This past January 2020, the publication How Light Exposure Changes Bacterial Communities in Household Dust was published under new discovery at Frontiers for Young Minds. The full article can be read here on their website.
Rosenberg, S., Ishaq, S., May, J., and Fahimipour, A.K. How light exposure changes bacterial communities in household dust. Frontiers for Young Minds. Article. Jan 2020.
Abstract
Did you know that there are bacteria living in the dust found inside many buildings? Most of these bacteria are harmless, but some might make us sick. We wanted to test how bacteria living in dust would be affected by light: which types would live and which types would die? To test this, we put dust in model offices for 90 days, under different lighting conditions, and measured the effects of light on the bacteria in that dust. We found that certain types of bacteria could not survive indoors when daylight entered rooms through ordinary windows. Understanding how different kinds of microbes thrive or decline in different environments is crucial, as we strive to create buildings of the future that can help us stay healthy, or at least do not make us sick as often.