmental conditions was observed in dishwashers. They found sixty-two percent of dishwashers were positive for fungi and fifty-six percent of these accommodated Exophiala. Both Exophiala species are known to cause systemic disease in humans and frequently colonize the lungs of patients with cystic fibrosis, they added.
They concluded that high temperature, high moisture and alkaline values usually occurring in dishwashers may provide an alternative habitat for species also known to be pathogenic to humans. The study was published in published in Fungal Biology.
