Our wariness of infectious disease led us to become infatuated with preventing microbial exposure, including those essential microbial-host interactions which were only latently understood. Even more nascent is the concept that microbial exposure is integral to our health, refuting the paradigm that pathogenic microorganisms are consistently pathogenic, and that some microorganisms could, in fact, be beneficial and essential due to their antagonism with hosts. Investigations into host-microorganism relationships exposed a multitude of microorganism-driven benefits for the host, and even the reliance of some microorganisms or strains on host ecosystems: thus, the abstraction of host-associated microorganisms was solidified. on squid and Vibrio fischeri, the understanding that microorganisms could not only be commensal, but mutualistic with their hosts, began to develop. In the following decades, led by early work from Hungate on protozoa in cattle and McNall-Ngai et al. In the early-1900s, culture-based investigations revealed the possibility of a commensal microbial community -that which benefits from its association without impacting the host. Successive developments in microbiology and microbial ecology, technology, and theory advanced our understanding of microorganism taxonomy, anatomy, physiology, ecology, and infectious potential, and continued to refine our relationship to microorganisms and move us past a strict definition of Germ Theory.
This idea captured our imagination, and shaped public policy, protocols, best practices, and infection control training-particularly in the healthcare and food service industries. The idea that microorganisms were solely disease-causing agents to be avoided began with the discovery that basic hand hygiene and aseptic techniques reduced the spread of disease, and led to the proposals of Germ Theory in the 1860s and Koch’s postulates in the 1890s.
Long before knowing why it worked, the ill were quarantined to prevent the spread of disease. This review presents built environment characteristics in relation to human health and disease, explores some of the current experimental strategies and interventions which explore health in the built environment, and discusses an emerging model for fostering indoor microbiology rather than fearing it. Technological and logistical constraints often preclude our ability to link health outcomes to indoor microbiology, yet sufficient study exists to inform the theory and implementation of the next era of research and intervention in the built environment. Health sectors have re-evaluated the role of microorganisms in health, incorporating microorganisms into prevention and treatment protocols, yet no paradigm shift has occurred with respect to microbiology of the built environment, despite calls to do so. There have been recent calls to incorporate building microbiology into occupant health and exposure research and standards, yet the built environment is largely viewed as a repository for microorganisms which are to be eliminated, instead of a habitat which is inexorably linked to the microbial influences of building inhabitants. Within this built environment, human behavior and building design contribute to the accrual and dispersal of microorganisms it is a collection of fomites that transfer microorganisms reservoirs that collect biomass structures that induce human or air movement patterns and space types that encourage proximity or isolation between humans whose personal microbial clouds disperse cells into buildings. In the constructed habitat in which we spend up to 90% of our time, architectural design influences occupants’ behavioral patterns, interactions with objects, surfaces, rituals, the outside environment, and each other.
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