Microbes Are Everywhere

Microbes seem to be overshadowed by larger forms of life, probably because they are so small, but they are still by far the most abundant life form on the planet, constituting some twenty-five times the total biomass of all animal life. There are well over a million different types, mostly harmless environmental microbes. They are in the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat—and when they die they set about deconstructing us. Each ton of soil contains more than 10,000,000,000,000,000, microbes, many of which are employed in breaking down organic material to generate essential nitrates for plants to utilize; every year nitrogen-fixing bacteria recycle 140 million tons of atmospheric nitrogen back into the soil. (1)

When we have a Big Mac, medium fries, and a medium Coca-Cola for lunch, we're not just consuming 1,070 calories, 64 grams of sugar, 43 grams of fat, and 1,150 milligrams of sodium, we're also eating 238,000 microbes—mostly bacteria, with a few thousand yeast and mold organisms as well. That's the finding from a trio of scientists at UC-Davis who, for the first time, tallied the number and type of microorganisms present in the average American diet, reports Ross Pomeroy. (2) For their study, the researchers purchased and prepared a full day's worth of meals for three separate diets: an average American diet, a USDA recommended diet, and a vegan diet. The Americna diet consisted of food from Starbucks and McDonald's, as well as frozen and packaged food from the grocery store. The USDA diet offered cereal, a variety of vegetables, and a turkey sandwich, among other selections. The vegan diet had lots of vegetables, nuts, and fruits, and rounded out with tofu, almond milk, and vegetable protein powder. All of the diets tipped the energy scale at a little over 2,200 calories. The USDA diet contained the most microbes, roughly 1.26 billion. The vegan diet came in a distant second at just over 6 million, while the American diet lagged behind at 1.39 million. Aerobic and anaerobic bacteria dominated the counts. Yeast and mold constituted a far smaller portion. The reason the USDA diet was so high is because it had three foods- yogurt, Parmesan cheese and cottage cheese—which contain live and active bacterial cultures. (3) A single 10-second kiss can transfer as many as 80 million bacteria, according to Dutch scientists. Studies suggest the mouth is home to more than 700 different types of bacteria—but the report reveals some are exchanged more easily than others. (4) More on our mouths: Lyall Watson reports “With each 100 spoken words, particularly those with explosive consonants like 't' or 'p', we put 250 tiny droplets into the air. Forty percent of these contain one or more bacteria, usually of the Streptococcus or Staphylococcus types. A single cough is worth 2,000 words, wheeling out 5,000 potentially dangerous droplets. But a sneeze is the Rolls Royce of bacterial vehicles. With acceleration from a standing start to 400 meters per second, almost the speed of sound, most of them infected, this biological tornado burdens the air with as many bacteria as would normally be dispersed by someone speaking 400,000 words—which would mean talking non-stop for fifty-five hours or reading War and Peace out loud.” (5)

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Our belly buttons house about 2,400 types of microbes—1,500 of which are new to science

Our belly buttons house about 2,400 types of microbes—1,500 of which are new to science. These data are from the lab of biologist Rob Dunn, an associate professor at North Carolina State University. In 2011, Dunn's lab launched the Belly Button Biodiversity project. What began as a way to get people excited about the microbiome became a serious endeavor when Dunn discovered the diversity in our navels. (6) Researchers at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio collected 68 dollar bills from people at a grocery stores and a high-school sporting event. Sixty-four (94%) of the bills were contaminated with bacteria know to cause either serious or mild illness. Five bills (7%) were found to be contaminated with bacteria which cause infections in healthy people. Fifty-nine bills (87%) were contaminated with bacteria that are usually harmless in healthy individuals, but can still trigger serious illness in those with depressed immune systems. However, real health risks to the average consumer are pretty low: US dollar bills may be no more or less covered in microbial goo than, say, doorknobs, pens or computer keyboards. (7) Eco-friendly reusable shopping bags are raising some eco-questions regarding reusing and washing them. These issues pose some problems for those wishing to be eco-friendly with reusable bags. A study from the United Kingdom found that the potential of reusable bags to benefit the environment depends on how many times they are used before being discarded. Real-world data show that bags are currently harming the environment instead of healing it. (8) Regardless, as scary as some of this might sound, many of these life forms are as yet poorly studied, and it remains conceivable that some help protect us. This is even more a problem today inasmuch, for one example, we seem committed to using antibiotic wipes on our hands. Recent studies are unable to find any benefits of antibiotics in hand sanitizers, soaps, or other household products in terms of preventing disease. But such products do have disadvantages. They can lead to antibiotic resistance and may also be killing good bacteria and in doing so making room for the bad, which especially if they are resistant to antibiotics, are all too happy to move in. (9) References

1. Dorothy H. Crawford, Deadly Companions, (Oxford University Press, 2007), 12
2. Ross Pomeroy, “This is how many microbes you'll eat today,” realclearscience.com, December 10, 2014
3. J. M. Lang et al., “The microbes we eat: abundance and taxonomy of microbes consumed in a day's worth of meals for three diet types,” PeerJ 2:e659 [url=http://dx.doi/org/10.7717/peerj.659]http://dx.doi/org/10.7717/peerj.659[/url]
4. Smitha Mundasad, “One kiss shares 80 million bugs,” bbcom.news, November 16, 2014
5. Lyall Watson, Heaven's breath: a natural history of the wind, (New York, NY, William Morrow & Co., 1984), 157
6. Azeen Ghorayshi, “Dataset reveals multiple bacteria types live in our navels,” wired.com, November 10, 2014
7. Laura Lee, 100 most dangerous things in everyday life, (New York, NY, Broadway Books, 2004), 10
8. Cheryl K. Chumley, “Reusable bags an environmental loser,” Environment & Climate News, 14, 1, April 2011
9. Rob Dunn, The wild life of our bodies, (New York, NY, HarperCollins, 2011), 82