Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, either everyone and welcome to Forward Thinking. The
Speaker 1: podcast that Looks in the Future says, there was a
Speaker 1: young sailor who looked through the glass. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Pokon, and I'm Joe McCormick. Guys, Now, if
Speaker 1: I were to give you just a term, just saying
Speaker 1: starship Enterprise, what are some of the ways you would
Speaker 1: describe the interior of that starship? It's so perfect and immaculate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Busters everywhere, Yeah, yes, space Dustbusters of the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was looking for Lenz Flair, but my Starship Enterprise
Speaker 1: doesn't involve that much. Lens Flare. Clearly Abrahams has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with Lauren's Starship Enterprise. Um. Yeah. If you
Speaker 1: think about the inside of the ships in Star Trek,
Speaker 1: they look disgustingly clean. Well, not all the ships in
Speaker 1: Star Trek, though, that's all the Federation. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: If you go you look inside the clingon ships, they
Speaker 1: look really grungy. And I don't know if it's just
Speaker 1: bad lighting or if there's like filth on the surfaces.
Speaker 1: I always assumed it was some kind of like since
Speaker 1: the Klingons to me were always a terrific parallel for
Speaker 1: Communist Russia, that it was clearly some kind of like
Speaker 1: in Communist Russia clingons. I don't I can't really finish
Speaker 1: that statement where I don't have anything clean. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's one of the exactly the machine oils you.
Speaker 1: That would be what the way I'd go, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it turns out that, you know, when we think about
Speaker 1: the Star trek Uh universe, whenever we're thinking about those
Speaker 1: Federation ships, we have those incredibly pristine, clean ships. This
Speaker 1: is not the only example of futuristic worlds where everything
Speaker 1: is spotless and immaculate, right, I mean the spaceship on
Speaker 1: two thousand one or the space station I guess I
Speaker 1: should say two thousand one absolutely spotless. I would say,
Speaker 1: especially if you look into earlier science fiction, they envisioned
Speaker 1: the future is an extremely clean place. I think one
Speaker 1: thing that was a sort of revolution in later sci
Speaker 1: fi depictions is they sort of dirtied up the future
Speaker 1: a bit. That's something you saw once you had Star
Speaker 1: Wars and Blade Runner and stuff like that. Fifth Element,
Speaker 1: although technically Star Wars is not the future that happened
Speaker 1: a long time ago. Well whatever, although lots of depictions
Speaker 1: in books, I mean you can't see the grid, and
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of this was also design elements.
Speaker 1: More so, I mean it was style over the substance
Speaker 1: of a concept of the future. Um, not that something
Speaker 1: like the fifth element isn't very stylish, but Highland for example,
Speaker 1: certainly never sometimes he did, but but he usually didn't
Speaker 1: describe his his future escapes as being pristine. Well, no,
Speaker 1: I would tie it probably to an idea, a sort
Speaker 1: of utopian idea of about the future, like like in
Speaker 1: Star Trek. I mean, when you look at and Vary's
Speaker 1: vision of the future, he has this vision that's generally
Speaker 1: better than today, very optimistic, right, and and and again
Speaker 1: that's where that kind of clingon thing comes in, because
Speaker 1: the Federation was this utopia and cling on society was
Speaker 1: portrayed as very much not now. However, I will counter
Speaker 1: that by saying, there are several dystopian versions of the
Speaker 1: future that are also very very clean. And in this case,
Speaker 1: the it's meant to be more sterile, a clockwork orange, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: So these are world these are worlds where the cleanliness
Speaker 1: is a symptom of something that's actually rotten in that
Speaker 1: world where it's not you know, it's not that everything
Speaker 1: is beautiful and lovely, it's that things are cold and impersonal.
Speaker 1: I would say that the association between cleanliness and a
Speaker 1: sort of utopian vision of the future is understandable once
Speaker 1: you look at the history of sanitation and sterilization, especially
Speaker 1: as it comes to medicine and society. Sure, because you
Speaker 1: can sort of see an arc that, oh wow, learning
Speaker 1: how to clean up our medical facilities and our homes
Speaker 1: and things like that, that was actually a big step
Speaker 1: forward for human beings, right, And that's really what we
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about in this podcast. Is this. I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems kind of odd, but this is actually inspired
Speaker 1: from one of our our listeners sent in a suggestion. Now,
Speaker 1: his suggestion was about a very specific thing that we're
Speaker 1: going to address in a future episode, but in general
Speaker 1: it had to do with this concept of cleaning and cleanliness,
Speaker 1: and we kind of got into this this discussion about
Speaker 1: you know, what, what is the future of this, What
Speaker 1: is is there such a thing as too clean? Is?
