Innovative and unique technology, based on the study of biological processes of bacteria, prevents pathogenic infections, and creates a safe, vital and healthy environment.
By: Yael Halfman Cohen
Innovative and unique technology, based on the study of biological processes of bacteria, prevents pathogenic infections, and creates a safe, vital and healthy environment.
The term "probiotics" reminds most of us of the "friendly bacteria" inserted into various food products in order to restore balance to our bodies. The idea of probiotics has existed since the beginning of the 19th century and is based on the "sense of quorum", according to which there will always be a fixed amount of bacteria in a certain area, sharing the same living environment and multiplying and dying according to the availability and abundance of the resources in the environment.
Naturally, in every area there are colonies of bacteria. Which ones are essential and which ones are negative and harmful. All of these share the same living environment and benefit from the same resources. Adding essential bacteria artificially causes the balance to be broken and the negative bacteria gradually disappear, this is because the essential bacteria use the existing resources, at the expense of the other bacteria. According to the principle of competitive inhibition, there is not enough space and enough food left for the other bacteria - and therefore they disappear.
Probiotics are one of the answers to the "circle of destruction" that the human race has fallen into in its fight against bacteria and molds. The increasing use of "antibiotics" and "antibacterial" chemicals has resulted in the development of more resistant microbial organisms, forcing us to use increasing doses of antibiotics and increasingly stronger chemicals in order to destroy them.
The company Better Air took the idea of probiotics one step further and offers its application outside the boundaries of our body - environmental probiotics. Certain bacteria and molds found in our environment are considered negative. They pose a substantial danger to humans and sometimes cause the "sick building" syndrome, a series of different morbidity characteristics, including headaches, coughing, itching, dizziness and more attributed to those staying in these buildings.
At the end of ten years of research and development, the Better Air company together with a team of researchers from the University of Ghent (GHENT) in Belgium, created the only probiotic balance method in the world today.
Yuli Horesh, the deputy CEO of the company, says that "we take advantage of the sense of quorum, together with the fact that bacteria have a very short life span (a few days), and inject the environmental probiotics regularly and at a fixed frequency according to the need, thus changing the ecological balance and making the The environment is clean, safe and protected from pathogenic bacteria." The process of treating bacteria with the environmental probiotics approach is described in the following video:
The solution is a system that provides a layer of probiotic microflora, which covers difficult areas such as air conditioner pipes, which are known to harbor dangerous bacteria and molds. The treatment reduces bad odor caused by bacterial infections, maintains the balance and inhibits the development of dangerous colonies. The system was successfully implemented in the air conditioning systems of the Azrieli Towers and other sites, and these days a small home/office device that is convenient for personal use has been marketed.
The biomimetic aspects of this system are related to the imitation of biological processes of bacteria such as the quorum sense and the principle of competitive inhibition as the basis of the system's operation. Although the system uses an animal component (the friendly bacteria) for its activity, the bacteria eradication mechanism is a product of microbiological research. The result is the gradual and natural disappearance of negative bacteria, without the use of substances or technologies that endanger humans and animals.
