Anti-Pathogen Architecture

I have seen Starship in concert, yeah, at the Riverbend festival in Chattanooga, which likes to bring lots of fans that used to be rather big, that used to be good. I don't know if it's a Starship used to be good. I don't know. I guess Starship used to be Jefferson Airplane, which was used to be good. Yeah. So this episode is not about Jefferson Airplane, but we will be talking about airplanes quite a bit. Sure. We wanted to talk about a sort of different way of addressing the how

can we live a healthier future question today? So on this podcast we talked about all kinds of vaccines, medical treatments, weird new surgeries, bug venoms you can take to cure your diseases. But one thing we haven't talked about much is environmental engineering for better health, trying to make a space that a lot of people are sharing for any given amount of time as pathogen free as possible, right, because we cannot all be hermits as often as we

want to. I mean, we feel the stress of this sometimes. Working in an open office as we do, there perhaps not as many walls, dividers, barriers and so forth as we might like. We have a we have a very uh proactive manager who is is keen to send people home should they exhibit any sign ins or symptoms of illness. Uh. Sadly she is not in our Atlanta office anymore. So I worry about what flu season is going to be

like next year. Oh man, there was a while back I was I had a cough and I felt so bad being in the office, but I had stuff I had to do. Uh, everybody's looking at me, and I was like, yeah, I know, I'm sorry. And on top of that, we're going to talk about environments like airplanes or even trains, things things where you've got a lot of people in an enclosed space, and what can you do or what can be done to make those uh, you know, cleaner safer for people less likely to spread

a disease. Should someone who is infected with something get on that that or get in that enclosure? Sure, because it's not just common sense that these you know, tubes of mass transit are going to probably have some some bugs flying around him. Yeah, um, they're is plenty of actual evidence of this, oh yeah, absolutely. In fact, back in two thousand two, Now the numbers vary. I've seen as low as sixteen and as high as twenty two, but around twenty or so people aboard an international flight

were infected by a single passenger who had STARS. And that's that's a serious issue there. In fact, it's in the name. It's a very dangerous condition to a disease

to contract. And I think ultimately sixteen people also came down with stars, but there were as high as twenty two were infected in some way, and a lot of people pointed to that to say, here's a way how where air travel can end up being a vector for a disease to spread very rapidly, because then you you expand that not just to the people who are on board the flight, but then the folks they come into contact with after the flight is over, and this also

becomes a starting point for every zombie outbreak movie you have ever seen or the novel you've ever read. Sure, Yeah, a long overseas flight. It's almost like a sort of like culture dish. Yeah, human one, and you hear about things like recycled air. We'll talk about that in a little bit. Uh. You know, it sounds like you're seated next to people for most of the flight, you aren't really able to move around, You can't really separate yourself

from everybody else. So it's it's a prime candidate for UH disease to spread from person to person. So we'll talk a little bit about that. But in order to understand all of this, we really need to kind of lay a foundation. So we usually do that on this show. We like to start from the ground and work our

way up. So I thought it'd be important for us to actually talk about what pathogens are sure, So this is going to mean that we're limiting the discussion today to communicable diseases, not diseases like not how to engineer environments to prevent you from getting back pain or something

right to to stop the spread of bacteria and viruses germs. Right, So, pathogens, most of the pathogens will be talking about in this episode fall into one of two categories that they are biological agents that cause disease or illness to a host.

Usually we talk about multicellular organisms being the host, although there are unicellular pathogens as well, or pathogens that can affect unicellar cellular organisms that is, but we're not unicellular, so we're not really concerned about that in this episode. You don't care if the bacteria on your skin gets sick.

