Even though our company makes cleaning products, I am a big fan of understanding and embracing the thousands of microbes and fungi that we live with in our homes. Natural cleaners like ours do not kill all the microbes in our environment, which I think is important.
Fungi and bacteria are common microorganisms that can be found in homes. While some of them have negative effects some of the species floating in our dust are incredibly beneficial to our health and well-being. For example having a dog influences the microbes in our homes and in doing so potentially reduces our risk of having children with asthma and other autoimmune disorders.
I was fascinated to read this article which looked at the thousands of fungi and bacteria in our homes.
This is a quote from the study’s author Rob Dunn: “In the next decade you will likely hear claims of every ilk about the microbial life around you and what we have understood. People will offer to sell you microbes that allow you to live until you are 200 years old. People will offer to kill microbes that are preventing you from living to 200. People will sell you underpants with probiotics or antibiotics. People will claim to have understood Autism, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and many other diseases that haunt modern society. It is already happening. When you hear these claims it is worth remembering that in your house, in our collective homes, dwell more than a hundred thousand species, most of which have not yet been studied, ever, in any way.”
The First National Inventory of All Household Life (on a swab)
In dust one can record the actions of storms, the wearing of mountains, the consequences of industrialisation. The study of dust has a long history. Geologists consider it. Toxicologists too. Arthur Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes look to dust to discern where a criminal might have traveled.
But perhaps the most telling feature of dust is its life. Each mote of dust is an entire world composed both of living organisms and of those in the process of falling apart. Run your finger along a surface, even one that seems clean, and in the particles you retrieve will be a measure of the life near that spot.
The bits of life in a mote of dust are, of course, tiny. A decade ago the only way to know their identity was to scrutinize dust sample after dust sample hoping to find relatively large and intact life forms in and among the small and broken. Alternatively, one might try to grow out of dust those organisms that are still living—bacteria, protists, worms, and water bears.
Recently though a new approach has emerged, one that has changed what we can see. Powerful genetic techniques allow scientists to find the bits of DNA in dust whether inside living organisms or inside the bits and pieces of dead ones. Claw of ant, eye of fly, collapsed spore of fungus. They are all floating around us, until recently undetectable.
Read the rest of the article here.
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