Speaker 1: In what realms? Is this super hyper cleanliness necessary? And
Speaker 1: are there anywhere it's something that would be a problem
Speaker 1: because again, in these different versions of the future, we
Speaker 1: have the ones where cleanliness is an example of an
Speaker 1: idyllic society and others where cleanliness is an example of
Speaker 1: some sort of uh dystopia. And of course, in order
Speaker 1: to discuss that, we we really need to look at
Speaker 1: at how the technology of cleanliness has developed over the
Speaker 1: past century or so, because because it is very much
Speaker 1: a technology or a series of technology. Sure, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we should. Actually, I'd say we should go back a
Speaker 1: few centuries um to to the idea of say, germ theory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can go back even further before we understood what
Speaker 1: germ theory was in fact, because there were some observations
Speaker 1: that led to the formulation of germ theory. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk about Igney simil Wise. Similwise, Yeah, a pioneer
Speaker 1: in antiseptics. So some of ice had a friend named
Speaker 1: Jacob or Jacob if you prefer the Anglo cutonized version,
Speaker 1: but ja Cob. He was a doctor who had performed
Speaker 1: an autopsy and in the process of performing this, accidentally
Speaker 1: cut himself and then subsequently came down with a terrible
Speaker 1: fever and died. And simil Wis was obviously distressed by
Speaker 1: this because he also, being a physician, was very much
Speaker 1: upset that his fellow physician passed away and passed away
Speaker 1: from an illness, and he also was observing something unusual
Speaker 1: to him. It was that in his area, women who
Speaker 1: were giving birth who were assisted by midwives were having
Speaker 1: more having better success with with their their babies surviving childbirth,
Speaker 1: but the women who were giving birth being assisted by
Speaker 1: medical students had a higher rate of infant mortality. And
Speaker 1: so civil Wise decided to look into this, and you know,
Speaker 1: it was kind of his friend's death that sort of
Speaker 1: sparked his imagination as he looked around at what was
Speaker 1: going on, and he determined that the medical students who
Speaker 1: were assisting in childbirths were the same medical students who
Speaker 1: were performing autopsies, and that perhaps they were corrupting the
Speaker 1: childbirth someway was something that they were carrying from the
Speaker 1: the dead bodies. They had no concept of germs at
Speaker 1: this time, believe it or not, that these people didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily know that you should wash your hands in between
Speaker 1: handling something horrible and delivering a baby. And so he
Speaker 1: ended up demanding that medical students follow a protocol which
Speaker 1: would involve them washing their hands with a chlorinated antiseptic solution,
Speaker 1: and then they saw mortality rates drop significantly. So it
Speaker 1: became clear that the practice of midwives who weren't coming
Speaker 1: into contact with dead bodies like the medical students were,
Speaker 1: we're better than the ones that the medical students were following.
Speaker 1: And this was a big step. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: one of those things where you know, today we take
Speaker 1: it for granted, but at the time it was revolutionary. Well,
Speaker 1: moving on from washing your hands, just the idea of
Speaker 1: water sanitation was something that came to people fairly late,
Speaker 1: the idea that they needed to be really careful about
Speaker 1: the water that they drank, and that in fact, that
Speaker 1: could cause illness if they were careful. So a doctor
Speaker 1: John Snow, who, as I put in my notes, obviously
Speaker 1: did not know nothing for all your Game of Thrones
Speaker 1: fans out there, found in the early nineteenth century he
Speaker 1: was he was trying to figure out a cholera outbreak
Speaker 1: in London, and there was a specific neighborhood in London
Speaker 1: where there were a lot of deaths due to cholera,
Speaker 1: and he was starting to really look into what was
Speaker 1: causing it and He took a very kind of forensic
Speaker 1: approach to this. In fact, made a map and plotted
Speaker 1: out where people were, and he figured out that there
Speaker 1: was this one water pump that was somehow contaminated with
Speaker 1: cholera UH. And at the time, this was a a
Speaker 1: big departure from the common belief, which was that cholera
Speaker 1: was spread through some form of noxious gas that escaped
Speaker 1: from the sewers, that it wasn't something that they were ingesting.
Speaker 1: So anyway, doctor Snow was able to convince the city
Speaker 1: government to shut down a particular water pump in this region.
