On Dec. 10, 2024, a research team led by Fangqiong Ling, an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis published study results from sampling the bathroom faucets of eight households in the St. Louis metro area. The team sampled the homes for seven days to see the flow and change of different bacteria populations. They found that, though houses generally shared major categories of bacteria, down to the species level, there was wide variation from house to house.

Computer modeling suggests that microbes initially establish their communities through both deterministic and stochastic processes, meaning random events, which could account for why there is huge variation at the species level, household to household. The research aims to be able to monitor, anticipate and prevent outbreaks of opportunistic pathogens and bacteria that spread disease. This kind of monitoring is under development for large buildings and institutions such as hospitals, but it’s scarce for individual households.

The Environmental Protection Agency instituted a rule on October 28, 2024 that all municipalities that provide water will be required to replace lead pipes within the next decade. With the changeover in infrastructure, there also may be opportunities to improve monitoring beyond metals and institute mitigation measures for microplastics and the microbiome. The study was published in Nature Water.