bacteria (Page 10)

More than 40% of the swimming pools in the Netherlands contain the bacteria that causes Legionnaire’s Disease. Government tests also found the bacteria in 9% of hotel swimming pools. Pool owners in the U.S. test their pools for many kinds of bacteria?but not for the kind that causes this sometimes fatal disease.

Testing began in the Netherlands after a deadly outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease in 1999 killed 32 people and made more than twice that number ill. Legionnaire’s was first discovered in an air conditioning unit in Philadelphia in 1976, when American Legion members staying at an infected hotel got sick and died.

The bacteria can be found in water that is warm enough for it to grow (90
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If your waitress has long fingernails, get up from the tableand run. Cooks and waitpeople with long nails are morelikely to pass on food bugs such as E.coli. Artificial nailsare an especially nasty breeding ground for harmful bacteria.

Michael Doyle and his team at the University of Georgia puthamburger contaminated with E.coli under the nails ofvolunteers. The subjects then washed their hands thoroughlyand the researchers measured how much bacteria was left.
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Jeans dyed blue by bacteria may soon be available. Walter Weyler and his colleagues at Genencor International in Palo Alto, California have genetically modified bacteria to produce the indigo pigment used to stain denim. The process would be a less-polluting way to dye jeans than chemical indigo production.

Originally extracted from plants, indigo dye is now made from coal or oil, with potentially toxic by-products. Bacteria have previously been adapted as alternative indigo manufacturers, but a trace by-product turns the jeans a shade of red.
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