You might you might need to depending upon what the bacteria are supposed to do, but at any rate, um the two types we're really going to be talking about our bacteria and viruses, and so we need to explain the difference between those. And the differences are many between

the two. Although we often if you know, if you're not if you're not keen on your science, like you haven't really studied biology very much, you know, it's it's easy to mix up the two, you know, or get confused over which which ones are treated by antibiotics versus vaccinations, that kind of thing, right, especially because in a lot

of the common types of diseases that they cause. The symptoms tend to be really similar, right, Yeah, The symptoms for diseases that are caused by bacterial infection or a viral infection can be very similar, and so they can be a little confusing. Which are the ones that cause the zombie outbreaks? It's typically a virus, but you know it's well, and these are modern times, I mean there's

a lot more fear of viruses. I think therefore also random radiation that can also and I guess you could say that viruses are sort of zombies themselves, both living and not. Yeah. Yeah, So let's start with bacteria. Bacteria single cell micro organisms. They're prokaryotes, meaning that they lack a membrane, any membrane bound organelles, including the nucleus. They don't have a nucleus. They are small, just a little sup of stuff inside, Yeah, a little soup pill, duff

soup pill, soup pill there. They are usually only a few micrometers in length. They tend to affect the body in a localized infection as opposed to a systemic infection. So like if you get a wound that gets infected, that's typically going to be a bacterial infection rather than a viral right, and and now that can end up developing into a blood infection, which can spread through the rest of your body, and that's very dangerous obviously, infect infections.

One of those big dangers of of wounds is that if if you don't bleed out, the next big danger is infection. Um. They're typically treated with anybody, so anybodys kill bacteria. They can sometimes kill both good and bad bacteria. We've talked about how our bodies are veritable bacteria cities Metropolis is oh yeah, yeah, they out number our own human cells tend to one within our bodies. So uh. And not all the bacteria that's in our bodies is actually harmful. Oh yeah, Lots of it is either harm

less or or helpful. Yeah, and uh. In fact, there was a really interesting study about hospitals that looked at different types of bacteria, some of which were incredibly helpful. I'll mention that a little bit later in the episode as well. Bacteria can survive and thrive even on non living surfaces. In other words, you could end up having a batch of bacteria sitting on all sorts of stuff, and you could end up, you know, coming into contact with that and getting bacteria on you as a result.

It's one of the things that makes bacteria pretty tricky stuff because it's not like it's it's not like it'll immediately die outside of the body. It doesn't. It's it can survive, can hang out in especially moisture, anything that has water on it or in it baia. A lot of them can even multiply in that in that case, not just inside a body. When they infect another organism. They survived between cells. In other words, they aren't inhabiting cells.

They're surviving with you, between all the different cells, so they are inter cellular. Then we have viruses, which are small protein structures that contain either DNA or RNA. Whether they are a form of life or not is a matter of debate because they exhibit some aspects that we associate with living things and they lack other things. So they do replicate, but they replicate by infecting a host cell. Typically it's a specific type of host cell for that

particular virus. They tend to have these old protein markers that have them seek out specific types of cells and latch on and then inject a bunch of their DNA or RNA, whichever the case may be, into that host cell, and they turn the host cell into virus making machine until the host cell is essentially consumed from within and bursts and with all the new little viral bits. Yeah, and they all go launching off looking for other cells and so on and so fourth. Uh So that's horrifying. Yeah,

pretty nasty stuff. Uh. They require a living host to multiply. They don't multiply outside of a host because they need that cell to infect. They cannot replicate on their own. Uh. They are intracellular because they infiltrate cells. Now, they are much smaller than bacteria. Said, bacteria tend to be a few micrometers in size. Viruses tend to be between twenty and four hundred nanometers in size. One thousand nanometers is one micrometer, So they are much smaller than bacteria are.

And a viral infection is systemic rather than localized. It can be treated with anti viral medications, but this typically slows down the viruses replication. It doesn't necessarily stop it. It gives your bodies immune system enough time to deal

with the virus itself. Uh. You can also get vaccinated vaccinations typically involve in get an injection of a dead virus of whatever type you are immuni immunizing yourself against, and then you have an immunity to that particular strain of the virus, not necessarily all strains of that virus, right, right, but it lets your body recognize that certain type of virus and fight it off in the future, right, just

say no way, mr and and turn it away. So, uh, yeah, that those are the major differences between the bacteria and the viruses. Uh. You know, you mentioned Joe that that wounds are really you know, if you have an infection with a wound, it tends to be a bacterial infection, which is absolutely true. Virus can enter through a wound. Oh sure. Your your skin is really your body's very best defense against viruses and bacteria and other pathogens as well.