Speaker 1: He had determined that this one water pump was somehow contaminated,
Speaker 1: and so they removed the handle. Thus you could not
Speaker 1: pump water this water pump um and as a result,
Speaker 1: the cholera outbreak started to disappear. People stopped UH coming
Speaker 1: down with cholera, and part of that was also because
Speaker 1: there was a general um decrease in population in that region,
Speaker 1: not just from the depths, which obviously that would decrease it,
Speaker 1: but people were fleeing because they were worried that this
Speaker 1: was somehow a tainted area and they would catch cholera
Speaker 1: if they stayed around. But even taking that out of consideration,
Speaker 1: they saw a significant drop and that is kind of
Speaker 1: what led them to the conclusion that water supply was really,
Speaker 1: really important, and it was very important to have a
Speaker 1: clean water supply to avoid illness. And it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: until seventy when we get Louis pasteur uh sending out
Speaker 1: this idea of the germ theory of illness, that illness
Speaker 1: can be caused by micro organisms that are too small
Speaker 1: to see with the naked eye. But that is what
Speaker 1: truly revolutionized medicine because now people knew the reason why
Speaker 1: you had to go through this process of sterilizing everything
Speaker 1: was because things you cannot see could in fact kill you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and apparently somebody named Joseph Lister read old Louis Pastewart.
Speaker 1: Joseph Lister promoted antiseptic surgery in the late nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: and he experimented with anti microbial chemicals, so he would
Speaker 1: sterilize surgical instruments, wound sites, and operating theaters with stuff
Speaker 1: like carbolic acid, which was actually quite effective. Uh. Carbolic acid,
Speaker 1: though also known as finn all, is highly toxic. It's
Speaker 1: not so much used anymore now we've got other stuff
Speaker 1: we use. Yes. And also the antiseptic listerine is named
Speaker 1: after him, not not invented, yes, not invented by him,
Speaker 1: named in honor of Dr Okay. Yeah. So now antiseptic
Speaker 1: surgery and hospital facilities are basically the norm, or at
Speaker 1: least through what we're striving for, whether or not it's
Speaker 1: actually achieved. Um. And as a result of all this work,
Speaker 1: the medical field sort of put in place standard procedures
Speaker 1: for how to keep operating rooms clean, how to keep
Speaker 1: hospital rooms clean, what you should do to your instruments.
Speaker 1: All right, so we understand that it's important to to
Speaker 1: be very clean and medical procedures. Now we understand that
Speaker 1: it's important to to sterilize equipment, to wash your hands.
Speaker 1: What are the ways right now that medicine, Uh, what
Speaker 1: are the procedures that medicine follows too to ensure this? Okay?
Speaker 1: So currently there are a bunch of methods of sterilization
Speaker 1: of things. So if you're cleaning off like a a
Speaker 1: site on a person's body, you might rub them with
Speaker 1: alcohol or with an iodine solution. Um. If you're sterilizing instruments,
Speaker 1: one of the most common things you would use is steam. Actually,
Speaker 1: steam is super great. In fact, it's probably like the
Speaker 1: best thing to use, uh superheated steam, hot moisture in
Speaker 1: an autoclave. So this will like locked steamer box too.
Speaker 1: It'll get things clean, it'll penetrate fabrics, it'll it'll really
Speaker 1: cut through and kill pretty much everything, kill or incapacitate.
Speaker 1: This is also also why you want to make sure
Speaker 1: if you're ever getting a tattoo or your ears pierced
Speaker 1: or something else, pierce that the the establishment has not
Speaker 1: a clave that they used to clean their instruments and
Speaker 1: that they use, you know, one time use instruments for
Speaker 1: things that are disposable and all that kind of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are also instruments that are not tolerant of heat
Speaker 1: or maybe not tolerant of water, and in those cases
Speaker 1: there are chemicals that you can use. You can use
Speaker 1: say ethylene oxide, parasitic acid, or hydrogen peroxide gas plasma.
Speaker 1: Those are three things I read about there basically in
Speaker 1: use today or at least being tested. So these methods
Speaker 1: that you're talking about killing off germs, I've slee it's
Speaker 1: solved all the problems. Right, So now we're we've got
Speaker 1: these perfectly safe medical theaters where there's no worry whatsoever
Speaker 1: of contamination, infection, Nope, what nope? Okay, So hospitals are
Speaker 1: obviously a lot better than they used to be, you know,
Speaker 1: before Joseph Lister, I think it was probably just pretty common.
Speaker 1: You go get an operation done and then oh you
Speaker 1: have word fever. I don't know what caused this, but
Speaker 1: now you're dead. Yeah. American Horror Story Season two really
Speaker 1: taught me a lot about the various hospital conditions of
Speaker 1: the past. Yeah. And they were just they were using
Speaker 1: unclean instruments, you know, it was just it's gross. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now we're doing a lot better job. But still we
Speaker 1: have not gotten rid of hospital associated infections. That's what
Speaker 1: they're called now, h Ayes. Uh. They did not disappear
Speaker 1: after the revolution and antiseptic medical care. In fact, I
Speaker 1: found a CDC source from two thousand two that estimate
Speaker 1: did the number of hospital associated infections in US hospitals.
