shower head

long time ago i was told to prefer taking a bath over having a shower because shower mist pulls some radioactive argon isotope out of our concrete walls back in europe. i can't find a reference for this, but anyways i don't think this should be an issue here in the US where we mostly have plaster walls...

anyways i have recently read of that hexavalent chomium in our water supplies [1], and i've also read about that study on the kind of bacteria that accumulate in the shower heads [2], typically related to the bacteria responsible for TBC, but actually not susceptible to antituberculosis drugs. i would be suprised if no fungi were lurking in there too... pretty useless to shampoo with nizoral if you are getting a fresh spray of fungi every morning...

with all the uglies that seem to be coming from the water supply, i'd really like to find a shower head that:

- has no plastic parts
- is cheap so that it can be replaced periodically
- has a minimal amount of spray, so that i breath as little as possible of the water coming out of it

i've found a pretty nice compact metal-only shower head for $6 at OSH, i am even going as far as removing it after each shower to let the pipe "breathe", but every time i use it, it sprays a crazy fine mist of water... no kidding, within a few seconds all of my mirrors are already cloudy

if anybody has found anything better, please holler

thank you!

[1] http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20101220/ts_yblog_thelookout/study-tap-water-in-31-cities-contains-cancer-causing-chemical
[2] http://www.greenlodgingnews.com/downloads/Feazl.PNAS.2009.pdf
[3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18209283
[4] http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/260/11/1599.abstract
[5] http://www.jstor.org/stable/30142118
[6] http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/50/5/1128

Interesting, would simply washing my hair in the bath and not using a shower head reduce the risk of fungal problems?

mmm... possibly... as a matter of fact i never had any hair loss until i moved out from home and didn't have a bathtub anymore...

by the way, i was told many times by many different people that hot showers cause hairloss. why, exactly? they affect the blood circulation? or what? is it scientifically proven, or is it a myth?

We had our shower taken out when I was young so always had a bath really. I usually wash my hair and rinse with the shower head attachment though...

You mean you had no hair loss with or without a bath tub?

with. basically until i started showering. and it's true i usually shampooed my hair while bathing and then rinsed it with the shower head attachment, but my bath was typically so hot i probably was rinsing them in cold or at most lukewarm water...

Yeah I usually have a pretty hot bath and wash my hair with cold water shower head. Going to start making the bath a bit colder and washing my hair in the tub only.

Thinking about it, if shower heads can get like that, couldn't taps?


I saw you made a post a few days ago saying:

"i just have removed my shower head and i am planning on showering directly from the straight pipe"

Would this work? I'll just do that if that actually works.

the jet was too strong. the shower head is kind of essential in throttling back the flow of water.

also, i took a flashlight and saw mold in the pipe itself. so now i am using this new all-metal showerhead and also taking it off after each use. interestingly, when i shut the water off, the showerhead is restraining the flow of the remaining water (which has no pressure left because the tap is off) and when i unscrew it off, the pipe squirts a bunch of water. a decent amount. but clearly not something that was filling the pipe and making it airtight, so i'd figure i'd rather starve the mold from water, than provide it with both water and air...

my 2c.

also, another piece of advice to you: do not bleach your showerhead, rather use a cheap one and change it frequently!!! by bleaching it, you may create an imbalance amongst bacteria colonies that are more or less affected by bleach. having a good balance of different kinds of bacteria is actually good to keep them all under control!!!