Your your skin is designed to be this terrific uh wall, like like a giant fortress wall against that kind of stuff. But but these things can get in either through cuts in your skin or through your mucous membranes around your eyes, your nose, your mouth, et cetera. And then of course there are plenty of other types of parasites they can get at you, such as malaria. Neither a virus nor bacteria. Sure, there's also UH fungi. There toxins that are also pathogens.

So there are other types, but the two were mainly concerned with our viruses and bacteria. Those are the two that tend to be passed from a person who is infected to a person who is not UH, and so we wanted to specifically focus on that. And also in order to talk about how to make places, especially things like airplanes and trains that sort of stuff safe, we have to look at how are these these various pathogens

passed from infected to healthy. Sure, so ever since the early sixteenth century, we've known that diseases are mostly spread by evil night vapors. When you check your humors to see if they are in balance, and you know there's an imbalance of humors, you know you had a case in the vapors. You know, we do still have kind of a well. Another popular theory, of course, used to be the miasma theory. You know that it was like there's something in the air and well, you know, you

would have a foul smell. You would associate the foul smell with some sort of disease and then therefore the smell was what was causing the disease, right, And we know that's not true scientifically now, but it does still sort of have a very strong intuitive appeal, like the idea that there's just sort of like some bad air around somewhere and it's like, I don't want to be

near that. Yeah. Yeah, Well it's it's not entirely inaccurate technically, because some bacteria and viruses can spread through the air. That's true. Sure, you can have airborne contact to contractive virus or bacteria like a thing that can be expelled in droplets when somebody coughs or sneezes, right, Yeah, sneezing in particular is pretty nasty because it's like a bazooka blast of pathogens from someone who is who is actually infected with some form of illness, whether it's the flu

or the common cold or something similar. Uh, and they expelled droplets containing the pathogen, which if you come into contact with them, if you breathe them in, or you otherwise are touching surfaces, if it's a bacteria, and you're touching surfaces that have been affected by this and then touching your eyes or anything like or you eat or anything like that, you could be introducing that same pathogen into your body. Uh. There's also some that can be

passed through direct contact. That's like your scary door knob yep, yeah, that would be more like that. Or or even say you you get on the plane. Everyone on your plane, everybody, every single other person that is getting on the plane perfectly healthy, not a problem. Person who got on the flight before you, very sick, sat in the same seat. You are in direct contact with that seat that they have had contact with they were in a very long flight.

You could potentially pick something up that way. Planes generally are disinfected in between in between flights. Yeah, sure, well, that's why. That's one of the reasons why when a plane has been deplaned everyone has left, there's still a at least a half hour, usually half hour more between then and when the people are allowed to board the plane, because the plane actually does have to be serviced, and by that it means lots of stuff, including disinfecting surfaces.

Those loose potato chips that you find in your airplane seats are a gift to you from the airplane nomes and you should definitely eat them. Okay, what about the types of diseases you get from kissing people like mono? Okay, that's oral transmission. You can have oral transmission or just spitting in each other's mouth, that would again be oral transmission, also known as the smoochy smoochy sickness. Um. That that's

one method. Uh. There are a lot of other ways of getting very sick through oral transmission, including very unpleasant ones the oral fecal transmissions not pleasant to think about. It does happen not as frequently in developed nations as in other places where sanitation is not as as uh strong water supply issues. Yes, that was a common way that polio was spread, right, Yeah, it was through people like swimming in water where there was a fetal to

oral transmission route. So it's it's definitely one of those things that can happen. It's less likely to happen, but it can mean depending again on the hygiene of the people who are also around you. So there are a lot of these means of transmitting diseases, but these are the main ones we would focus on for public spaces. Obviously,

there are other methods. I mean there's sexually transmitted diseases, but we're talking about airplanes and trains, so for the large portion of the people actually using these, that's not going to be a factor. Put your genitals on the public transportation, please don't. I've seen it happen. So, speaking of all these different of transmission, the ones that were specifically looking at oral and airborne in direct contact, that tells you, all right, well, here are the main ways

that a disease can be transmitted. Airborne's probably the the the actually the one that's most frequent in at least in the case of a lot of people in an enclosed space. So with that in mind, how can we

