Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: luring vogel bomb. Here you remember books? Words printed on
Speaker 1: paper bound between two covers. When Guttenberg introduced the printing
Speaker 1: press in fourteen fifty, books became objects of extraordinary wonder
Speaker 1: that would change the world. Throughout the centuries, These fascinating
Speaker 1: tactile objects educated and amused, instructed and advised, and curled
Speaker 1: up with us on rainy nights, sparking our imaginations. In
Speaker 1: eighteenth century America, lending libraries became egalitarian sanctuaries of knowledge
Speaker 1: where farmers and financiers alike could access for free all
Speaker 1: the mysteries of the world. But in our current virtual, ephemeral,
Speaker 1: device driven culture, books have become marginalized clutter. Sometimes casually
Speaker 1: thrown away books, just like the rest of us, can
Speaker 1: end up in some truly grungy places. In some cases,
Speaker 1: bona fide treasures have literally been tossed into garbage bins
Speaker 1: and kicked to the curb. A couple of cases in
Speaker 1: point in Vancouver, British Columbia, in twenty seventeen, a homeless
Speaker 1: man salvaged for rough condition. Eighteen seventies, Moroccan leather books
Speaker 1: from an alleyway trash heap. Turns out, the four volumes,
Speaker 1: titled The Far East, consists of twenty four issues of
Speaker 1: a rare English language news magazine published in Shanghai, China,
Speaker 1: between eighteen seventy and eighteen seventy eight. Back in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, South Bees in London auctioned a hundred and
Speaker 1: eighteen issues of the same periodical with a hundred and
Speaker 1: twelve original album and prints, the largest collection to surface
Speaker 1: on the market in thirty years, for over forty two
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. Don Stewart, a veteran bookseller and the owner
Speaker 1: of renowned mc lloyd's Books in downtown Vancouver, who purchased
Speaker 1: the volumes for an undisclosed amount, said it's the best
Speaker 1: thing ever to come out of the garbage that I've
Speaker 1: ever encountered. And then in Ankara, Turkey, over a period
Speaker 1: of time, sanitation workers in the Turkish capital collected thousands
Speaker 1: of discarded books while making their garbage pickups. Instead of
Speaker 1: abandoning them to landfills, these thoughtful, curious stewards of knowledge
Speaker 1: rescued the books and compile the library that now houses
Speaker 1: six thousand volumes in every imaginable genre. Originally, the library
Speaker 1: was set up only for the sanitation workers and their families,
Speaker 1: but as words spread, people began to donate cast off books,
Speaker 1: and the library open to the public in September. Now
Speaker 1: a vital part of the community, The libraries located in
Speaker 1: an old brick building at the headquarters of the city
Speaker 1: sanitation Department. The collection of salvaged volumes has grown so
Speaker 1: large that the library now loans books to schools, various
Speaker 1: educational programs, and prisons. These books, like any used books,
Speaker 1: may carry the stains and abrasions of their former experiences,
Speaker 1: including generations of people handling them. But as much as
Speaker 1: books may impact us, how much of an impact do
Speaker 1: we leave on books? Let's get over to Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: In Sick at Home with the flu, Cheyenne day Bert,
Speaker 1: a sixteen year old high school sophomore, wondered if she
Speaker 1: was getting contagious germs all over the library book she
Speaker 1: was reading, and then began to wonder if library books
Speaker 1: in general might be potential carriers of infectious disease. So
Speaker 1: she created an award winning international Science Fair project to
Speaker 1: find out with the help of local librarians. She chose
Speaker 1: popular books that were checked out often and rubbed. Methodically
Speaker 1: taken swabs from each book onto four Petrie dishes per book.
Speaker 1: Two of the dishes contained agar, a substance that bacteria
Speaker 1: thrive upon, and two of the dishes contained methylene blue,
Speaker 1: a chemical that thwarts the growth of certain bacteria while
Speaker 1: enabling others. Next, she put the plates in an oven
Speaker 1: at body temperature to find out how many microbial colonies
Speaker 1: were present and guess what, fearless library card holders. Not
Speaker 1: much bacteria was present on the books she tested, and
Speaker 1: none of the swabs exhibited E. Coli. Would that in
Speaker 1: mind say hello to formites. A formite is any non
Speaker 1: living object or substance capable of carrying infectious organisms, such
Speaker 1: as viruses or bacteria, and transferring them from one individual
Speaker 1: to another. We spoke via email with Jesse T. Jacob
Speaker 1: m D, an Associate professor of medicine and hospital epidemiologist
Speaker 1: at Emory University Hospital Midtown. He said that books and
Speaker 1: e readers can be considered formites, but quote the infection
Speaker 1: risk is very low. Asked if it's possible to get
Speaker 1: sick from touching a library book. For example, someone with
Speaker 1: the flu licked their finger to turn the pages, or
Speaker 1: sneezed or coughed on the book. Jacob said it's possible,
Speaker 1: but unlikely influenza can survive on paper and cloth for
Speaker 1: less than twelve hours. It's usually the respiratory secretions that
Speaker 1: carry the highest burden virus, and it would not be
Speaker 1: expected on spit, So licking a finger and turning a
Speaker 1: page is less likely contagious than picking your nose and
Speaker 1: then turning the page. Important safety tip, Jacob continued. Most
Speaker 1: respiratory viruses are transmitted by indirect contact, such as when
Speaker 1: a person touches an object think door knobs and handles
Speaker 1: that has been contaminated and then inadvertently touches a mucous
Speaker 1: membrane such as the lining of the eyes, nose, and mouth.
Speaker 1: While bacteria can potentially be spread by books or tablets
Speaker 1: in moost people, it will not cause infection. Asked what
Speaker 1: kind of bacteria and viruses have the strongest survivability on paper,
Speaker 1: Jacob said Graham positive materia such as strep and staff
Speaker 1: are better at persisting on surfaces in general, followed by viruses.
Speaker 1: Jacob suggests that because so many people are allergic to
Speaker 1: dustin mold, those are probably bigger problems than bacteria or
Speaker 1: viruses on books. He left us with this sage advice
Speaker 1: good for shared books and any other objects. Clean your
Speaker 1: hands and avoid touching your face or mucous membranes with
Speaker 1: potentially contaminated fingers to avoid catching a virus. So, if
Speaker 1: you perchance regret tossing that once cherished, dog eared, pizza
Speaker 1: stained copy of whatever it was that first ignited your
Speaker 1: passions or awakened your sensibilities, but why not revisit another
Speaker 1: well loved copy by checking it out at your local library.
Speaker 1: According to Jacob, the odds of it making you sick
Speaker 1: are quote very low, but with a pine, the odds
Speaker 1: of it making you happy are very very high. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by Carrie Tato and produced by Tristan McNeil.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other viral topics,
Speaker 1: visit our home planet, how Stuff Works dot com