Dhaka, Oct. 14 -- When you step into the shower, you probably expect to get clean - not blasted in the face by a cloud of bacteria. Yet that's exactly what happens, according to new research showing that shower heads and hoses are home to thriving microbial communities.

Scientists say the pipes and fixtures leading to your shower head create an ideal breeding ground for bacteria and fungi. Warm, wet, and rarely disturbed, they allow microbes to build up in sticky films known as biofilms - microscopic "cities" clinging to surfaces and feeding on nutrients in water and carbon from plastic hoses. When you switch on the tap, fragments of these biofilms are released into the spray.

In laboratory and household tests, researchers found that ba...