perhaps design environments to better protect against that sort of thing? Yeah, because it seems like if we know what the vectors are like, if you know the routes that these diseases are trying to exploit in order to infect new people, you should be able to put up barriers to those vectors, right, Yeah, I mean you you at least can take it into account and say what sort of design elements can we put in place that are best going to protect people

while not negatively impacting their experience. While you know you don't want to have a little isolation tubes descend and and surround each person. Oh actually, I totally want that. There's no space on an airplane already that you wanted to be further confined with an isolation too, Yeah, that's fine, just pump the air. You don't need as much leg room as well. In general, what we're talking about is sort of mechanical methods of protection from disease. An analogy

would be if you're talking about malaria. One way that people have found is very effective in treating malaria rather than you know, medications and things, is just mosquito nuts. The prevention just having a barrier in place that prevents the infection vector from getting to you. Yeah. So one thing we can do, and and people actually will do, is look at hospitals and say, what are the most effective means of preventing transmission of disease in a hospital environment?

Because as you would imagine hospitals, clearly there are two big things come along with it. One, you've got a lot of sick people there, so there's a lot of opportunity for disease to pass from one person to the next. Is where the sick people go. Yeah, and the other one is that you've got people who are in very delicate states. They may have compromised immune systems, so you

have to be very good about preventing that from happening. Yeah, you also have a high traffic population of lots of people coming and going, lots of nursing staff changing over exciting plane basically right. And you've got you've got various staff visiting multiple patients. So that means there's another potential means of transferring a disease from one person to another, whether it's from one patient to another, or a patient to a member of staff, or whatever it might be.

So there are a lot of things that we can learn by looking at effective methods and policies and hospitals. And uh I actually saw a really cool video and read up on a project that I thought was pretty interesting. It's called the Hospital Microbiome Project. And they look at hospitals as ecosystems. They almost think of it as a living, breathing entity because it has its own They think of the So, who are the apex predators at the hospital?

That would that would probably be insurance companies, But at any your rate, uh, at any rate, the uh SO the hospitals there, their respiratory system would be the like the HVAC system, right, the air filtration system that would be part of it. And they talk about how it's a very complex system. You've got different air pressures built

up in different rooms. Right. Not all the rooms have doors that are open, so there's actually differences in air pressure, which means that directs the flow of air whether it's coming into the room or out of the room. Uh, the filtration system has to have a really good air filter in order to catch as many pathogens as possible to prevent them from spreading throughout the facility. Um, you know,

it's it's a complex system. They started looking at all sorts of different factors to try and determine which ones are most important, which ones correlate with the spreading of pathogens. So, for example, they started looking at things like patients the

temperature of the patient's room. Now, patients generally have control over that for their comfort, right, they can set the thermostat to higher or lower, And so they wanted to make sure that the room temperature was not going to be correlated with the spread of pathogens because of it is then maybe you have to take the control away from the patients. They found that there was no real

correlation between room temperature and the spread of pathogens. But they did find that and this is no surprise because what Lauren had said earlier, humidity is a factor. Ah. Yes, if you've got more water droplets in the air, then you have a better chance of stuff like bacteria transmitting through them. Yeah, so humidity control could actually be an

effective means of limiting pathogens spreading in a hospital. So it's one of those things that the project recommends is installing equipment that would allow for the control of humidity to limit that kind of of spread. So that was really interest sting, uh, and they looked at lots of

other things too. They included r f I D tags with staff so that they could track who goes where, They had different bio sensors to really look at all sorts of of criteria to kind of judge what is important, and they even went so far as to uh measure the bacteria in the hospital before it opened. They used a hospital in Chicago that had not yet opened, so they were evaluating the hospital before any patients were in it, and they took a sample of the various bacterial cultures

that were inside the hospital before it even opened. Then they started measuring the new bacteria that came in once patients were admitted to the hospital, and they have a real time kind of graph that shows the different populations and how closely related they are. And they realized that the bacterial uh populations that were already in the hospital, one we're not harmful, they weren't pathogens, and two we're limiting the spread of pathogen bacteria. So they were almost

acting like bodyguards in a way. And so they said, this is really interesting stuff in may tell us more about the kinds of bacteria we might want to intentionally cultivate cultivate in hospitals to help prevent the spread of pathogens, because again, bacteria is not a blanket term for bad stuff.