Speaker 1: So this is just in the US, and basically it
Speaker 1: came to the conclusion that were there were one point
Speaker 1: seven million hospital associated infections. Uh. Part of the problem
Speaker 1: that we're talking about here is one that we talked
Speaker 1: about in our antibiotics episode, which is that in in
Speaker 1: in hospitals, sometimes through the use of of drugs that
Speaker 1: are drugs or other methods that are meant to kill
Speaker 1: off bacteria, some of the bacterias survive and become more
Speaker 1: hardy and difficult to kill. And that therefore hospitals can
Speaker 1: sometimes contain strains of superbugs that that get passed around
Speaker 1: and are difficult to get out. Yeah, because then the
Speaker 1: drugs you would use to to take care of such
Speaker 1: a UH infection are no longer effective because they've built
Speaker 1: up a resilience to that drug, right, right, And I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, and certainly things are a lot better than
Speaker 1: they used to be. Like we've said, I always think
Speaker 1: of that moment in an Undiscovered Country, which which I'm
Speaker 1: sorry is is a terrible reference to make in a
Speaker 1: science fiction show. But when Bones, you know, is here
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century UH medical center and he's just
Speaker 1: horrified by everything, He's like, you savages, what are you doing? Technically,
Speaker 1: that's Star Trek for Voyage Home when they go to
Speaker 1: rescue Chekhov who's passed out. But did I say the
Speaker 1: wrong thing? I totally say the wrong thing. I did
Speaker 1: say Undiscovered Country, which is more about cling on, cling
Speaker 1: on medical care, which is also complicated because they have
Speaker 1: two hearts. It's very warm in here. It is very
Speaker 1: warm in here. Well, I wanted to talk about one
Speaker 1: interesting other way I found of disinfecting in hospital facilities,
Speaker 1: which is using rays. Oh yes, I've seen this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff where you get like the little UV chamber
Speaker 1: that can dal's say a device or instrument or even
Speaker 1: like your toothbrush with uvs. Well, I'll do you one better. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what if you need to disinfect an entire room. Well,
Speaker 1: so you could wipe down all the surfaces with alcoho
Speaker 1: hall or with some kind of antiseptic solution, But that
Speaker 1: doesn't always work, and also that is time consuming and
Speaker 1: people don't always get all the surfaces they need to.
Speaker 1: There is, in fact, a disinfecting robot I read about.
Speaker 1: This is manufactured by a company called zen X, and
Speaker 1: it's a little R two D two buddy and you
Speaker 1: just wheel him on into a room and you shut
Speaker 1: the door behind you, and it uses a pulse zen
Speaker 1: on UV light that zaps micro organisms and it will
Speaker 1: basically kill them. It disrupts microbial life at the cellular level,
Speaker 1: so different UV frequencies can damage RNA DNA cell walls,
Speaker 1: internal cellular structures, and it can do a whole room
Speaker 1: in about fifteen minutes. You put it in like three
Speaker 1: different positions for five minutes apiece with the door closed
Speaker 1: because you don't want to be in there staring at
Speaker 1: it with it destroying your eyes. And ultra violet light
Speaker 1: can have a nasty effect on on us, especially if
Speaker 1: we have prolonged exposure. Yeah, it actually makes use of
Speaker 1: uv C light, which is the kind of UV light
Speaker 1: that is usually blocked by our atmosphere when it's sent
Speaker 1: in by the sun. And supposedly this thing is pretty
Speaker 1: durn good. I like to imagine that when this thing
Speaker 1: is is active. Even though ultra violet lights outside the
Speaker 1: visible spectrum, we can't see it, right, but I'd like
Speaker 1: to imagine when it's active, if you were outside the hospital,
Speaker 1: you just see these crazy disco flashing lights coming out
Speaker 1: the window and you hear the the Moss Eisley Cantina
Speaker 1: song playing. But maybe that's just me. But hey, I
Speaker 1: want to talk about something else about the future of cleanliness,
Speaker 1: which is that it doesn't just matter for hospitals because
Speaker 1: the more we get down into miniaturization, whether it's in
Speaker 1: the medical field, or in industry, electronics research, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: having contamination can really cause problems, absolutely so in the
Speaker 1: manufacturing process for electronics, when you're trying to create semiconductors,
Speaker 1: when you're creating micro processor chips, you're talking about working
Speaker 1: with components that are on the nanoscale. So it's not
Speaker 1: unusual now to have a computer with a microprocessor where
Speaker 1: the trans the transistors, the individual components on it may
Speaker 1: measure forty five nanometers across or even less. That's super tiny, right,
Speaker 1: I mean these this is the a scale at which
Speaker 1: quantum effects start to take take hold, so it doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily behave the same way we it would on the
Speaker 1: classic macro scale, which basically means that if you've got
Speaker 1: I mean, we're not talking about germs. Most of the
Speaker 1: electronics that I know about at any rate will not
Speaker 1: get an infection from a germ like that. But tiny
Speaker 1: specks of dust could very much screw your Yeah, you could.
