I don’t know. Maybe some research has been done. But with highlifes and lowlifes adopting the look, especially in Australia, whenever I see one these, I can only think of this:
Hillbilly beard: What bugs live in there?
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Tag Archives: beard
Jimmy Fallon tests Will Forte’s beard for bacteria & poop
Forte told Fallon that his friends had been sending him articles about facial hair being infested with bacteria and “poop.”
“A lot of these beards are riddled with fecal matter,” he told Fallon.
You can’t sleep at night because you have poop in your beard?”
Forte’s beard was swabbed by a post-doctoral research scholar from UCLA. The samples were then sent to a lab where they underwent germ analysis.
The actor was flanked on either side by Emmy-award winner Jon Hamm and Rachel Dratch as Fallon read the test results live on the air.
Forte tested positive for several strains of bacteria.
Here’s what was found in Forte’s facial hair: pseudomonas, a bacteria most commonly found in soil and dirty sneakers, serratia marcescens, a bacteria found in dirty showers, staphylococcus, most commonly found in trash cans, and yeast.
But it all came down to the one final test.
“Did you have poop in your beard?” Fallon said.
The test results came out negative for poop.
“I was so scared,” Forte shouted, running into the audience to celebrate.
The beard stays, you go; gastrointestinal anthrax after an animal-hide drumming event — New Hampshire and Massachusetts, 2009
We often host drum circles out on the large lawn where we beat on large animal hides and get into touch with our inner obscure jazz that NPR helps us find. Or Phish live albums.
Or not.
On December 24, 2009, a woman aged 24 years from New Hampshire was confirmed to have gastrointestinal anthrax on the basis of clinical findings and a Bacillus anthracis blood culture isolate. Her symptoms began on December 5.
One day before symptom onset, she had participated in a drumming event at a community organization’s building where animal-hide drums of multiple ages and origins were played. This report describes the case and subsequent investigation, which identified 84 persons potentially exposed to anthrax, including those persons at the drumming event and those who lived or worked at the event site. Review of New Hampshire disease surveillance data and clinical microbiology records for periods before and after the event identified no additional anthrax cases. Initial qualitative environmental testing of the event site yielded three positive samples (two from drum heads and one composite sample of three electrical outlets in the main drumming room). Wider, targeted, semi-quantitative environmental testing of the site and additional drums yielded six positive samples (two from one drum and four from environmental locations in the building).
These results suggested that aerosolization of spores from drumheads had occurred. All isolates obtained from environmental and drum samples matched the patient’s isolate by multiple-locus variable-number tandem repeat analysis using eight loci (MLVA-8). Public health agencies and persons with exposure to animal-hide drums should be aware of the potential, although remote, risk for anthrax exposure associated with these drums.
A total of 72 persons attended the December 4 event, and a total of 59 drums were present, including 17 drums that participants brought from home. Volunteers set up drums and prepared a vegetarian meal; participants ate dinner in the main drumming room (Figure) before beginning the drumming circle, which lasted 2 hours.