And I found it really interesting. So I'm hoping to be able to look into more about this particular project because it seemed like such a cool way of addressing the thing, the the issue, and also could potentially apply to other environments. Now I'm not saying that we're going to be introducing tons of cultures of different types of bacteria inside of aircraft. Maybe we will, but um, hey, we've got an open office floor plan here we can and we and we all use this tiny little podcast studio.

I think that we would be really just the perfect population. Yeah. You know what I think we should do that some hospitals do now is that ultra violet sanitization procedure where when people leave a room they blast it with UV radiation to just kill it all. Yeah, you spacetime based, hand and naked. Yeah. And now granted the folks that the Microbiome Project would say, yeah, you don't really want to kill the bad along to kill them all? A right, Well,

let the bacterial gods or them out. I'm sorry that probably was hasty. Yeah, yeah we should. I mean I wonder to what extent you can trust good bacteria to remain good, Like if you know that they're not generally pathogenic and attacking humans, are there certain scenarios where they might would they become opportunistic if somebody has a weakened immune system or something like that? I would imagine that.

I mean, I am not a microbiologist, so I should should I should preface everything I say all the time, just a question. I should be like, I'm not a microbiologist, but I like the color blue. Uh no, but I'm not a micro Pizza is delicious, exactly. I'm not a microbiologist, but I would imagine it's sort of like saying, uh, you know, I know there's no record of a gerbil attacking and eating a fully grown man, but if the opportunity arose with the gerbil, do that? Because you know, yes, okay,

all right, fair enough, I'll move on. So what one thing that we could actually do in this our open office environment is install filters. Yeah, these are really really awesome. I mean, these are the the types of air filtration systems meant to eliminate or will really capture, uh, the vast majority of pathogens that could pass through that system,

especially the airborn ones. That's kind of hard to imagine, because when I think of air filtration, I think of off like the filtration rectangle that I shove into the furnace under my house to filter our heating and air and the I mean there, it looks basically like it's going to catch some hair and dust, but basically but anything very small could get through it. Yeah, so we're

obviously talking about a totally different level of filtration. Here is something that's able to catch stuff that's on the micrometer level. Yeah, HEPA stands for high Efficiency Particulate Arrestants Filter Particulate Arrested Squad. Sorry, there's a whole series of cops that's just based on that. So, uh yeah, it's they're designed to capture particles that are point three micrometers in size or larger. So anything below that would potentially

pass straight through the filter. So remember we mentioned viruses can be between twenty and four hundred nanometers, so anything that's three hundred nanometers or larger the filter could catch. But anything smaller than yes, they could potentially pass through. However, if you're looking at just the sheer number of pathogens, this would catch a lot of them, like nine, like around ninety upper ninety percentile for the pathogens of point

three micrometers and size are larger and um. The thing to remember is that while they catch the pathogens, they don't kill them, right. So, if you have airborne bacteria and you've got one of these filtration systems in the bacteria gets sucked up into the filtration systems and they hit that filter so that they cannot be recycled back into the environment. They may be stuck on that filter, but they'll still be alive. Yeah. So, so don't lick

your HEPA filter. And and when you are disposing of it, be very careful. If you happen to be the person who is doing this, I you know, get some training and make sure you don't shake it out over uh, I mean compromised patients right right. You just go to the waste basket and you're you're pounding it against your hand kind of like the carpet or or like the filter in a dryer. You know, take it off them after a load of laundry and you're like trying to

get all the lent out. Don't do that, that would be that would be foolish. Yeah so, but they are incredibly effective and in fact, in fact, these are very similar to filters that are already in aircraft. Uh so. Uh, there are a lot of aircraft that we really essentially all aircraft that are currently in use have a filtration system that is similar to, if not identical to, Yeah,

many of them do. You use hype filters. So let's talk about how we can take what we've talked about, plus some other ideas to make things like planes and trains safer from a contagion standpoint. H And a big part of it is looking at ways of using airflow to help protect people from pathogens. Right, because we've got these filters in these planes, but it takes a minute for air to circulate through a cabin and get back

