Farts Can Be Silent, But Can They Be Deadly?

It's highly unlikely that most farts spread disease, but there is one strange case in the medical records. Learn why passing gas is almost always safe (except for our noses) in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain stuff,
Lauren Vogelbaum. Here, Look, no one really wants to think
about it, and yet you can't help but think about
it when you smell or emit a particularly odiferous fart.
Can that fart spread disease? We found two studies done

(00:23):
decades apart that come to two different conclusions. In August
of ninety eight, an outbreak of infections of a particular
strain of streptococcie occurred at Vanderbilt University Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee.
The nine patients infected were housed in different wards with
different problems, and they were visited by many medical staff
during their stays, but seven of them shared an anesthesiologist.

(00:47):
The stuff took oral swabs of the anesthesiologists skin and throat,
but they came back negative no trace of the streptococcie.
Since this was the mid twentieth century when penicillin was
handed out like candy, the anesthesiologist was given a short
course of an hbiotic because why not. But a few
months later, in November and December, another outbreak of the
same strain of strep infected eight different patients the same

(01:10):
anesthesiologist attended five of these new cases. He still wasn't
showing any symptoms, but this time the staff took an
anal swab of the doctor and that turned up the
exact strain of strip affecting these new patients. The doctor
was given a full round of antibiotics and taken off
duty for ten days. Afterwards, his cultures were clear of
streptococci and there were no further wound infections related to

(01:32):
his patients. Researchers said at the time in the New
England Journal of Medicine that while the quote anus to
hand to patient route of transmission was a possibility, airborne
transmission was more likely in this case. The authors of
the paper concluded then that it was probably the doctor's
farts infecting the patient's wounds, not him failing to wash
his hands properly. Fast forward to two thousand one, a

(01:56):
woman called into doctor Carl carsel Nikki's radio show in
Australia asking if she was contaminating the operating room when
she quietly farted during procedures. Doctor Carl thought that was
a fair question, so he enlisted a microbiologist friend, Luke Tenant,
to help find out Tenant asked a colleague to fart
into two petree dishes, one with his pants on and

(02:17):
one with his pants down. Never forget, science is very elegant.
Tenant checked the dishes the next morning. The no pants
dish had lumps of bacteria similar to those found on
our skin and in our gut. The pants dish had
no bacteria. Doctor Carl noted that the bacteria and the
no pants dish wasn't harmful though, just the normal everyday

(02:38):
microbes that live within and around us, and can even
be helpful. They're part of the microbiome that helps us
digest our food. Well, okay, but what about pink eye.
You may have heard as a kid that you can
get pink eye if somebody farts on your pillow. First
of all, if someone farts on your pillow, they are
not your friend and you shouldn't let them anywhere near
your pillows. Second, though, the myth just isn't true. It's

(03:01):
called passing gas. Because it's gas, any bacteria in the
fart would die pretty quickly outside the body. You can, however,
get pink eye from actual poop. If you touch poop
and then touch your eye, you can get pink eye.
As with a bacterial infection, any viruses that might be
present in your intestines aren't likely to spread through farts.

(03:22):
This is even true of coronaviruses like the one that
leads to COVID nineteen. Viruses fall out of the air
pretty quickly, meaning these surfaces they land on are more
contagious than any smell wafting past your unfortunate nose, more
than anything to do with farts. Good hand washing techniques
will make the most difference for keeping bacteria and viruses

(03:42):
outside your body. Washing your hands for twenty seconds each
time you use the bathroom or touch shared surfaces like
the handle of the office refrigerator, for instance, vastly reduces
the likelihood that you'll contract any illnesses or infections. So
what have we learned here today? Wear pants and wash
your hands words to live by. Today's episode was written

(04:07):
by Kristen hall Geisler and produced by Tyler Clang. From
more on this lots of other curious topics, visit how
stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I
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