Speaker 1: You could have an entire die of semiconductor material ruined
Speaker 1: if there are dust particles inside the room. You want
Speaker 1: to control for that as much as possible. So as
Speaker 1: we get to this point where the precision is really important.
Speaker 1: Something like a dust particle could comple completely dwarfed the
Speaker 1: components on a chip, and if it were to fall
Speaker 1: in place, it would ruin it. And of course, you
Speaker 1: know that's money, right, You're you're spending money to make
Speaker 1: this stuff, and everyone you everyone that's ruined you cannot sell,
Speaker 1: so you lose money on the deal. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: on those scales, having a piece of dust in your
Speaker 1: semiconductor or or whatever it might be at the nano
Speaker 1: scale would basically be like having a rock in an
Speaker 1: engine block. Yeah, it's throwing a monkey causing major problems.
Speaker 1: But how the heck do you rule out a tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny particles micron. There are a couple of different things
Speaker 1: you gotta do. Well. One, you've got to construct a
Speaker 1: room that is sealed so that you can seal it
Speaker 1: off from the rest of the building so that you're
Speaker 1: not getting air drafts pulling in more dust particles from
Speaker 1: somewhere else. It's like having an airlock system. Really. Secondly,
Speaker 1: you have to have an air filtration system that can
Speaker 1: recycle the air in that room and filter it out
Speaker 1: very efficiently. So we're talking like replacing all the air
Speaker 1: in that room regularly through this filtration system, and most
Speaker 1: of these clean rooms that you know, that's what they're
Speaker 1: called in the industry where these microprocessor manufacturing machines exist,
Speaker 1: are able to do that frequently, like several times an hour. Essentially,
Speaker 1: as you're you're putting all the air through this filtration
Speaker 1: system over and over again to remove any particulates that
Speaker 1: happened to be floating through it. So you end up
Speaker 1: with like an incredibly pure air or atmosphere within. They're
Speaker 1: not like pure oxygen, but as in there there's no
Speaker 1: particulate matter flowing around. And on top of that, you
Speaker 1: make everyone played dress up. Yeah, I'd imagine you don't
Speaker 1: just walk in from the parking lot. No, No, I
Speaker 1: mean obviously, like you know, anything on you anything like
Speaker 1: in your skin, particles, your hair, any dust that's on
Speaker 1: you with in my in my case to yeah and
Speaker 1: in my case to now congratulations. So anyway, which would
Speaker 1: mean you would be uh, I'm not making any nanotechnology. Now,
Speaker 1: you would not be allowed inside the clean room in
Speaker 1: that state. So what you have to do is you
Speaker 1: have to put on a special kind of suit. They
Speaker 1: kind of look like hazmat suits. They're called bunny suits.
Speaker 1: In the industry, that's really what they're called. But it's
Speaker 1: something that covers you from head to toe so that
Speaker 1: you can enter the room and not contribute any sort
Speaker 1: of particulate matter that would otherwise corrupt the system as
Speaker 1: it's being as it's as it's going through this stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: most of the time these manufacturing processes, I mean, they're
Speaker 1: they're automated. Obviously, when you're talking about creating stuff on
Speaker 1: the nano scale, you don't have someone in there doing
Speaker 1: it by hand. That would be impossible. But you know,
Speaker 1: you do occasionally have to put humans into the system
Speaker 1: to do various things. So imagine especially if you're doing research. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's one of those things where whenever a person
Speaker 1: does have to go in, they have to you know,
Speaker 1: get suited up and everything, make sure that they're not
Speaker 1: going to corrupt it. So yeah, and it turns out
Speaker 1: it's not just in electron x that this is important.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of different industrial um processes that require
Speaker 1: precision and cleanliness together, and in fact, the more precise
Speaker 1: you get, the more important that cleanliness is because if
Speaker 1: it's a really super tiny mechanism, those parts have to
Speaker 1: fit together exactly, and even just a little bit of
Speaker 1: grease or oil could make it so they don't set properly.
