Days after leaving the farm, agricultural workers can still tote farm-reared, drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in their noses. The pig-dwelling bacteria may cause infections in the workers and could put family and community members at risk, too.
In a two-week study, researchers led by epidemiologist Christopher Heaney of Johns Hopkins University collected nasal swabs from 22 hog farm workers in eastern North Carolina.
Nineteen of the workers, or 86 percent, carried staph at some point during the study, and around half had a multidrug-resistant strain. That’s compared with only about a third of people in the general population who carry staph and only about 5 percent who harbor drug-resistant strains.