to one of these filters. Yeah, so that air is going to continue to be there inside the cabin until it gets pulled through the filtration system. And while it's there, you know, you have plenty of opportunity to encounter all sorts of pathogens. Now I should also add that, you know, we started off talking about the stars story, but that is really the exception, not the rule. It was an

exceptional case. In fact, there are a lot of experts who say that really, when you look at it from a broad study, people don't tend to pass disease along or catch a disease while traveling. It can happen, and it is an opportune place for it to happen, but it doesn't happen so frequently that it's like an epidemic or anything. All that being said, one of the things you can actually do, you you can take action and

make your plane right uh safe. According to experts is you can turn on the air vent and aim it so it's hitting your lap, So it's blowing down on you, hitting your lap, and it acts as kind of an air force field. And so if someone else sneezes or coughs uh, that downward air is going to help protect you from any airborne bacteria that would otherwise get into your breathing space. So that's a d I O Y approach of of trying to make your trip a little

less germ infested. Little bonus fact, you can use a similar method to protect yourself from mosquitoes. Have you ever tried this? No? Yeah, apparently I've read about this. If you set up an oscillating fan and sit in the breeze of the fan, mosquitoes aren't gonna get to you. Oh yeah they can't. Yeah they're they're weak, They got these weak little wings. I can't do it. They can't. I like the fact that they are. They are upset about it too, not just that they can't, but then

totally picturing Luke Skywalker from from Empire strikes back. Oddly enough, the same thing is true about Gary Oldman. I woke up and he could not get to me. Because I had an oscillating fan set up. Well, you better be careful to avoid fan death though, Yeah, I will be

careful about that. Let's talk about also another little side note about what you can do if you're on a If you're going on an airplane trip and you want to you know, you're concerned about about the possibility of encountering pathogens, particularly if it's something like during flu season something like that. On top of using the vents set to like lower medium to blow straight down onto your lap,

you might also consider carrying some hand sanitization gel. I've seen recommendations of sanitization gel that has like sanitizer has like alcohol content in it. Question. Yeah, I've actually heard it is not such a great idea to use hand sanitizer. Well, not necessarily all the time, because if you're doing it all the time then and you could be helping contribute

to uh superbugs. But for something where you are in an environment where you are concerned about the cleanliness of that environment, Let's say that someone is coughing and you want to eat your airplane food, but you're worried that maybe your hands have come into contact with pathogens. You would want to clean your hands and another top on top of that, another issue is that if you go into the washroom to wash your hands, the water on

airplanes is not always clean. In fact, I've seen experts suggest that if you wish to brush your teeth on an international flight, you may want to consider using bottled water, because the fecal content in airplane water in some studies has proven to be higher than what you would like it would know, I mean, we all accept some level of feces in our water, but what is unacceptable? Uh, the amount that would make you sick as is my answer to that. But I don't what that specific palpable

That would definite when you can see it. But but about about hand sanitizer and hand washing both, actually, yeah, you just want to make sure that you're not overdoing it, especially if you're I mean, you know, I would say that the more important thing is to not touch surfaces

and then touch your mucous membranes immediately afterwards. But but if you do choose to use sanitizer to wash your hands before you, for example, eat a meal, then just watch out for skin dryness because all of that washing and sanitization can make your skin dry out and crack, which then introduces a new vector through which microbes can get into your body that you otherwise would have been

protected from. So if you are going to do that kind of thing, maybe just carry a little bottle of moisturizer to use after you do the washing hand or sanitizing. That little one court bag is getting bigger and bigger. That makes me wonder if a thing from Fantastic four gets sick a lot. Oh man, poor dude, he probably does, whereas I wonder if thing from the Adams family gets sick a lot. I mean, he touches everything with his hand, he does, that's all he is. But he doesn't really

have a respiratory system, so that's true, so maybe he's okay. Alright, So next we we wanted to mention Also we talked about how the air filtration system is very similar to the hospital ones, including some aircraft that actually do use Heppa filters. Specifically, uh A lot of the air in uh an airplane cabin is recycled, not all of it, and it does go through this filtration system. So the air going through the filtration, you know, people talk about

