Making the Human Health Connection: Healthy Buildings, Healthy People, Healthy Communities

The Health in Buildings Roundtable will meet Tuesday, April 23rd from 8 to 4:30 at the Natcher Center on the NIH campus in Bethesda. The line-up includes a diverse set of speakers and topics. We saw nothing in the program posted on line mentioning microbial ecology, microbiology, or microbes, but the program might be of …

Discussion of surface sampling methods in the built environment (video) [Updated w/ notes]

Researchers from the University of Oregon, UC Berkeley, Cornell, and Texas looking at bacterial and fungal communities in the built environment had a great video discussion on our methods for surface sampling. Watch the video on YouTube Notes on the discussion and equipment used by each group should be coming soon. Thanks again to everyone …

Video Conference on Air Sampling Methods[Updated with notes]

Some of us doing bioaerosol sampling had a video conference to discuss methods in the field. The goal was to swap experiences, considerations, and ideas as the field moves forward. It was a great conversation among researchers from Berkeley, Oregon, Cornell, and Univ. of Texas. Summarized notes are in the works and will be uploaded …

Building science journals – a partial list and links to more

Many reliable and credible scientific journals related to building science most relevant to the microbiology of the built environment are listed here. These are selected based on our personal experience and judgment and do not constitute a comprehensive or definitive list. Indoor Air — International Journal of Indoor Environment and Health Indoor Air provides a …

Building “science” blogs (?)

Many recent microbe.net post links to “blog of the day” provide diverse, interesting reading related to microbial ecology. To identify some worthwhile “building science” blogs, we contacted some of the most knowledgeable building scientists we know. The results suggest some observations comparing building science and microbial ecology. Both domains (“fields,” “disciplines”) are highly diversified, ranging …

Guidelines: travel-related Legionnaire’s Disease investigation

After recognition of recent incidents of Legionnaires’ Disease in hospitals, more attention is being paid to Legionella spp by hotels and other travel industry members. In 1986, several European countries formed the European Working Group for Legionella Infections (EWGLI) to share knowledge about monitoring potential sources of Legionella as well as to provide technical guidelines …

microBEnet Microbiology blog of the day: Aetiology from Tara Smith

Going through the list of Microbiology Blogs I have curated at microBEnet and going to try to feature one of the every day or so with a mini description. And just going to do this alphabetically.  So todays blog is: Aetiology. Author: Tara C. Smith Tagline: Discussing causes, origins, evolution, and implications of disease and other phenomena Recent …

Just posted on Mendeley – ozone and filter interactions paper

Destaillats et al 2011. “Secondary pollutants from ozone reactions with ventilation filters and degradation of filter media additives”, Atmospheric Environment, vol. 45, no. 21, p. 3561-3568, 2011. Can be freely downloaded from LBL.gov web site as LBNL-4829E.pdf (692.59 KB) http://iepubs.lbl.gov/publications/author/22