Speaker 1: So what do you do? I mean, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: if you make especially tiny little metal pieces components, often
Speaker 1: grease or oil is part of that process. How do
Speaker 1: you clean something so tiny that you can't just you know,
Speaker 1: take a brush and brush it off, or take a
Speaker 1: cloth and wipe it off, because it's far too small
Speaker 1: for that. What would be your next best approach? I
Speaker 1: have no idea. Some kind of gas exactly a gas,
Speaker 1: or at least you start with a gas, but you
Speaker 1: compress it and lower the temperature down so that you
Speaker 1: convert it into a solid, specifically carbon dioxide. According to
Speaker 1: Science Daily, there's one company it's been looking at carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide and actually using it to cool it down into
Speaker 1: what they call snow crystals, and they blast the various components.
Speaker 1: Let's say that it's a clock mechanism that has really
Speaker 1: super tiny components in it, and you want to get
Speaker 1: all the grease and oil off of those parts before
Speaker 1: you assemble it. They would blast it with this these
Speaker 1: little snow particles which are enough to knock off. It
Speaker 1: absorbs all the oil. It absorbs grease. It can knock
Speaker 1: off dust without damaging the components themselves. That obviously is
Speaker 1: very important. You can't just sand blast these things because
Speaker 1: you don't want to damage them. Plus stand everywhere, so
Speaker 1: they This is used to shake loose any particles and
Speaker 1: to absorb oil and grease. And because it's solid carbon dioxide,
Speaker 1: it's it almost instantly converts right back into gas. It
Speaker 1: goes straight from solid to gas, which, if you remember
Speaker 1: the great movie Real Genius, is totally awesome and you
Speaker 1: can make something do that. It's like an evaporating sham Wow. Yes,
Speaker 1: yes it is is a sham well that that disappears
Speaker 1: in front of your very eyes. But no, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a really cool solution literally, But it's a really
Speaker 1: cool solution because it allows you to clean off these
Speaker 1: little components convert over to gas, so you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about any kind of damage due to moisture.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not going to get any of the
Speaker 1: components wet. It just goes straight from solid to gas um.
Speaker 1: So it's it's really a neat and innovative approach to
Speaker 1: cleaning these tiny little components. Yeah, I can imagine how
Speaker 1: clean rooms and clean industrial and research facilities are going
Speaker 1: to become even more important and widespread once nanotechnology becomes
Speaker 1: a more widespread field. Absolutely, yeah, because any anything could
Speaker 1: could contaminate the sample. Also, I imagine that this would
Speaker 1: have some kind of crossover back to the medical field.
Speaker 1: I mean, any time that you've got got methods of
Speaker 1: of purifying a situation, an environment, or a piece of equipment,
Speaker 1: that's that's a good thing, right, Okay, So our need
Speaker 1: to have things clean and a lot of various settings
Speaker 1: is getting more pronounced, and we're keeping up. Basically, we're
Speaker 1: getting better technologies to keep things clean on a smaller
Speaker 1: and smaller scale. But should be should we be worried
Speaker 1: that we're getting too clean? Because I remember back maybe
Speaker 1: ten fifteen years ago, there were a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: magazine articles that had headlines like, you know, is your
Speaker 1: house too clean for your kids? Are you making your
Speaker 1: kids sick with all of your cleanliness? It was that
Speaker 1: sort of like mom bating attack kind of headline that
Speaker 1: you still see, the kind of thing. But there was
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff about this, and I at the
Speaker 1: time I didn't really look into it because I was
Speaker 1: too young to care. But yeah, yeah, it's called the
Speaker 1: hygiene hypothesis and um and and it's based around this
Speaker 1: concept that that getting things too clean has messed with
Speaker 1: our immune systems. And and this has to do with allergies,
Speaker 1: because allergy there are really just immune system responses to
Speaker 1: what's otherwise harmless stuff, you know, certain foods, or pollen
Speaker 1: or mold, animal saliva, which by the way, it's a
Speaker 1: saliva usually not the dander itself in general, like if
Speaker 1: a cat. If a cat like soon you're allergic to cats,
Speaker 1: you might end up with a nasty little rash exactly
Speaker 1: where the cat licked you. I, in fact get that
Speaker 1: all the time. It's great um. But but at any rate,
Speaker 1: what happens here is that your immune system attacks the
Speaker 1: allergen in your blood by producing an antibody that the
Speaker 1: allergen binds to. But the antibody is also attached to
Speaker 1: this particular kind of blood cell called a called a
Speaker 1: mast cell. And when all three of these things link up,
Speaker 1: the mass cell is triggered to produce chemicals, including histamine,
Speaker 1: which causes the symptoms of an allergic reaction. So essentially,
Speaker 1: what we're saying here is that your immune system no
Speaker 1: longer has to do the work it would have had
Speaker 1: to do if you were surrounded by germs all the time.
