How to reveal the tiny inhabitants of the spaces of the house
On a chilly day in the city of Eugene, Oregon, James Meadow climbed up wearing shorts and a sleeveless top into an airtight sterile chamber, which was formerly used as a refrigeration unit and which he fondly calls "the pickle box." Meadow, a postdoctoral student in the Department of Biology at the University of Oregon and the Center for the Built Environment, sat there for four hours without a bathroom break as 12 air filters collected the bacteria his body emitted.
The question that Midow and his colleagues ask is: "How many microorganisms do humans emit when they are just sitting at the desk?".
The researchers from Oregon are testing the air content to design buildings that will include efficient ventilation and filtration systems that will allow their occupants to breathe the healthiest air possible. "If we're always surrounded by bacteria," Midow says, "we can eventually get to a point where we can manage the ecosystem in our homes like we manage nature reserves."
Preliminary data from the pickle box show that detectors are able to detect the presence of a single person and begin to distinguish between different people. Right now, Midow says, the built environment is an uncharted territory: "We know more about microbes found in the ocean depths, in the troposphere, or in rocks in Antarctica."
The article was published on the Scientific American Israel website
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A dog's nose is an unusually sensitive detector, which can identify a person by the trail of substances he left behind, even after a long time.
Something is not clear to me, the bacteria that we "emit" for the most part are part of our natural flora... this protects us by 'pushing' aside and is competition for pathogenic strains. What benefit will arise from changing it? By using filters, which will cause it to be diluted and hence a golden opportunity for other bacteria to "settle" in us or a violation of the natural balance of the bacteria in our body?