An article in the Sunday NYT on the Ecology of Disease — paints with a very broad brush that ignores the role of the microbiology of the built (and especially the indoor) environment, where we spend most of our time and most likely acquire most of our diseases. What the article ignores underscores the importance …
Very very interesting article in the Globe and Mail by Alex Hutchinson: Destination — not the flight — more likely to make you sick, study says – The Globe and Mail. The article discusses the issue of people (well, mostly athletes) getting sick when they travel. What is fascinating is that a few lines of evidence indicate …
Another good indoor microbiology video from the BioBE Center
Love this, from Ashley Bateman and the BioBE Center.
Every day there are numerous news reports dealing with “mold” and the built environment. It’s usually a mix of scaremongering, cleaning suggestions, and the occasional bit of interesting science. Generally we avoid this topic, since surprisingly little is actually known about what fungal species are actually associated with human health impacts. This story just caught …
A paper from MIT researchers, A Metric of Influential Spreading during Contagion Dynamics through the Air Transportation Network, a study of contagion dynamics shows that airports are among the more hazardous locations on your travel itinerary. Published in PLoS One, the paper is freely downloadable at this link The authors write: “Characterizing the early-time behavior …
Interesting new paper on cleaning surfaces … and what seems to work or not work: Residual viral and bacterial contamination of surfaces after cleaning and disinfection. It is an advanced PDF in AEM – not sure if people have access to the advanced PDF or not – unclear if those are freely available. I have added it …
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 …