While many rashes that befall bakers and others who handle baking products are attributed to parasites (mites, etc., that thrive in flour, sugar, yeast -- YUK!) there is research linking baking yeast to fungal infections in humans. "...microbiologists in Italy and the United States (US) have shown that commercial strains of bakers' yeast, saccharomyes cerevisiae, can cause thrush, an infection of the mouth or throat in infants or of the vagina in women...According to the monthly Journal of Clinical Microbiology, a Santa Clara Valley Medical Centre [USA] publication, [Karl] Clemons and his team decided to investigate bakers' yeast after seeing isolated reports of it causing thrush. In the journal, it was reported that Claudio Farina of the United Hospital in Bergamo, Italy, sent the Santa Clara team samples from 16 women with thrush whose symptoms were not caused by candida albicans. All 16 samples contained a strain that is sold in Italy for cooking." Full text of the article is located on the Internet at http://www.africanews.org/science/stories/19970908_feat1.html ~~Margery Wilson, IBCLC Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA