Speaker 1: I'm Carol Masster. Here's one of the feature stories in
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Business Week magazine this week. Like our bodies,
Speaker 1: the buildings we inhabit are teeming with microbes. Yet despite
Speaker 1: spending as much as our time indoors, especially now that
Speaker 1: we're hunkering down for the winter during a pandemic, we
Speaker 1: know very little about these indoor microbes, which scientists began
Speaker 1: studying only in the past fifteen years. And as tempting
Speaker 1: as it might be to dump bleach all over every
Speaker 1: surface in an attempt to kill COVID nine team, a
Speaker 1: more serious risk is that attempts to sterilize our surroundings
Speaker 1: can kill off bacteria critical for human health, which is
Speaker 1: why there's growing interest in putting bacteria to work cleaning.
Speaker 1: One company in the space is already worth about sixteen
Speaker 1: billion dollars, and its microbes are key ingredients in dozens
Speaker 1: of home care brands. This episode is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Principal Financial Group, combining actionable insights with specialized solutions
Speaker 1: to help you meet your investment goals. Get to know
Speaker 1: h at Principal dot com. How to heal a building,
Speaker 1: open the windows, stop the obsessive sanitizing spread some good
Speaker 1: germs around a building, like a person is only as
Speaker 1: healthy as its microbiome, Caroline Winter. Four years ago, a
Speaker 1: doctoral student in architecture asked Luke Leung to help him
Speaker 1: come up with a thesis topic. Leung, an engineer whose
Speaker 1: projects include the world's tallest building, the bird Khalifa in Dubai,
Speaker 1: proposed the question what is heaven. The student did a
Speaker 1: lot of research and found that no matter the faith Islam, Judaism, Christianity,
Speaker 1: heaven is always a place with a garden and running water,
Speaker 1: recalls Leung, director of the Sustainable Engineering Studio of Skidmore
Speaker 1: Owings and Meryl the architectural behemoth better known as s
Speaker 1: O M SO. Then we started questioning, if that is heaven,
Speaker 1: what exactly is the place we are living in. In
Speaker 1: the Western world, humans spend of their time indoors. The
Speaker 1: average American spends even more than that inside buildings or cars.
Speaker 1: For years, scientists have sounded the alarm that are disconnect
Speaker 1: from the outdoors is linked to a host of chronic
Speaker 1: health problems, including allergies, asthma, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, and obesity.
Speaker 1: More recently, experts in various fields have begun studying wide buildings,
Speaker 1: even those designed to be as germ free as possible,
Speaker 1: are vectors for disease, not the least COVID nineteen there
Speaker 1: was a study of more than seventy cases in China,
Speaker 1: and guess how many people caught the disease outdoors? Leong
Speaker 1: asks just two. Early testing following Black Lives Matter protests
Speaker 1: in Minnesota also suggested that transmission of stars Cove two
Speaker 1: outside is rare, even when thousands of people gather, talking, yelling,
Speaker 1: and chanting, at least when mo to those people wear masks.
Speaker 1: Out of more than thirteen thousand protesters tested, only one
Speaker 1: point eight percent were positive. Other states showed similar results.
Speaker 1: Leon says a misalignment with nature in building design is
Speaker 1: partly to blame for our scourge of chronic diseases and
Speaker 1: the current pandemic. The relative lack of airflow and sunlight
Speaker 1: is an obvious issue. Temperature, humidity, and indoor air pollution
Speaker 1: also play a role, but there's another less discussed factor,
Speaker 1: the microbiome of the built environment, which encompasses trillions of microbes,
Speaker 1: including bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Until about fifteen years ago,
Speaker 1: very few scientists and even fewer architects, designers, and engineers
Speaker 1: paid attention to indore microbes, with the exception of problematic
Speaker 1: outcropping such as black mold and legion Ella, the bacteria
Speaker 1: that causes Legionnaire's disease. That changed after the two thousand
Speaker 1: one anthrax attacks, when letters laced with deadly b acteria
Speaker 1: were mailed to politicians and the offices of news outlets,
Speaker 1: killing five people and infecting seventeen more. Experts at the
Speaker 1: nonprofit Alfred pce Loan Foundation began contemplating what role buildings
Speaker 1: might play in mitigating bio terrorism threats. Realizing we knew
Speaker 1: almost nothing about which microbes exist indoors, the Foundation poured
Speaker 1: tens of millions of dollars into research. Soon, scientists uncovered
Speaker 1: rich ecologies of fast evolving indoor microbe populations. Crucially, most
Speaker 1: had little overlap with outdoor populations, including salutary species that
Speaker 1: humans co evolved with over millions of years. Now, with
Speaker 1: a global pandemic raging, these researchers are suddenly in demand.
Speaker 1: Our calendar is fairly full, says Kevin van den Wimelenberg,
Speaker 1: director of the Biology and the Built Environment Center at
Speaker 1: the University of Oregon. He used to receive two or
Speaker 1: three inquiries per week asking for advice on how to
Speaker 1: improve the health of a building. Now he gets twenty
Speaker 1: a day. It's everyone from hospitals to large commercial real
Speaker 1: estate portfolios, to nursing homes in school districts, to personal
Speaker 1: friends who run a barbershop and are trying to decide
Speaker 1: whether or not they should blow out the hair of
Speaker 1: their patrons. Of course, the most urgent microbe related question
Speaker 1: is where to find stars Cove two and how to
Speaker 1: kill it. Beyond that, there are also long term questions.
Speaker 1: How can we promote indoor microbe populations that don't make
Speaker 1: us chronically ill or harbor deadly pathogens? Can we actually
Speaker 1: cultivate beneficial microbes in our buildings the way a farmer
Speaker 1: cultivates a field. Experts, including Van den Wimelenberg, are confident
Speaker 1: all this is possible. I really believe our building operators
Speaker 1: of the future and our designers will be thinking about
Speaker 1: how to shape the microbiome, he says. The term microbiome
Speaker 1: is most often used to refer to the population of
Speaker 1: microbes that inhabit our body, many of which helped produce
Speaker 1: vitamins hormones and other chemicals vital to our immune system, metabolism, mood,
Speaker 1: and much more. In the typical person, microbial cells are
Speaker 1: as numerous as those containing human DNA and cumulatively way
Speaker 1: about two pounds. In recent decades, our personal microbiomes have
Speaker 1: been altered by factors such as poor dietary habits, arise
Speaker 1: in caesarean section births, over prescription of antibiotics, over use
Speaker 1: of disinfectants and other germ fighters, and dwindling contact with
Speaker 1: beneficial microbes on animals and in nature. According to a study,
Speaker 1: Americans microbiomes are about half as diverse as those of
Speaker 1: the young know Mommy, a remote Amazonian tribe. Like our bodies,
Speaker 1: the buildings we inhabit are also teeming with microbes. Inhale deeply,
Speaker 1: writes Rob Dunn, a professor of applied ecology at North
Speaker 1: Carolina State University, in his book Never Home Alone. With
Speaker 1: each breath you bring oxygen deep into the alveola of
Speaker 1: your lungs, along with hundreds of thousands of species. Sit down.
Speaker 1: Each place you sit, you are surrounded by a floating, leaping,
Speaker 1: crawling circus of thousands of species. Dune says, more species
Speaker 1: of bacteria have been found in homes than there are
Speaker 1: species of birds and mammals on Earth. In researchers found
Speaker 1: that indoor air contains nearly equal concentrations of bacteria and viruses.
Speaker 1: Almost all viruses are harmless, and some may be beneficial
Speaker 1: over time. These many microbes have adapted to survive and
Speaker 1: even thrive everywhere, from our pillow cases and toothbrushes to
Speaker 1: the more extreme climates of our dishwashers, showerheads, ovens, and freezers.
Speaker 1: Many are derived from humans or likely feed off human debris,
Speaker 1: like Pigpin from the comic strip Peanuts. Each of us
Speaker 1: has a plume of microbes spewing off our body at
Speaker 1: a rate of about thirty seven million bacteria and eight
Speaker 1: billion fungal particles per hour. The difference is that our
Speaker 1: plumes are invisible to the naked eye. Indoors, the impact
Speaker 1: is measurable. One study notes that it takes less than
Speaker 1: twenty four hours for a hotel guest to colonize a
Speaker 1: room with their personal microbes, erasing all traces of previous
Speaker 1: guests and making the space microbially identical to their home.
Speaker 1: Considering our perpetual emanations, it's easy to envision how the
Speaker 1: coronavirus might spread within a room. A single sneeze discharges
Speaker 1: roughly thirty thousand microbe filled droplets, traveling it up to
Speaker 1: two hundred miles per hour. A cough releases about three
Speaker 1: thousand droplets, which reach speeds of fifty miles per hour.
Speaker 1: A simple exhale produces fifty to five thousand droplets. We
Speaker 1: know that a person infected with influenza releases as many
Speaker 1: as thirty three viral particles per minute just breathing, and
Speaker 1: about two hundred million per sneeze. Meanwhile, exposure to just
Speaker 1: a few hundred stars CoV two particles may be enough
Speaker 1: to cause infection. Outdoors are invisible. Plumes almost always dispersed quickly,
Speaker 1: which is a very good thing in the case of
Speaker 1: COVID carriers. Any virus that is released into the air
Speaker 1: is rapidly diluted, moved by wind currents, and spread out
Speaker 1: across a seemingly infinite space, says Lindsay mar an expert
Speaker 1: in infectious disease transmission and professor of civil and Environmental
Speaker 1: engineering at Virginia Tech. It's almost like putting a drop
Speaker 1: of dye into the ocean versus putting it into a
Speaker 1: glass of water. Sunlight also inactivates viruses in as little
Speaker 1: as five minutes eight minutes. In the case of stars
Speaker 1: CoV two, a study from the Department of Homeland Security
Speaker 1: found that the coronavirus can hang around indoors in the
Speaker 1: dark for hours. Facing an invisible and potentially deadly virus.
Speaker 1: The understandable impulse has been to whip out some clorox
Speaker 1: and go to battle, but indiscriminate bleach bombing could backfire.
Speaker 1: For one thing, mr acted efforts maybe a colossal waste
Speaker 1: of time and money. New York City, for example, announced
Speaker 1: in the spring that for the first time, it was
Speaker 1: closing the subway system during early morning hours to deep
Speaker 1: clean every train. It's all theater, says Jack Gilbert, a
Speaker 1: professor and microbiome researcher at the University of California at
Speaker 1: San Diego. You bleach the subway, the bleach dries up
Speaker 1: and becomes inactive. If just one person who has COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen interacts with that surface, the four hours of cleaning
Speaker 1: have no effect. And because we now know stars COVI
Speaker 1: two is most often transmitted through the air, cleaning efforts
Speaker 1: seem even more futile. A more serious risk is that
Speaker 1: attempts to sterilize our surroundings can kill off bacteria critical
Speaker 1: for human health, or, even worse, inadvertently promote the survival
Speaker 1: and evolution of more dangerous bugs, including antibiotic resistant superbugs.
Speaker 1: We should be worried, says Rob Knight, founding director of
Speaker 1: the Center from Microbiome in a Vation and a professor
Speaker 1: of pediatrics at UCSD. If we are over zealously stripping
Speaker 1: off all the bacteria that would naturally be there, then
Speaker 1: we may be creating homes for bacteria and maybe even
Speaker 1: viruses that are harder to remove. No amount of chemicals
Speaker 1: will get rid of everything, and what's left behind is
Speaker 1: often undesirable. Microbiologists have swabbed the International Space Station to
Speaker 1: find out what happens inside an enclosed, supposedly sterile chamber
Speaker 1: in which every bit of food and equipment has been
Speaker 1: disinfected with an especially designed NASA facility. As it turned out,
Speaker 1: microbes were everywhere, almost all of them human derived. Among
Speaker 1: the most common were bacteria associated with pecs, stinky feet,
Speaker 1: and armpits, which is perhaps why the I S S
Speaker 1: has been described as smelling like a mix of plastics, garbage,
Speaker 1: and body odor. Here on Earth, proper hygiene is effective
Speaker 1: in minimizing exposure to pathogens such as those that cause
Speaker 1: food poisoning and strep throat, but we tend to go
Speaker 1: nuclear using harsh chemicals when soap and water could do
Speaker 1: the job. For years, anti microbials have been added to
Speaker 1: everything wallpaint, kitchen sponges, underwear, lip gloss. Now we've become
Speaker 1: more extreme in hopes of zapping stars Cove two straight
Speaker 1: out of the air. Some building managers are installing so
Speaker 1: called bipolar ionization units, even though they may not work
Speaker 1: against COVID and sometimes generate harmful gases such as the
Speaker 1: lung irritant ozone. As for the antimicrobial cleaning agents and
Speaker 1: surface coatings being liberally applied throughout offices and other public spaces,
Speaker 1: we may be introducing large quantities of poorly understood, potentially
Speaker 1: poisonous chemicals into our everyday life, as well as speeding
Speaker 1: the evolution of disastrous superbugs. The more we use the
Speaker 1: same anti microbials in different contexts, the more opportunity these
Speaker 1: microbes have to develop resistance, says Erica Hartman, an engineering
Speaker 1: professor at Northwestern university who focuses on indoor microbiology and chemistry.
Speaker 1: If they're developing resistance to the antimicrobial itself, that's not great,
Speaker 1: because then we've lost an important product in our cleaning arsenal.
Speaker 1: But if they also develop resistance to clinically relevant antibiotics
Speaker 1: of which we have precious view, that's an even bigger concern,
Speaker 1: and there's evidence that both of those things happen. Wiping
Speaker 1: out good bacteria along with the bad has also been
Speaker 1: linked to chronic health problems. One often cited series of
Speaker 1: studies begun in examined the relationship between cleanliness and disease
Speaker 1: in the Finnish Russian border region of Karelia, where people
Speaker 1: share similar genetics. On the wealthier, cleaner, finished side, people
Speaker 1: were as many as thirteen times more likely to suffer
Speaker 1: from inflammatory disorders as on the Russian side, where the
Speaker 1: majority live in rural homes, keep animals, and cultivate their
Speaker 1: own gardens. Our pandemic era anti germ crusade may not
Speaker 1: have a big impact on the already formed microbiomes of adults,
Speaker 1: but infants and young children, who need exposure to a
Speaker 1: wide variety of microbes to train their developing immune systems
Speaker 1: could be more adversely affected. It's just speculation, but we
Speaker 1: could see a blip where this generation of kids has
Speaker 1: more immune related conditions. Knight says, especially in places where
Speaker 1: people have had to stay quarantined indoors, where kids didn't
Speaker 1: get to go outside as much. Leong of s O
Speaker 1: M began thinking about the microbiology of buildings years before
Speaker 1: the pandemic. It's not something he tends to mention to
Speaker 1: prospective clients. If you tell a client, let's talk about microbes,
Speaker 1: they'll say get out of here. Next, he says, we
Speaker 1: have to address it carefully. Beyond using organic materials and
Speaker 1: maximizing access to natural light and outdoor spaces, Leung says
Speaker 1: lots can be done to make buildings healthier at the
Speaker 1: microbial level. For safer air, he extols the use of
Speaker 1: filters designed to eliminate sars Kovi two and other pathogens
Speaker 1: and contaminants, but he cautions against bipolar ionization technology and
Speaker 1: says air shouldn't be sterilized over long durations. Whenever possible,
Speaker 1: Leung suggests deploying ventilation systems that pump office is full
Speaker 1: of microbially diverse outdoor air. Among his current projects is
Speaker 1: the thirty one story we Bank Tower in Shunjun, which
Speaker 1: upon completion in twenty twenty two, will draw air through
Speaker 1: trees planted on balconies before it's funneled inside. Sometimes we
Speaker 1: also open up buildings at night, Leung says, noting that
Speaker 1: the outdoor air is first measured for pollutants. During the
Speaker 1: day people want air conditioning, but when they're gone, you
Speaker 1: can recharge the building with microbes from outside. Proper ventilation
Speaker 1: is particularly important in energy efficient buildings, which, like spaceships,
Speaker 1: are designed to be sealed off from the outside world.
Speaker 1: In addition to delivering fresh oxygen and eliminating the brain
Speaker 1: numbing build up of carbon dioxide, good airflow and filtration
Speaker 1: reduce exposure to a long list of mostly unregulated and
Speaker 1: unmonitored chemicals found indoors. These include known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors,
Speaker 1: which reside in carpets, computers, free floating dust, office chairs, paint,
Speaker 1: and more. Outdoor pollution also seeps inside buildings and gets trapped,
Speaker 1: especially during hours when ventilation systems are turned off. All
Speaker 1: this means indoor air is often far worse than outdoor air,
Speaker 1: with levels of some contaminants rising to ten times higher
Speaker 1: or more. For businesses, better air quality alone translates to
Speaker 1: an estimated sixty five hundred to seventy five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: of added annual productivity per employee, mainly a result of
Speaker 1: improved wakefulness and acuity, say Joseph Allen and John Macomber,
Speaker 1: Harvard professors who in April published the book Healthy Buildings.
Speaker 1: By contrast, they note a study of more than three
Speaker 1: thousand workers in forty buildings found that fifty seven percent
Speaker 1: of all sick leaf was attributable to bad air. Disturbingly,
Speaker 1: Allan and Macomber also write that up to ninety percent
Speaker 1: of American schools don't meet the minimum ventilation requirements, and
Speaker 1: that those standards are already far below optimal in London,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, Mumbai and other polluted cities. Outdoor air needs
Speaker 1: to be heavily filtered before being pumped indoors, and most
Speaker 1: beneficial outdoor microbes likely don't survive, but in cleaner and
Speaker 1: greener areas, simply opening windows has proved effective. After taking antibiotics,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to eat yogurt to replenish with probiotics, says
Speaker 1: Mark Fretz, a colleague of Van den Weimelenberg at the
Speaker 1: University of Oregon, where he's a research assistant professor at
Speaker 1: the Institute for Health. In the Built Environment, for your buildings,
Speaker 1: the yogurt is essentially opening your window. In twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: researchers compare them acrobiomes of a hospital room in Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 1: with operable windows with one in which windows were permanently sealed.
Speaker 1: It was very difficult to find a hospital that even
Speaker 1: had an operable window, Frets says. Opening the window, it
Speaker 1: turned out, resulted in far more microbial diversity throughout the room,
Speaker 1: including species found on plants and leaves. Notably, there was
Speaker 1: also a significantly lower chance of encountering pathogens. Side note,
Speaker 1: Potted plants also seed indoor spaces with valuable natural microbes,
Speaker 1: and they measurably improve human happiness, physical and mental health,
Speaker 1: and even original thinking, but they barely improve air quality.
Speaker 1: Another means of achieving healthier air is humidification, currently an
Speaker 1: extreme rarity in North America. As any office worker who
Speaker 1: struggled through a dry and overheated winter season knows, most
Speaker 1: of our commercial buildings in the US are not humidified.
Speaker 1: Leung says, and that's why the pandemic could get even
Speaker 1: worse this winter. Not only does sufficient moisture in the
Speaker 1: air allow the human immune system to function at its best,
Speaker 1: but it also gloms onto viral particles so they decay
Speaker 1: and drop to the floor more quickly. According to some calculations,
Speaker 1: viruses in dry air can survive six times as long
Speaker 1: as those in buildings with the relative humidity of about
Speaker 1: forty percent. Of course, building interventions alone can't eliminate the
Speaker 1: risk of stars covey to contagion, so it's best to
Speaker 1: keep social distancing and wearing masks. In the meantime, scientists
Speaker 1: at universities and start ups are racing to develop microbial
Speaker 1: censors for air filters, building services, waste water, and even
Speaker 1: indoor air. We have tools to help us see the unseen,
Speaker 1: Van der Weimelenburg says. For now, those detection tools are
Speaker 1: in their infancy, relying on the arduous process of repeatedly
Speaker 1: collecting samples and transporting them to labs for testing. Gilbert
Speaker 1: has ambitious plans for microby interventions in buildings. Trained as
Speaker 1: a microbial ecologist and with experience working on soils, plants,
Speaker 1: and marine systems, He was initially skeptical when he learned
Speaker 1: the Sloane Foundation was promoting something called the Microbiology of
Speaker 1: the Built Environment. I thought it was a joke, Gilbert says,
Speaker 1: I'll admit it. I thought there can't be much microbiology
Speaker 1: in the built environment, so why would anyone be interested.
Speaker 1: Then in the winter of twenty twelve, he got a
Speaker 1: visit from Paula Olsouski, a program director for the Sloan Foundation.
Speaker 1: At that point, he was a professor at the University
Speaker 1: of Chicago, and when the meeting was over, a blizzard
Speaker 1: had descended on the city. I offered to drive her
Speaker 1: back to her hotel because I had a car that
Speaker 1: could handle the snow, Gilbert recalls, but it was snowing
Speaker 1: so heavily that the drive took two and a half hours,
Speaker 1: and in that time she convinced me. Now at the
Speaker 1: forefront of microbiome research human and environmental, Gilbert was even
Speaker 1: permitted to sample President Obama's microbiome in twenty sixteen. He's
Speaker 1: not allowed to disclose the results. When the pandemic hit,
Speaker 1: Gilbert quickly redirected much of his research funding towards studying
Speaker 1: stars Cove two. He has one project together with Night's
Speaker 1: lab to see how the virus travels through hospitals where
Speaker 1: it most often takes up residence, and whether it piggybacks
Speaker 1: on nefarious bacteria, as the influenza virus often does. He
Speaker 1: also has a second, more counterintuitive study under way in
Speaker 1: an undisclosed California hospital. Gilbert is investigating whether adding harmless
Speaker 1: basilis bacteria into medical facilities reduces the prevalence of pathogens,
Speaker 1: including multi drug resistant bacteria and viruses. If you don't
Speaker 1: have anything on a freshly disinfected surface and you cough
Speaker 1: your virus laden bacteria onto the table, it will survive there,
Speaker 1: Gilbert says, But if there's a high enough abundance of Bacillus,
Speaker 1: then the bacillus will outcompete and exclude other pathogens that
Speaker 1: land on the surface. Similar studies have been done in
Speaker 1: the past with encouraging findings, but Gilbert's is more rigorous.
Speaker 1: The idea of putting bacteria to work cleaning isn't as
Speaker 1: far fetched as it might sound. In the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: a Danish company called Novozymes started selling environmental microbes for
Speaker 1: decontaminating wastewater. In the nineteen eighties and nineties. It also
Speaker 1: contracted with the US government on a large scale bioremediation
Speaker 1: project to help clean up the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill.
Speaker 1: About the same time, Novozymes sent researchers looking for bugs
Speaker 1: that might help clean home septic tanks, restaurant grease traps,
Speaker 1: pet stains, and much more. Among their best finds were
Speaker 1: grease and odor cutting bacteria discovered in the outdoor grill
Speaker 1: sites of Virginia parks and the kitchen of a Florida restaurant. Today,
Speaker 1: Novozymes is worth about sixteen billion dollars, and its microbes
Speaker 1: are key ingredients in dozens of home care brands. These
Speaker 1: include the likes of Aunt Fanny's micro Cosmic Probiotic powered
Speaker 1: multi surface cleanser and Counterculture Probiotic Cleaning Tonic we clean
Speaker 1: the way Nature has been cleaning for four billion years
Speaker 1: with probiotics, reads counter Cultures website. The idea is to
Speaker 1: deploy an army of microbes that eat away at dirt, debris,
Speaker 1: and organic matter, also degrading the stuff left in cracks
Speaker 1: and crevices. Last year, even Wreckett benk Kisser introduced a
Speaker 1: probiotic cleaner called vo which the company says will help
Speaker 1: contribute to the balancing of the home microbiome. Going a
Speaker 1: step further, scientists are studying whether salubrious environmental microbes can
Speaker 1: be introduced into urban homes to reduce the prevalence of
Speaker 1: inflammatory diseases. In Finland, one group seeded the doormats of
Speaker 1: city dwellers with about thirty grams of forest soil so
Speaker 1: residents could drag outdoor microbes inside. The six month experiment
Speaker 1: showed the rugs did shift the indoor air to include
Speaker 1: more outdoor microbes. Next, the researchers want to run a
Speaker 1: large scale study to see whether forest soil impacted rugs
Speaker 1: can improve the immune systems of infants and young children.
Speaker 1: Another finished group is bypassing the rugs and simply smearing
Speaker 1: infants with a soil preparation to find out if there
Speaker 1: are health benefits. So far, no one knows exactly which
Speaker 1: outdoor microbes are beneficial or how much exposure is best. Still,
Speaker 1: a number of startups are marketing bacteria sprays for homes
Speaker 1: and businesses. Belgium based take Air advertises an air enricher
Speaker 1: that disperses soil and ocean derived microbes through existing ventilation
Speaker 1: systems to create a natural and protective biosphere for your
Speaker 1: building users. Clients include a Belgian chain of Gems and
Speaker 1: a housing project in Antwerp. Another front runner, Better Air
Speaker 1: in Israel sells the world's first organic air and surface probiotic,
Speaker 1: a freestanding microbe mister that retails for four dollars refill
Speaker 1: cart ridges are It's only a matter of time before
Speaker 1: these technologies become better understood and more widespread. There's absolutely
Speaker 1: fascinating research to be done. Gilbert says, I want to
Speaker 1: maybe engineer basilis so it has properties that can stimulate
Speaker 1: the immune systems of people in a room. Vann Wimelenberg
Speaker 1: is also hopeful. There's no reason this stuff can't work.
