Not much to add to this story other than to say that this is one of those examples where germophobia seems certainly justified: Dentist’s office a ‘perfect storm’ for HIV, hepatitis exposure – CNN.com.
Jessica Green gave another great TED talk recently, this time talking about engineering buildings to influence microbial communities. Check it out. The software that they’re developing in collaboration with Autodesk looks really cool.
Fun microbiology news this week. The BioBE Center has a new paper that is getting a lot of press. The paper is about microbes and roller derby. Really. If you want the inside story check out the guest post by Ashley Bateman from the BioBE Center on my Tree of Life Blog: The Tree of Life: …
Seems like Legionella has been in the news a lot recently, with more and more outbreaks occurring (see recent posts here, here, here, and here). One of the largest outbreaks was in the VA hospital in Pittsburgh which got a lot of press because it occurred over a entire year and there have been numerous …
Interesting story here: Mmegi Online :: US embassy refuses to name water bacteria. Apparently the US Embassy in Botswana does regular water testing there (and elsewhere around the world). And the testing identified some issues with the water recently so they sent out a notice to their employees to boil the water. But when asked to provide …
Not 100% sure what the main reason for this story is but I guess it is useful: Legionella Not Just Found In Hospitals, Some Homes Infected « CBS Pittsburgh. In my discussions with people about Legionella there is definitely an opinion out there that it is something that happens in big buildings – offices and hospitals …
Another short post here, this time on modeling the spread of hospital-acquired bacteria. Horizontal gene transfer between bacteria is a huge problem in hospitals and these researchers have developed some models for how this process actually occurs in hospitals. They’ve applied their techniques in a couple of real-life situations with interesting results. They found for …
Short post here about a cool-sounding advance in materials science related to microbes in the built environment. A research group at Duke University is working on a material that deforms in response to an electric current, thereby dislodging established biofilms (e.g. on the underside of a boat). Hard to tell how likely this is since …
Yes, Staples to the rescue. They will protect us all from the germs all over our offices. And – kindly – they will sell us all sorts of germ killing materials. Oh – and they will do this by making excessively germophobic claims about germs in our offices. And even better – they will use …
[edited from the ASHRAE press release] Changes to clarify requirements in a proposed standard are open for public comment. The proposed ASHRAE standard, 188P, Prevention of Legionellosis Associated with Building Water Systems, specifies what must be done to control the spread of legionellosis. The standard helps facility managers/owners understand how to apply the available information …