Not really knowing
what to blog this week, I did a search on the good ole New York Times website; “Cave
Microbes.” I was expecting, well, something about microorganisms in caves. But the
key words pulled up an article related to microbes indoors. Weird, right?
The article I found
was actually pretty cool. It is about the microbiologist, Dr. Fierer, of
Boulder, Colorado, and his studies of all the organisms that live in our homes.
Fierer studies microbes in homes to, hopefully, come up with strategies to
manage homes, and eliminate all the harmful species, and keeping all the
beneficial ones. But first, they need to know what’s inside.
“Here’s an undeniable fact: We are an
indoor species. We spend close to 90 percent of our lives in dry walled caves.” In a typical home, you’ll find humans, dogs,
cats, maybe fish, ants, bugs… and billions of microbes. Fierer swabbed 82
surfaces in 4 Boulder homes, and the all the results were similar; bacteria,
staphylococcaceae, corynebacteriaceae, molds, species associated with raw
produce, etc... I found this part a little crazy: “The microbes living on your pillowcase are not
all that different from those living on your toilet seat.”
Fierer came to
the conclusion that humans rapidly “infect” the places in which they live. We
come in contact with 37 million bacteria per minute, just on our exposed
skin. Dr. Fierer teamed up with Rob Dunn
from North Carolina State University, and sampled 1,400+ homes, and the results are
still being analyzed.
I liked this article, it was very well
written, and had a lot of information. The intro to the article was cool
because it sounded like a story. I had a few questions, like what corynebacteriaceae is, but that was it. This article’s
audience was definitely for someone who knows about microbes because it had
some terms that I would not have known without this class. Towards the end of
the article there were questions that some people had, such as “If you
live in a forest, do you have different microbes than if you live in a desert?” in which he replied with “These are questions
we don’t have the answer to yet.” Overall good article, but rises a ton of
questions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/science/getting-to-know-our-microbial-roommates.html?pagewanted=2
Indoor microbes and outdoor microbes! We can’t live with them, but we also can’t live without them! This article does seem very interesting. We are in fact an indoor species, just like your blog states, but I never really thought about all the microbes that can build up in our homes! This is a place where we can kick up our feet and relax; and I speculate this might just be the reason why so many microbes “live” with us. When I read about our pillowcases and toilet seats having similar microbes, I was appalled. I never even thought our pillowcases could be so “dirty.” Like you said in your blog, this article does raise some questions. One being; how does Feirer actually plan to eliminate the bad microbes but still keep the good microbes in the household? This seems like a tough process because all the new “defenses” microbes have; like “hiding” and “falling asleep” (in a dormant stage) when they are in danger. Another question that arises is, do different people who work in different environments bring home different microbes? Can family members in the household be “resistant” to certain pathogens because of the microbes that other family members bring in the household? This is a very interesting article that arises many questions, but seems to be a great discussion topic!
ReplyDelete-Angelo V.
I really like how this article came with the comic! The information that comes with it is really interesting too. I've heard before that there are tons of different microbes all over our homes. If you think about it, purses, backpacks, and other items that people take with them outside of their home, probably attract TONS of outside microbes into a persons house. It's frightening that the same bacterium on our toilet seats are on our pillow cases. I've heard about there being tons and tons of microbes all over our beds and pillow cases.. which kind of freaks me out. I wonder what there is that we can do to disinfect the "unwashable" things like our mattresses.
ReplyDeleteThis article was very informational and interesting. I didn't know that humans come in contact with 37 million bacteria per minute that is crazy. I also like the way they explain our homes as caves. If you think about its true we do live in caves in a way. The environment of our homes are sometimes completely different from the outside world. They can be very warm, cold, dry or humid and we get to control this, but mother nature has control over the outside world. So with human intervention microbes can live and thrive in our homes for may years and not have to worry about floods or solar radiation or non of the other elements outside. Perhaps our homes are bacteria castles and we are their servants. Besides we feed them, make sure they are comfy and protect them.
ReplyDeleteWow, this subject is really intriguing. I never really thought about the microbes that live in our home and how many there really could be.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of a experiment that they did on the transfer of germs in Myth Busters. They made an imitation nose drip for one person to see how far this drip could transfer among a dinner table with several guest. Once the dinner was over, they could see the spread of these "nose drippings under backlight. It was all over the table, silverware and even on some of the guests faces. That just shows how quickly and easily microbes can transfer from one place to the other. In a house it's the same concept because we literally touch everything. When we come back from work, school, or even just an outside jog, we bring back a new population of microbes into our home. One of the questions that comes up for me is if these microbes in our home are bad for us or not. Should we be wiping down surfaces in our home more often? Even if we did wipe down surfaces in our home more often, it doesn't seem that would reduce the transfer of microbes in our home unless we literally did it every second of the day, wore gloves, and never went outside.