Introduction to Bacterial Contamination Essay

Introduction to Bacterial Contamination
Bacterial, fungal and viruses are exists throughout living environment and can be transmitted by a variety of methods to humans. Bacterial, fungal and viruses can be transmitted through a direct contact which includes contact with blood and other body fluids or person to person spread such as through fecal oral spread. Contact with droplets and airborne spread by droplet nuclei also act as a mode of transmission for bacterial. Indirect contact involve transmission through a contaminated intermediate object where hands act as intermediate (Goldmann, 2000). Previous reviews of studies that have been published showed the connection between hand hygiene and reduced risk of infection (Bryan, Cohran, & Larson, 1995 Larson, 1988).
Human routine activities in the home will likely result in microbial spread (Kagan et al., 2002). Bacteria can easily spread from sponges and cloths during wiping of surfaces (Cogan, Slader, Bloomfield, & Humphrey, 2002 Gorman, Bloomfield, & Adley, 2002 Ojima, Toshima, Koya, Ara, Tokuda, et al., 2002). The aerosols from flushing the households toilet seeded with coliforms bacteria persist after flush for at least 12 minutes (Newsom, 1972). The activity that involve physical removal such as wiping of surfaces tends to transfer and spread microorganisms from one surface to another surface (Ojima, Toshima, Koya, Ara, Kawai, et al., 2002).
2.2 Introduction to Household Bathroom
Previous studies regarding the domestic environment showed that microorganisms including potentially pathogenic species are usually found in all area of home environment (Rusin, OroszCoughlin, & Gerba, 1998 Scott et al., 1982 Speirs et al., 1995). These studies result showed that damp sites such as kitchen sink areas, nappy buckets and toilet are frequently associated with contamination and occurrence of potentially harmful bacteria.
A lot of microorganisms can cause infections at low doses (R. G Sinclair, Choi, Riley, & Gerba, 2008) and pathogens can even survive for hours to weeks on surfaces including on bathroom floors (Ryan G. Sinclair & Gerba, 2011).
Bathroom can be reservoir of many numbers of microorganisms especially in wet areas. 90% of salmonella infections are thought to be associated with the home environment (Collins, 1997). In home where a family member had salmonellosis, salmonella was still present in toilet four week after the infection despite the cleansers were used (Barker & Bloomfield, 2000). When a small amount of feces from a individual infected with salmonellosis were transferred from the contaminated hand of the individual's to the receiver, the receiver's fingertips could pick up a colony forming units (CFU) and transfer a dose sufficient to cause disease to the mouth (Kagan et al., 2002). Both of inanimate surfaces and hands are associated for the cross contamination that cause secondary infection in the home (Scott, 1999).
Toilet bowl emissions are thought to be source of contamination of nearby toilet surfaces (Rusin et al., 1998). An aerosol droplets and splashing are also responsible for transferring contamination from sinks and toilets to the surrounding areas in the bathroom but chlorine can effectively reduced the contamination level in the toilet (Scott & Bloomfield, 1985).