Speaker 1: He says, we're already heavily manipulating the microbes in our buildings,
Speaker 1: just not deliberately. On a Tuesday afternoon in June, Leung
Speaker 1: takes my call while teaching his eighteen year old son
Speaker 1: to drive. Asked about the probiotic air enhancers, he laughs,
Speaker 1: it actually says a lot about human beings. He says.
Speaker 1: We've created buildings so sterile that now we have to
Speaker 1: buy nature and spray it back in. That's how silly
Speaker 1: we are. Perhaps the pandemic will serve as a wake
Speaker 1: up call. This is our chance to right our wrongs
Speaker 1: of the past two years, he says, speaking of restoring
Speaker 1: our relationship with soils, plants, and animals. It won't be easy.
Speaker 1: Over the next forty years, the total amount of indoor
Speaker 1: square footage will roughly double worldwide, reports science journalist Emily
Speaker 1: Anthus in her book The Great Indoors. Given the horrors
Speaker 1: of COVID, many businesses and building managers will also work
Speaker 1: their hardest to sanitize indoor environments like never before, perhaps
Speaker 1: causing unintended consequences. In the meantime, the climate crisis is
Speaker 1: compounding potential health risks, as flooding, wildfires, and men made
Speaker 1: disasters destroy the natural world, exposing us to dangerous new
Speaker 1: diseases while annihilating the microbes we likely need to prevent
Speaker 1: widespread chronic illness, not to mention those we may need
Speaker 1: as medicines already. Leung says, urban air is often depleted
Speaker 1: of healthful natural bacteria in the winter time, when the
Speaker 1: leaves are gone from trees. Do you know what the
Speaker 1: main thing is you find an urban air? He asks,
Speaker 1: Microbes from animal feces. Still, the pandemic may be changing
Speaker 1: our perspective on indoor life and even physically altering our microbiomes.
Speaker 1: Although some people are cleaning too much, eating more junk food,
Speaker 1: and drinking more alcohol, prescriptions for antibiotics are markedly down
Speaker 1: from last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control
Speaker 1: and Prevention. One explanation is a decrease in non covid
Speaker 1: illnesses as a result of social distancing, and though people
Speaker 1: aren't mingling as much or sharing microbes, which can be
Speaker 1: beneficial when pathogens aren't involved, those lucky enough to live
Speaker 1: where they aren't required to hold up indoors are spending
Speaker 1: more time in nature. I mean, I see neighbors outside
Speaker 1: I didn't even know existed, and they're working in dirt
Speaker 1: that they're pretending is a garden, what microbiome expert says.
Speaker 1: As businesses allow employees to work from home, many are
Speaker 1: also abandoning urban life for greener settings. But winter is
Speaker 1: upon us and the pandemic is surging once again as
Speaker 1: more people move indoors. If we don't adjust our lifestyle
Speaker 1: and start making our buildings healthier from a microbial standpoint, now,
Speaker 1: Leung says, we'll get hit even harder. If you think
Speaker 1: this pandemic is bad, wait another fifty years when we
Speaker 1: have a much older population and much higher healthcare costs.
Speaker 1: In the not so distant future, he warns, three interrelated
Speaker 1: factors will increasingly affect our well being. Climate change, chronic
Speaker 1: health problems, and more pandemics. We're going to have to
Speaker 1: design for that, Leung says. And it's going to be
Speaker 1: important to bring humans and nature together again like in heaven.
Speaker 1: And that is one of our feature stories in this
Speaker 1: week's Bloomberg Business Week magazine. Check out more stories in
Speaker 1: the current issue of Bloomberg Business Week on news stands,
Speaker 1: online at Bloomberg dot com and on the Bloomberg Terminal.
Speaker 1: I'm Carol Master, and be sure to check out Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week Radio Monday Friday at two pm Wall Street
Speaker 1: Time on Bloomberg Radio. You can also catch us on
Speaker 1: our daily podcast feed. Find that at Bloomberg dot com,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you download your podcast. Watch us
Speaker 1: too on YouTube search Bloomberg Global News