So here’s a question. Every couple of weeks I see articles about the wonderful benefits of having plants indoors. However, we’ve published in the past about how there’s little to no evidence that plants actually do anything meaningful in terms of indoor air quality (see here and here). The new rage seems to be biowalls… …
Quick update: A few days ago I wrote about a Legionnaires outbreak in Chicago at the Marrioott hotel: Time for hotels to start surveying their microbes. CNN is reporting that the hotel has identified a putative source for the Legionella bacterium that causes Legionnaires: the fountain in the lobby and/or a spa: Chicago hotel shuts fountain, …
Just a quick follow-up post here. Back in May we posted about a Wired article where they describe the interesting detective story of identifying a type of fungus that thrives on ethanol and grows extensively on and near distilleries. Being America, this was soon followed by lawsuits against the distilleries as described in a New …
Hmm … Not sure what to think of this. The Percolator (which is labelled as a free market environmentalism blog) has a mini story on possible dangers of banning reusable plastic bags: http://percolatorblog.org/2012/08/21/the-health-costs-of-plastic-grocery-bag-bans/ They embed a Youtube video with an interview they did with Jonathan Klick into their post … I am embedding it here too. …
Well, I wonder if this will get Marriott Corporation more involved in microbial studies in the indoor environment: Legionnaires’ disease outbreak kills 2 at Chicago hotel – CNN.com. Seems that there has been Legionella lurking around somewhere in the JW Marriott hotel in Chicago. The outbreak has led the hotel to drain all major standing water …
Here’s a case where just the title of an article is awesome: “Pyrosequencing-Derived Bacterial, Archaeal, and Fungal Diversity of Spacecraft Hardware Destined for Mars”. Sadly it’s not open access but the abstract is worth a read at a minimum. The authors conducted environmental surveys in cleanrooms and of equipment destined for Mars. Basically they found that …
Well, this could end up being interesting:Homeland Security To Test Biosensors In MBTA Stations Overnight « CBS Boston. At 1 AM Wednesday morning, at the Porter, Davis, and Harvard Square T stations on the Red Line of the MBTA researchers from the Department of Homeland Security will purposefully release killed Bacillus subtilis bacteria into the air. This …
Ugg – not impressed by this press release from Clark Seif Clark: Healthcare Facilities need to be Aware of Microbial Pathogens. This release has some accurate points such as that people with compromised immune systems need to worry about pathogens in the world around the. And that people with compromised systems can be harmed by breathing …
All you germaphobes, you might not want to read this: Boosting bacteria in drinking water may improve health – health – 10 August 2012 – New Scientist. Or the post here at the microBEnet blog a few days ago from David Coil about this same topic. The article discusses a paper from Lutgarde Raskin’s group at …
A quick post here on something that’s about as close to my pet topic of “probiotics for buildings” as I’ve ever seen. This group works on wastewater treatment, starting with the fact that a lot of bacteria makes it from the filtration process into drinking water. They studied the “drinking water microbiome” in a treatment …