"Microscopic cancers are forming in human body all the time"

From TEDtalksDirector — May 17, 2010 - William Li presents a new way to think about cancer treatment: angiogenesis, targeting the blood vessels that feed a tumor. The crucial first (and best) step: Eating cancer-fighting foods that beat cancer at its own game.

"We're probably forming microscopic cancers all the time in our body. Autopsy studies from people who died in car accidents have shown that about 40 percent of women between the ages of 40 and 50 actually have microscopic cancers in their breasts. About 50 percent of men in their 50s and 60s have microscopic prostate cancers. And virtually 100 percent of us, by the time we reach our 70s, will have microscopic cancers growing in our thyroid. Yet, without a blood supply, most of these cancers will never become dangerous. Dr. Judah Folkman, who was my mentor, and who was the pioneer of the angiogenesis field, once called this "cancer without disease."

A microscopic look at hotel hygiene makes a microbiologist travel with an impervious mattress cover

From CNN:

The microbiologist Philip Tierno doesn't feel comfortable staying in hotels. He knows too much. He travels with an impervious mattress and pillow cover to protect against the unseen debris that guests leave behind. When humans sleep they shed about 1.5 million cells an hour.

While the covers were developed for allergy sufferers, Tierno encourages everyone to use them at home and on the road.

And definitely ditch the bedspread, he advises. Hotel bedspreads became a hot topic when one featuring bodily fluids from several sources was introduced in boxer Mike Tyson's 1992 rape trial.


How hotels clean drinking glasses

An Atlanta TV station used hidden cameras to monitor how the drinking glasses in hotel rooms were cleaned. In one case, a housekeeper appeared to clean a toilet and the glasses wearing the same gloves. In multiple hotels, the glasses were rinsed in the sink and dried for the next guests, in violation of health codes.

The Health Magazine lists the 12 germiest places in America or the so called "dirty dozen":

1. Kitchen sink
2. Airplane bathroom
3. A load of wet laundry
4. Public drinking fountain
5. Shopping cart handle
6. ATM buttons
7. Playgrounds
8. Bathtub
9. Office phone
10. Hotel-room remote
    
    

References:
A microscopic look at hotel hygiene, CNN, 2011.