Yes, microbes in healthcare facilities are important, but fear mongering doesn’t help

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 …

Wow – the “Probiotics for buildings” movement keeps spreading

It sounds so nice and catchy.  Priobiotics for buildings.  We have written about it here are few times Probiotics for buildings in action? Interesting but can’t verify Probiotics for buildings: A potential future application of current work on microbes in buildings Though I have not found any published science behind this movement there is more …

Jeffrey Marlow in the Extremo Files blog @Wired discusses Kembel et al. air flow microbes study

In the “Extremo File” blog, Jeffrey Marlow discussed recent work from the BioBE Center: Is Your Office Building Trying to Kill You? | Wired Science | Wired.com.  The post discusses how studies of microbial ecology are moving from the outdoors to the indoors and that is a useful message to get across. I presume the post …

Catchy title: “Boosting bacteria in drinking water may improve health” but hard to come by evidence for this idea

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 …

Great article on Microbiology of the Built Environment – for Discover’s subscriber’s only alas …

Just got a copy of the July/Aug issue of Discover and, well, discovered that this is the issue with the following article: Earth’s Last Unexplored Wilderness: Your Very Own Home | Ecosystems | DISCOVER Magazine. It is alas available online only to subscriber’s but for those interested in microbiology of the built environment, it is worth …

Press release of interest: Infants Exposed to Specific Molds Have Higher Asthma Risk

A new paper is discussed in this press release that is of interest to studies of microbiology of the built environment: UC HealthNews : Infants Exposed to Specific Molds Have Higher Asthma Risk. From the lab of Tiina Reponen who is involved in various studies on this topic. The online article is here: Full Text though it is not freely …