Air conditioning may lead to our demise

By: Eileen Martinez
The environment inside a building has multiple impacts on human health, and in this study, researchers examined how different microbial diversity is in built ecosystems (buildings) versus the natural ecosystem (outdoors). By studying environmental factors (ventilation sources, temperature, and humidity), at a health care facility, scientists found that the source of ventilation air (mechanical vs. window) has a significant impact on the bacterial diversity between built and natural ecosystems. the airborne bacteria found in mechanical ventilation were human pathogens that were not found in the airborne bacteria in window ventilation and in the air outdoors; in addition, the bacteria found in window ventilation were non-pathogenic and were also found in the air outside. This is important because we can better understand how bacteria, specifically human pathogens, are transported an accumulated from place to place. Also, from this research we can see that mechanical ventilation may be harvesting pathogens, and that natural ventilation may be a way to minimize the amount of human pathogens that accumulate inside buildings.

 

Figure from Kembel et.al (2012) depicts the amount of bacterial species found at a health care clinic that are closely related to human pathogens in airborne microbial samples in both indoors and environmental conditions. 

Original article: Kembel SW, Jones E, Kline J, Northcutt D, Stenson J, Womack AM, Bohannan BJM, Brown GZ, Green JL. (2012).  Architectural design influences the diversity and structure of the built environment microbiome. ISME Journal 6:1469-1479.