So earlier this week I wrote an article at Slate called “I would rather lick a toilet seat than cell phone”. Which was a really unfortunate title since I was trying to emphasize that toilet seats are surprisingly clean and the general point of the article was about microbial scare stories. I did not mean …
One of our pet peeves are the oft-repeated microbiology stories in the media that consist of “OMG we found bacteria on your chair/house/keyboard/dishwasher/cell phone/toys/books/doorknobs/dusters/vacuum cleaners/”. There are three issues with this kind of story; firstly that bacteria are everywhere so no shockers about finding them on your cell phone. Secondly, most of these stories focus …
I recently posted here about one of the new Sloan-funded projects in the microbiology of the built environment, the “Hospital Microbiome Project”. One thing I didn’t mention is that they already have some interesting preliminary results from the construction phase of the project that are worth checking out. Jack Gilbert has also been involved in …