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Related: About this forumMapping the Microbes of the New York City Subway
http://www.wired.com/2015/02/mapping-microbes-new-york-city-subway/A few years ago Christopher Mason, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, dropped his eight-month-old daughter off at daycare and watched as she put a plastic toy giraffe in her mouth. Then he watched that giraffe go into another kids mouth. And then another. It got me thinking about what microbes were being transferred, Mason says. Looking around New York, he realized: Critters live on every surface people touch, all the time. Especially, he realized, on the subway.
By 2013, Masons vision of a city teeming with shared germs had become a project. He recruited grad students and other researchers to same the entire New York City subway system. After 18 months of swabbing surfaces of metal handrails, turnstiles, ticket kiosks, and other places that people touch a lot, the team had what they call a PathoMap, the first description of New Yorks subway-riding microbial denizens. In a city where 5.5 million people ride the underground (and occasionally elevated) rails among 466 stations every day, this is data that both allays and inspires dread.
The newly published map provides a snapshot of a city teeming with microbesseptillions of them (thats a one followed by 24 zeroes). No need to grab your hand sanitizer or stock up on antibacterial soap, though. (In fact, dont; that stuff is terrible.) While some of the microbes were pathogenicincluding traces of anthrax and the Bubonic plague, which, believe or not, were harmlessstraphangers have nothing to worry about. Many of the species are good for human health or simply associated with foods like cheese and yogurt. This is what a healthy city looks like, Mason says. Its also a baseline that could give public health experts and city planners a new way to look at urban areas, tracking microbial ebb and flow in real time.
The researchers found traces of at least 637 known species of bacteria and a smattering of viruses, fungi, and microscopic animals. They also found well, dunno. As the New York Times noted, about 48 percent of all the samples didnt match any known species. It turns out that kind of uncertainty is pretty common in microbial censuses. In a 2013 analysis of all the DNA in a bunch of high-volume samples of the outdoor and indoor air in San Diego and New York, a research group lead by the famed geneticist Craig Venter failed to identify nearly half the samples. Still, when you think about it, thats kind of weird. I wouldve thought that we knew the majoritymaybe 80 to 90 percentof the microbes in a human environment, Mason says. It means theres a lot left to be discovered.
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Mapping the Microbes of the New York City Subway (Original Post)
steve2470
Feb 2015
OP
Chemisse
(30,811 posts)1. What an amazing project!
Although it does make me want to wash my hands - a LOT!
Warpy
(111,261 posts)2. Learn to scratch your nose with the back of your wrist when you're out
and wash your hands as soon as you get back home. It's really the best way to avoid a lot of colds and other crud out there on shopping carts and subway straps.
Of course it doesn't help that most subway stations are urinals with tracks.
Chemisse
(30,811 posts)3. Good idea - for a teacher too.
Although I teach chemistry, so have 4 sinks and lots of soap right in the room.
It would be nice to see more supermarkets have wet wipes available, not just for the carts, but for when we have to handle leaking meats.