Speaker 1: So like the fact that we have managed to reduce
Speaker 1: some of the micro organisms around us particular, really, if
Speaker 1: we're in a a hyper clean home, that this this
Speaker 1: hyper clean realm means that since our immune system doesn't
Speaker 1: has to work against micro organisms, it gets bored and
Speaker 1: starts a fight club. Yeah, that's I mean essentially, or furthermore,
Speaker 1: that your immune system won't be primed, it won't be
Speaker 1: strong enough to deal with with microbes when they do
Speaker 1: come around, and that therefore they won't be able to
Speaker 1: kill those off efficiently. Right, And uh, it's interesting in
Speaker 1: our notes here, the tendency toward having allergies is genetic,
Speaker 1: but specific allergies are not inherited. This explains why my
Speaker 1: parents are able to eat lobster to their hearts content.
Speaker 1: And I am not Oh, you're allergic to lobster, deadly
Speaker 1: allergic to lobster. I'm allergic to red lobster. I am amused, Joe,
Speaker 1: But I am, in fact, I am seriously severely allergic
Speaker 1: to lobster. Like if I eat lobster within an hour,
Speaker 1: I'm having some really nasty symptoms, you turn into Kirby.
Speaker 1: I kind of I did. I definitely get pink and
Speaker 1: puffy and then I stopped breathing. So that's a problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's bad. I once wore a lobster costume for
Speaker 1: I mean, completely legitimate editorial work purposes. I can tell
Speaker 1: you the story about that one later, um and what
Speaker 1: it was. Sort of itchy. I once broke out in
Speaker 1: a rash of to be fifty two concert there at
Speaker 1: any rate. So do you guys, do either of you
Speaker 1: have any severe allergies? Not really, My wife has really
Speaker 1: bad allergies. Yeah. I don't have any anaphylactic allergies, um,
Speaker 1: but I do have some like seasonal pollen related kind
Speaker 1: of things and cats cat dan. The only the only
Speaker 1: two anaphylactic ones I have are lobster and alcohol. So
Speaker 1: Al's lobster and liquor shack is way off. I can't.
Speaker 1: But you can eat as many oak tags as you want. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: but but so an interesting thing that that research has
Speaker 1: been done about by the National Institutes of Health No
Speaker 1: less UM is that more people are experienced allergies recently
Speaker 1: than they were in the past. UM. One particular report
Speaker 1: said that over Americans surveyed from from said that they
Speaker 1: were sensitive to at least one allergen um, which is
Speaker 1: two to five times the rate from a survey conducted
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six to night Right. So, one of
Speaker 1: the suggestions for what is contributing to this uh perceived
Speaker 1: increase in allergies is that the hygienic practices that we
Speaker 1: have put into place may in fact be putting things
Speaker 1: out of whack, right, right, that these that that hygiene
Speaker 1: hypothesis that um that sterile environments actually lead to more illness.
Speaker 1: And this isn't just in the antibacterial way, which again
Speaker 1: we talked about in that previous episode, UM, where we're
Speaker 1: not just creating superbugs. It's that our immune systems are
Speaker 1: basically bored or underdeveloped. Right. So the thing is that
Speaker 1: this is not this is not a hypothesis that has
Speaker 1: gone unchallenged. There are are plenty of arguments against it,
Speaker 1: or at least saying that the cleanliness of our environment
Speaker 1: maybe a factor, but it's probably not the major factor. Well,
Speaker 1: I would just like to point out that our homes
Speaker 1: are not sterile. I mean they might be might be
Speaker 1: cleaner than they were a hundred years ago, but they're not.
Speaker 1: But the perception based upon that mom bate, you know,
Speaker 1: fearmongering we talked about earlier was that if you don't
Speaker 1: have a clean home, your kid will get sick, and
Speaker 1: then it was if you have to clean a home,
Speaker 1: you're making your kids get allergies. Oh well, well, part
Speaker 1: part of this whole theory is that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of good germs, um, microbiole flora and fauna that evolved
Speaker 1: in tandem with us and and that are not pathogenic,
Speaker 1: are not going to hurt us, and that those are
Speaker 1: also being killed off in addition to the bad bugs
Speaker 1: that we're trying to get rid of with all of
Speaker 1: the lisol and vacuuming and uh, I don't know what
Speaker 1: else really growing everything in Yeah yeah, yeah, mr um
Speaker 1: And and there is a lot of actual research involved.
Speaker 1: This hypothesis was proposed back in nine nine and uh
Speaker 1: and and since then there have been a bunch of
Speaker 1: reports that that seemed to indicate that it that it's
Speaker 1: a thing, that it's a that it's a legit thing. Um.
