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There is a paper published in the Journal of Virology last month about the bad quality of air.
http://jvi.asm.org/content/86/15/8221.abstract
Airborne viruses are expected to be ubiquitous in the atmosphere but they still remain poorly understood. This study investigated the temporal and spatial dynamics of airborne viruses and their genotypic characteristics in air samples collected from three distinct land use types (a residential district [RD], a forest [FR], and an industrial complex [IC]) and from rainwater samples freshly precipitated at the RD site (RD-rain). Viral abundance exhibited a seasonal fluctuation in the range between 1.7 × 106 and 4.0 × 107 viruses m−3, which increased from autumn to winter and decreased toward spring, but no significant spatial differences were observed. Temporal variations in viral abundance were inversely correlated with seasonal changes in temperature and absolute humidity. Metagenomic analysis of air viromes amplified by rolling-circle phi29 polymerase-based random hexamer priming indicated the dominance of plant-associated single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) geminivirus-related viruses, followed by animal-infecting circovirus-related sequences, with low numbers of nanoviruses and microphages-related genomes. Particularly, the majority of the geminivirus-related viruses were closely related to ssDNA mycoviruses that infect plant-pathogenic fungi. Phylogenetic analysis based on the replication initiator protein sequence indicated that the airborne ssDNA viruses were distantly related to known ssDNA viruses, suggesting that a high diversity of viruses were newly discovered. This research is the first to report the seasonality of airborne viruses and their genetic diversity, which enhances our understanding of viral ecology in temperate regions.
tl;dr
- In each cubic meter of air, there are between 1.6 million and 40 million viruses.
- In each cubic meter of air, there are between 860,000 and 11 million bacteria.
Given that we breathe roughly .01 cubic meters of air each minute, a simple calculation based on these results suggests we breathe in a few hundred thousand viruses every minute. Half of the viruses the scientists trapped didn’t match any known virus species. But most belong to groups that infect plants or mammals.
User was warned for this post
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Is this really news? I mean I honestly don't care that I'm breathing so much as long as my immune system is able to handle it. This is more of a quantitative measurement than some big discovery as far as I can tell; not like there's some over-time measurement (would be pretty hard to pull off anyway) of the quantity of viruses in the troposphere :S
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As long as people aren't dying from disease left and right, I think we're doing relatively okay. I am worried, however, for the future.
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Not breathing is more dangerous...
obligatory response
/thread
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On October 02 2012 15:42 Aerisky wrote:
Is this really news? I mean I honestly don't care that I'm breathing so much as long as my immune system is able to handle it.
Exactly my thoughts. I would be more worried about pollutants in the air (smog, ash etc) than viruses. If you are healthy, your immune system can handle a lot.
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The article does not say that breathing is dangerous. It just quantifies the kinds and numbers of viruses and bacteria found in air it seems from a quick glance at the abstract. To say whether it is dangerous you would of course have to investigate whether these quantities of these viruses are harmful (lots of viruses and bacteria are not harmful). Also danger cannot really be seen as an absolute and must be weighed against the alternatives which seems to be 1) Not breathing (not very practical), 2) cleaning the air somehow, 3) Making ourselves more resilient to what is in the air.
This reminds me of the common middle school experiment of using a growth medium on a petri dish to check how many bacteria are on various surfaces (handles, toilet seats, faucets, cutlery, etc.). Of course in that experiment we don't try to quantify the types of bacteria found or their effects on humans, so it is fundamentally flawed to make any conclusions beyond those of quantity. The strawman version of the study presented suffers from the same defects it seems to me.
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On October 02 2012 15:47 Alex1Sun wrote:Show nested quote +On October 02 2012 15:42 Aerisky wrote:
Is this really news? I mean I honestly don't care that I'm breathing so much as long as my immune system is able to handle it. Exactly my thoughts. I would be more worried about pollutants in the air (smog, ash etc) than viruses. If you are healthy, your immune system can handle a lot.
Yup more of a reason to avoid antibiotics and other things that damage your immune system.
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100% of people who breath at some point do die, so yes, this study tells the truth.
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At no point in the abstract you quoted are these viruses characterized as dangerous. You're either intentionally or unintentionally misrepresenting a rather modest scientific study to support a stupid, sensational headline.
Maybe you could get a job at Fox or MSNBC.
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tl;dr is exaggerated (atleast for bacteria), only CFU (colony forming units) matter really--the CFU count is NEVER that high. Its more like 400-1000 CFU/m^3 (cubic meter). So sorry but I call bullshit on this thread.
-Source: I am a microbiologist who samples air every single day and counts the CFU per meter (inside and outside).
-edit: Also, only an astronomically small percentage of these bacteria can cause any real harm beyond a cold.
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On October 02 2012 15:53 Intr3pid wrote:
100% of people who breath at some point do die, so yes, this study tells the truth.
Breathing is correlated with death. And how is it that age old saying goes: "causation is the same as correlation", something like that?
However only about 90%-95% of people breathing have died. The rest are still alive, and who knows whether anyone still alive will die? (if you assume everyone dies, and then concludes that everyone dies because everyone dies, that is bad reasoning)
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This is why I love TL.
EVERYONE is an expert on EVERYTHING.
Everyone has five PHDs on any topics that appear in the General section.
I am only posting about an interesting I read about that I want other to know to. There are of course more information from what I've read than what was available in the online abstract.
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Thank you for this crucial piece of information. Well, I guess now we all have to decide if we want to die immediately by not breathing, or if we want to get 6 million viruses because we want to 'live' for a bit. I, for one, am going to die like a man and stop breathing as of right now.
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On October 02 2012 16:00 xwoGworwaTsx wrote:
This is why I love TL.
EVERYONE is an expert on EVERYTHING.
Everyone has five PHDs on any topics that appear in the General section.
I am only posting about an interesting I read about that I want other to know to. There are of course more information from what I've read than what was available in the online abstract.
as they said, nowhere in the article is stated 'breathing is dangerous'
It's interesting but the title is misleading.
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On October 02 2012 16:00 xwoGworwaTsx wrote:
This is why I love TL.
EVERYONE is an expert on EVERYTHING.
Everyone has five PHDs on any topics that appear in the General section.
I am only posting about an interesting I read about that I want other to know to. There are of course more information from what I've read than what was available in the online abstract.
What I love about TL is how frequently scientific studies are mangled in the General Section by people who are either unwilling or unable to understand and describe them competently.
(I would love to hear you quote your "additional information" from the study. I'm sure the tone of the article is just as alarmist as your absurd OP, but they just forgot to mention anything about it in the abstract.)
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Did ya know Living gets ya Killed??
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- Sensational title
- Lack of information (the study was done in Korea)
- Lack of any significant new knowledge to know or even anything at all to discuss
Yes, we can close this dumb thread now.
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things like this used to be filed away and never read in books full of useless trivia. now we have kind souls to post them on web forums for our(and their own) attention. thank you for making the world a better place. in light of this new revelation, i've decided to give humanity another chance.
oh, humanity! you!...
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On October 02 2012 15:53 Intr3pid wrote:
100% of people who breath at some point do die, so yes, this study tells the truth.
"Life is a sexually-transmitted disease with 100% mortality rate." Our forefathers have a lot to answer for...
On topic, this study illustrates just how much our immune system has to cope with every day. It's really amazing that it works that well (most of the time, at least).
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Gonna start permanently holding my breath now. Will let you guys know how that works out by the end of the week.
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EPT
