Bacteria And Dust Are World Travelers

Bacteria may travel thousands of miles through the air worldwide instead of hitching rides with people and animals. Researchers at Rutgers University and other colleagues suggest that there must be a planet-wide mechanism that ensures the exchange of bacteria between faraway places. ¹ Air samples collected by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National laboratory found as many as 1,800 bacterial species in the air we breathe. These bacterial life forms are not just on us and around us, they are part of us. Yale University engineers for instance, have found that a person's 'mere presence' in a room adds about thirty-seven million bacteria to the mix, every single hour. ²

Bellybutton Biodiversity Project

Taking swabs from sixty subjects' bellybuttons, researchers at North Carolina on the 'Bellybutton Biodiversity Project' found a veritable zoo of bacteria, a total of 2,368 different species, over half of which were previously unknown to science. One person's bellybutton even housed a bacterium only known to exist in Japanese soil. He had never set foot in Japan, so how did it get there? Well, bacteria are world travelers. Even in drawing a single breath, as microbiologist Nathan Wolfe has observed, we are sampling a safari of microbial species from around the world: “Dust from deserts in China moves across the Pacific to North America and east to Europe eventually circling the globe. Such dust clouds harbor bacteria and microbes they pick up from the smoke of garbage fires or from the mist above the oceans they cross.” ² Kimberly Prather and her colleagues at the University of San Diego, found tiny particles of dust and bacteria from thousands of kilometers away in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. This study provides the first evidence of dust and bacteria from Africa and the Middle East reaching the Western US. ³ Air pollution from China, India and several other Asian countries has wafted across the Pacific Ocean over the past 25 years, increasing levels of ozone smog in the western US. ⁴ Ozone is only one of many pollutants from Asia that reach the US. Instruments regularly detect mercury, and soot. At present China emits more sulfur dioxide than any other country in the world. ⁵

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A study on the Sierra snow pack confirmed that more than a third of the air pollution affecting California originates in China. ⁶ It's not just air pollution from China. Dust clouds from the African Sahara can travel thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean every year and in large quantities. Scientists found that the average air concentrations of inhalable particles more than doubled during a major Saharan dust intrusion in Houston, Texas. ⁷

Summary

The point of all this is not to scare people about bacteria and dust. Bacteria and dust are everywhere, surviving in even the most extreme environments like hot springs, ice cubes, and the air we breathe. But not all of them are malicious, just be aware they are present.

References

1. “Bacteria may travel thousands of miles through the air globally,” sciencedaily.com, March 25, 2019
2. Ziya Tong,, The Reality Bubble, (New York, Penguin Random House, 2019)
3. Sam Lemonick, “Sahara dust brings rain and snow to California,” earthmagazine.org, March 1, 2013
4. Meiyun Lin et al., “US surface ozone trends and extremes from 1980 to 2014: quantifying the roles of rising Asian emissions, domestic control, wildfires and climate,” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 17(4), 2943, 2017
5. Ian Plimer, Heaven and Earth, (New York, Taylor Trade Publishing, 2009), 13
6. J. Marteen Troost, Lost on Planet China, (New York, Broadway Books, 2008), 51
7. Ayse Bozlaker, et al., “Quantifying the contribution of long-range Saharan dust transport on particulate matter concentration in Houston, Texas using detailed elemental analysis,” Environmental Science & Technology, 47(18), 10179, 20