Speaker 1: One study found that that kids exposed to farm animals
Speaker 1: were half as likely to develop Cron's disease, which is
Speaker 1: an autoimmune disorder, or another one found that infants living
Speaker 1: in a home with two or more dogs and cats
Speaker 1: were less likely to develop allergies than their peers. Anecdotally,
Speaker 1: I grew up with many dogs and cats and alcohol
Speaker 1: and lobster will still kill me. But that's anecdotal, and
Speaker 1: obviously in a scientific study that has no bearing whatsoever. Well, no,
Speaker 1: but but it is you do kind of raise an
Speaker 1: important point. There are many, many, many facets to this issue,
Speaker 1: and anything health related is going to be extremely complex,
Speaker 1: So you know, there's there's also indications that that any
Speaker 1: number of factors from malnutrition to lack of exercise to
Speaker 1: pollution could be creating these these more allergenic populations. Right,
Speaker 1: so it may be allergic populations. Allergenic as a whole
Speaker 1: separate word. Boy, there are a few people here that
Speaker 1: I consider to be allergenic. Uh At any rate, The
Speaker 1: interesting thing here is that you know, it's it's one
Speaker 1: of those like I said, it could be, it could
Speaker 1: be a factor, but most people, I think agree that
Speaker 1: it's not a major contributing factor. And also it's way
Speaker 1: more important to be to practice good hygiene and cut
Speaker 1: down on access to things like, you know, bacteria that
Speaker 1: could hurt you, rather than to invite it in and say,
Speaker 1: let's let's go ahead and invite all the germs and
Speaker 1: dirt and everything into our world and make ourselves sick
Speaker 1: and we'll deal with it. Then. Well, I think that
Speaker 1: there's a happy medium between going out and eating dirt
Speaker 1: on purpose all the time and and cleaning every thing
Speaker 1: within an inch of its of its non life, you know.
Speaker 1: I think that there has to be something in between there. However,
Speaker 1: I do want to put in that one of the
Speaker 1: topics that comes up a lot when people talk about
Speaker 1: the hygiene hypothesis is vaccination, and and there's some amount
Speaker 1: of rumor that that vaccination is part of the hygiene
Speaker 1: problem here. But but really exposing your immune system to
Speaker 1: more stuff and thus making it stronger is good. Yes,
Speaker 1: vaccinations are very important. I mean, obviously, uh, we feel
Speaker 1: very strongly about it. But vaccinations they promote herd immunity,
Speaker 1: which is incredibly important if you want to prevent things
Speaker 1: like pandemics breaking out that otherwise could severely damage a population. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's absolutely no research that indicates that, um that vaccinating
Speaker 1: is leading to some kind of immune disorder in anybody.
Speaker 1: So bottom line is, guys, go out there and get vaccsnated,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, it's seriously I mean, there was
Speaker 1: a story recently about someone who went to Asia, came
Speaker 1: back to San Francisco had measles rode the public transportation system,
Speaker 1: potentially exposing as many as four thousand people just in
Speaker 1: that time span alone, two measles. California, by the way,
Speaker 1: very low rate of vaccination, so that was like the
Speaker 1: recipe for a possible pandemic to break out. So it's
Speaker 1: really important stuff. And it's not just so that you
Speaker 1: don't get sick. It's also so that the people around
Speaker 1: you don't get sick. And the more people who participate,
Speaker 1: the better off we are, you know. Just it's it's
Speaker 1: just simple science. Yes, but this is all very slightly
Speaker 1: off topic. So yeah, let's clean this up, all right, guys.
Speaker 1: Here here's the bottom line. We've gotten really good at
Speaker 1: creating very clean environments for very specific uh applications. We're
Speaker 1: still trying to get better, especially when it comes to healthcare,
Speaker 1: so that we can make sure that uh, we don't
Speaker 1: end up spreading disease while we're trying to heal others.
Speaker 1: And really there's not such a thing as being too clean,
Speaker 1: particularly around your house. I mean, it's not like you're
Speaker 1: going to create an allergen problem using household cleaners and
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. Although you know, don't don't worry
Speaker 1: about it too much. I think it's probably the moral
Speaker 1: of the story, like, you don't You don't need to
Speaker 1: be hyper village exactly. You don't need to. You don't
Speaker 1: need to be scrubbing the floor all the way into
Speaker 1: the wee hours of the morning every day. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, don't worry that by cleaning up a
Speaker 1: spill and using some cleaner that you're going to cause
Speaker 1: our you know, your kid to develop allergies. That way,
Speaker 1: don't like the floor on purpose, but don't worry if
Speaker 1: you happen to. Okay, wise words for us all, So
Speaker 1: let's wrap this up. Guys, if you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for future topics about the future, then you should let
Speaker 1: us know. Send us an email our addresses FW thinking
Speaker 1: at discovery dot com and drop us a line on
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