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Ugly ducklings—the dark side of plastic materials in contact with potable water

Lisa Neu,Carola Bänziger,C. Proctor,Ya Zhang,Wen-Tso Liu,F. Hammes

Published 2018 in npj Biofilms and Microbiomes

ABSTRACT

Bath toys pose an interesting link between flexible plastic materials, potable water, external microbial and nutrient contamination, and potentially vulnerable end-users. Here, we characterized biofilm communities inside 19 bath toys used under real conditions. In addition, some determinants for biofilm formation were assessed, using six identical bath toys under controlled conditions with either clean water prior to bathing or dirty water after bathing. All examined bath toys revealed notable biofilms on their inner surface, with average total bacterial numbers of 5.5 × 106 cells/cm2 (clean water controls), 9.5 × 106 cells/cm2 (real bath toys), and 7.3 × 107 cells/cm2 (dirty water controls). Bacterial community compositions were diverse, showing many rare taxa in real bath toys and rather distinct communities in control bath toys, with a noticeable difference between clean and dirty water control biofilms. Fungi were identified in 58% of all real bath toys and in all dirty water control toys. Based on the comparison of clean water and dirty water control bath toys, we argue that bath toy biofilms are influenced by (1) the organic carbon leaching from the flexible plastic material, (2) the chemical and biological tap water quality, (3) additional nutrients from care products and human body fluids in the bath water, as well as, (4) additional bacteria from dirt and/or the end-users’ microbiome. The present study gives a detailed characterization of bath toy biofilms and a better understanding of determinants for biofilm formation and development in systems comprising plastic materials in contact with potable water. While bathing typically means good hygiene, bath toys can serve as incubators for microbial growth. Microbes colonize nearly every natural and human-made surface, sometimes living within complex communities called biofilms. A team led by Frederik Hammes at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology found that tap water bacteria and fungi readily formed biofilms inside bath toys, suggesting that bathing provides food for microbes. These nutrients may come from bath toys’ polymeric material, from care products like soap and from human secretions like sweat. While 16S rRNA sequence analysis found that some of the microbes were related to disease-causing strains, future work is needed to assess the disease risk from these bath toy-associated biofilms. This work sheds light on how microbes are spread by our routine activities and that we are bathed in microbes, literally.

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