New papers on microbiology of the built environment, March 22, 2016

Microbes and humans Review: The Anthropocene: a conspicuous stratigraphical signal of anthropogenic changes in production and consumption across the biosphere – Mark Williams – Earth’s Future (OA) Biospheric relationships between production and consumption of biomass have been resilient to changes in the Earth system over billions of years. This relationship has increased in its complexity, …

Opportunistic Fungal Pathogens in Dishwashers and Kitchens

An interesting new paper titled The Black Yeast Exophiala dermatitidis and Other Selected Opportunistic Human Fungal Pathogens Spread from Dishwashers to Kitchens came out several days ago in PLoS one. Zupančič et al investigated the fungal diversity and distribution of 30 dishwashers. Swabs were taken from various parts in the dishwasher, sink, and on items that had been washed …

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 …

Is your dishwasher trying to kill you? Maybe, but no evidence of that from this work

A new paper coming out in the journal Fungal Biology is getting a lot of press.  The paper is: Dishwashers — A man-made ecological niche accommodating human opportunistic fungal pathogens Normally, I try to avoid writing up blog posts relating to papers that are not at least freely available online so that anyone out there can …