CF Parenting IRL: Assessing the risks - Showers, taps and toilets 🚽

My second post on this topic and it’s a glamorous one - showers, taps and toilets!

These posts are purely intended to share some of the things that I think might be lesser known outside of the CF community so please remember I am not an expert and I am by no means telling you how to manage risk in your household. These are just some things that I think CF families have to be so careful of that my friends/family might not be aware of! 🙏

Shower heads is first up! These can be a source of pseudomonas with colonised biofilms***, and the shower spray can contain aerosolised droplets that can be inhaled. The advice I’ve seen is that it’s best to run the shower for 1-2 minutes before your child gets in. (If your shower is anything like ours you’d need to do that to wait for it to warm up anyway 🙏)

Taps that are used regularly are much less risky but taps can contain pseudomonas in the form of biofilms. The risk is reduced compared to showers as the water spray is not being inhaled. If a tap is used frequently then the risk is also lessened but the advice seems to be that any taps that are rarely used should have the water run through them for 1 minute every day.

I read today that around 20% of toilets contain pseudomonas (this is data for Europe so not sure what the global or country specific number might be). That’s still pretty high if you are a CF mama wanting to avoid it. Aerosols containing bacteria can be created when flushing toilets, so the recommendation is that lids should be lowered before flushing - which is actually just a lot more hygienic anyway!! 🚽

*** Bacterial biofilms are clusters of bacteria that are attached to a surface and/or to each other and embedded in a self-produced matrix. The biofilm matrix consists of substances like proteins (e.g., fibrin), polysaccharide (e.g., alginate), as well as eDNA. The biofilm bacteria can share nutrients and are sheltered from harmful factors in the environment, such as desiccation, antibiotics, and a host body's immune system. A biofilm usually begins to form when a free-swimming bacterium attaches to a surface.