@brigby Hi Brenda. Supposedly, if you have the pink bacteria in your bathroom at home, then you do not have avium mycobacterium lurking in your pipes. The pink bacteria outranks the mac variety. This is according to Dr. Joseph Faulkinham who is a microbiologist at Virginia Tech University. I have been collecting statistics on mac patient's occupations too, so I am glad that you mentioned that you are a teacher. I have found that the majority of mac patients have worked as nurses or in the medical field (I would say about 80%). Second to them is teachers. The correlation that I see between the two is that both occupations expose you to many people and their germs year after year. The other correlation I see is that hospitals and schools use commercial cleaning products. It is possible they are creating super bugs.. These are just my observations from reading so many posts here over the years.