Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum. Here, Look, no one really wants to think
Speaker 1: about it, and yet you can't help but think about
Speaker 1: it when you smell or emit a particularly odiferous fart.
Speaker 1: Can that fart spread disease? We found two studies done
Speaker 1: decades apart that come to two different conclusions. In August
Speaker 1: of ninety eight, an outbreak of infections of a particular
Speaker 1: strain of streptococcie occurred at Vanderbilt University Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: The nine patients infected were housed in different wards with
Speaker 1: different problems, and they were visited by many medical staff
Speaker 1: during their stays, but seven of them shared an anesthesiologist.
Speaker 1: The stuff took oral swabs of the anesthesiologists skin and throat,
Speaker 1: but they came back negative no trace of the streptococcie.
Speaker 1: Since this was the mid twentieth century when penicillin was
Speaker 1: handed out like candy, the anesthesiologist was given a short
Speaker 1: course of an hbiotic because why not. But a few
Speaker 1: months later, in November and December, another outbreak of the
Speaker 1: same strain of strep infected eight different patients the same
Speaker 1: anesthesiologist attended five of these new cases. He still wasn't
Speaker 1: showing any symptoms, but this time the staff took an
Speaker 1: anal swab of the doctor and that turned up the
Speaker 1: exact strain of strip affecting these new patients. The doctor
Speaker 1: was given a full round of antibiotics and taken off
Speaker 1: duty for ten days. Afterwards, his cultures were clear of
Speaker 1: streptococci and there were no further wound infections related to
Speaker 1: his patients. Researchers said at the time in the New
Speaker 1: England Journal of Medicine that while the quote anus to
Speaker 1: hand to patient route of transmission was a possibility, airborne
Speaker 1: transmission was more likely in this case. The authors of
Speaker 1: the paper concluded then that it was probably the doctor's
Speaker 1: farts infecting the patient's wounds, not him failing to wash
Speaker 1: his hands properly. Fast forward to two thousand one, a
Speaker 1: woman called into doctor Carl carsel Nikki's radio show in
Speaker 1: Australia asking if she was contaminating the operating room when
Speaker 1: she quietly farted during procedures. Doctor Carl thought that was
Speaker 1: a fair question, so he enlisted a microbiologist friend, Luke Tenant,
Speaker 1: to help find out Tenant asked a colleague to fart
Speaker 1: into two petree dishes, one with his pants on and
Speaker 1: one with his pants down. Never forget, science is very elegant.
Speaker 1: Tenant checked the dishes the next morning. The no pants
Speaker 1: dish had lumps of bacteria similar to those found on
Speaker 1: our skin and in our gut. The pants dish had
Speaker 1: no bacteria. Doctor Carl noted that the bacteria and the
Speaker 1: no pants dish wasn't harmful though, just the normal everyday
Speaker 1: microbes that live within and around us, and can even
Speaker 1: be helpful. They're part of the microbiome that helps us
Speaker 1: digest our food. Well, okay, but what about pink eye.
Speaker 1: You may have heard as a kid that you can
Speaker 1: get pink eye if somebody farts on your pillow. First
Speaker 1: of all, if someone farts on your pillow, they are
Speaker 1: not your friend and you shouldn't let them anywhere near
Speaker 1: your pillows. Second, though, the myth just isn't true. It's
Speaker 1: called passing gas. Because it's gas, any bacteria in the
Speaker 1: fart would die pretty quickly outside the body. You can, however,
Speaker 1: get pink eye from actual poop. If you touch poop
Speaker 1: and then touch your eye, you can get pink eye.
Speaker 1: As with a bacterial infection, any viruses that might be
Speaker 1: present in your intestines aren't likely to spread through farts.
Speaker 1: This is even true of coronaviruses like the one that
Speaker 1: leads to COVID nineteen. Viruses fall out of the air
Speaker 1: pretty quickly, meaning these surfaces they land on are more
Speaker 1: contagious than any smell wafting past your unfortunate nose, more
Speaker 1: than anything to do with farts. Good hand washing techniques
Speaker 1: will make the most difference for keeping bacteria and viruses
Speaker 1: outside your body. Washing your hands for twenty seconds each
Speaker 1: time you use the bathroom or touch shared surfaces like
Speaker 1: the handle of the office refrigerator, for instance, vastly reduces
Speaker 1: the likelihood that you'll contract any illnesses or infections. So
Speaker 1: what have we learned here today? Wear pants and wash
Speaker 1: your hands words to live by. Today's episode was written
Speaker 1: by Kristen hall Geisler and produced by Tyler Clang. From
Speaker 1: more on this lots of other curious topics, visit how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I
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