Thursday January 10 at 10:06 am on the east coast, the Diane Rehm Show will focus on the flu. You can read the advance description at http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2013-01-10/battle-against-flu. To find your local station, if you don’t already know it, go to www.npr.org. Most local stations make their broadcasts available on their web sites. “This year’s flu …
Just found a very interesting, very detailed article about keeping space robots / vehicles clean in terms of microbes: RYOT News » Scientists building robots focused on not contaminating Mars. The article reports: The decontamination of spacecraft, an obscure arm of space science, has grown in importance as NASA turned its attention to places such as …
Well, microbial studies of swimming pools may get a boost from the Abu Dhabi government. In Fines of up to Dh100,000 for breaking pool rules in Abu Dhabi – The National there is a discussion of rules to make sure pools are safe and clean. I particularly like the line: “We do not get the bacteria in the …
OK, this is one of the more interesting “microbiology of the built environment” stories I have seen in a while: Cliff the beagle sniffs out dangerous infections in hospitals | SmartPlanet. A new paper in BMJ reports on training and testing of dogs to detect Clostridium difficile infections in hospitals. There is even a video included …
Wow – this is disturbing: VA under scrutiny after Legionnaires’ cases in Pittsburgh – CNN.com. Seems that there has been an outbreak of Legionnaires’ at the VA hospital in Pittsburgh and apparently the hospital officials new knew about problems for a year but did not reveal this. For more on this see Doyle, Casey seek investigations …
We recently wrote about moldy documents in French archives and a higher incidence of asthma among workers who handled documents than others working in the same spaces but not handling them. See our previous post: “Hands off the moldy docs (for your own good?)” Now we find researchers reported that bacteria can also be transferred …
Not long ago we posted about the effect of copper on microorganisms in the built environment. This topic seems to come up more and more often with information ranging from belief that copper is a miracle cure to strong skepticism. A recent study from the UK adds an interesting piece to this puzzle by showing …
One the one hand this story represents an important set of findings: Hospital Rooms Can Be Bacteria Reservoirs : Personal Liberty Digestâ„¢. Main point: Hospital rooms are not getting to be germ free after cleaning. And in this case they focused on rooms where the recently discharged patient had a history of infection with multidrug resistant …
Occasionally I come across a news story related to the microbiology of the built environment that I really want to blog about… but don’t know what to say. Here is such a story about a ski resort in Arizona using 100% treated sewage water for snow making and the concerns associated with that. Blog post …
French archive employees handling moldy documents were found to be more likely to experience headaches, fatigue, eye or throat irritation, coughing, and rhinorrhea (stuffy nose) than their co-workers breathing the same air but not handling moldy documents . The culture and qPCR-based analysis of air samples showed Penicillium chrysogenum, Cladosporium sphaerospermum, and Aspergillus versicolor were …