New papers on microbiology of the built environment, December 24, 2015

Happy Holidays!  As I already noted on my MicrobiomeDigest blog, the stream of scientific papers does not seem to take a holiday break, so I will keep on posting new papers here. Clean sweep Potential association of vacuum cleaning frequency with an altered gut microbiota in pregnant women and their 2-year-old children — Ekaterina Avershina …

Your dishwasher, vacuum cleaner and compost are trying to kill you! Or are they?

In the last 24 hours I saw articles with the following three headlines: My dishwasher is trying to kill me: Extreme conditions suit pathogenic fungus. Compost Harbors Legionnaire’s Disease Bacteria Bacteria, Mold Found In Vacuum Dust You’re not safe anywhere!  And people wonder why microbes get such a bad rap.   Yes, of course some microbes …

Stirring up the air with vacuums – interesting new study

Well, normally I find popular press stories about getting rid of dust and bacteria to be mostly fear mongering.  But this article from WebMD (which much of the time I have complaints about) actually seems worth a look: Are Vacuum Cleaners Bad for Your Health?.  The article discusses in part new work from Australian researchers on …