iGary said:
Rob won't let me go to the steamroom at the gym becuase he said it's full of germs. (Oh, but it is fine if we go to a germ-filled theater to see HP for the third time.)
At first I agreed with you, but then speaking for a biology prospective, he really is right. When you visit a univerity or research department for Microbio you'll see they have these giant walkin storage rooms. Some are kept cold, some are hot. The cold ones are to store stuff, the hot ones incubate it. The hot ones are often at 37C, which is 98.6F. The
optimum temperature for the Mesophile bacteria is 30 - 40 C. The Mesophile are most bacteria, esecially. those living in association with warm-blooded animals.
According to
this site, steam rooms are supposed to be kept at less than 60C. This means that most are probably at the optimum temperature for bacteria growth. Plus the steam probably helps to make the bacteria more motile.
Now I'm sure if you're sitting in the theatre with a coughing kid it's probably not much better. But the thing about the steam room is that the conditions let bacteria multiply so well. And when bacteria multiple, it's exponential. And plus you have a large variety of bacteria in the steam room, so that increases the chances that one of them will surive in your system.
Sorry, but Rob is kind of right.
Of course this is only of relevancy to bacteria, not necessarily viruses.
Anyway, I hope you feel better. Sorry for the bionerd stuff, but I'm doing a lot of research on some similar stuff and I actually realized some unique connections between my research and this situation.
-Brian