how you're breathing recycled here that's what's making you sick. Actually, no breathing and recycled heir is great because it's all those pathogens are being caught by the filtration system. It's

before he got recycled, pre recycled. It's bad. Yeah. According to the Airport Cooperative Research Program, which is an f A, a sponsored consortium of airline and airport councils here in the United States, aeron flights is generally a mix of recycled air and air that is pulled in from outside of the airplane, which, certainly when you get to cruising altitude is fine. Nothing's really living in that air at that point. Um. It is filtered before they put it

directly into your plane. So if you're concerned about kem trails, which you shouldn't be, uh, then then you know that's taken care of. Um. And and that air is supposed to be exchanged some ten to fifteen times per hour while you're on a flight. So so that's nice. Yeah, that's actually a good system. So if we move, But I'm sure the water is also not supposed to have fecal matter, yes, well, and I should I should add that this is not something that's that's found across all aircraft,

across all airlines, all the time. It was just there was a study done in which out of I think there was something like a hundred and thirty airplanes where they tested the water and something like twenty of them came back with that's a significant number, right, So yeah, that's more than zero. Yes, it's it's just one of those things where again, you know, if you're aware of it,

then you can take precautions against it. I mean, this is particularly important if you are someone who, let's say that you know that your your immune system has been compromised in some way. It's important for you to know. So, but let's let's look at some ways that are being done, you know, stuff that's outside of the filtration systems in the d I Y methods, some proposals that could also

help protect people. So there was this was what was actually inspired this podcast in the first place, the story we're gonna talk about, which is at a high school student named Raymond Wong one first place at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Pittsburgh on May fifteen, two thousand fifteen, and he was specifically looking at using airflow kind of like what we were talking about with the events UM to design aircraft cabins where the airflow

itself would protect passengers from the spread of pathogens, airborne pathogens, which is pretty cool. And he did this by running various computer simulations and uh it did I think thirty two different computer simulations showing what would happen in a sneeze with different types of airflow. The animations are pretty interesting.

He used a dark blue color to represent the spread of the sneeze and so you watch the different uh computer simulations like whoa, that would make it way worse or this would essentially mean you're just sneezing on yourself. Like That's kind of how it turned out. But it was interesting to see the different simulations. And he one

first place and seventy dollars. Yeah. Yeah. Now, while this was a cool idea, and while he was awarded first place, there are those who have pointed out that perhaps it's not as grand an idea as you might first consider. Wong himself had said that the um the design would end up increasing fresh air availability in the cabin by a hundred nine percent and that would cut down on

pathogens more than so. It's really pretty impressive, but um, some experts have said, you know, it may be that it prevents the immediate spread of the pathogens through the air, but you still have the droplets to contend with, and some of those are going to be traveling at least around the immediate area, and that you would you could

still encounter those pathogens. It's just that, you know, if you're like three rows ahead, you might not be but if you're next to the person, you probably would still be exposed to them. So it's just a good idea to you know, keep that hand washing and moisturization combo in mind just in case. So, but it was it was neat to see a student come up with a clever means of potentially protecting people. Whether this ever gets built into actual aircraft as part of the design is

another matter entirely. It may never be incorporated directly there, although it is very similar to that method we talked about about turning the vent on and having it pointing down at you. What about other practical ways that we could re engineer our airplane environments. Well, one thing would be addressing a different vector, because right now we're talking about the airborne vector disease spread, which is very common and probably the main thing we should worry about. But

what about contagion by contact? Right now? On aircraft, Again, assuming that they're doing the you know, the clean walk through between flights, you shouldn't have to worry too much about the in the first place. But there's a way

you could add to that that security. Plus, if you're talking about something like a train where they obviously are not going to walk through and clean every surface between every stop, they can't, and certainly not on Marta Atlanta, No, no, not on Martha, so probably not in any public transportation. There's just no, there's no practical way. Yeah, yeah, even if even if the demand were there, there's no practical

way of of performing that. So one thing that could be done is that you could start using materials that are antimicrobial in the actual upholstery of any sort of cushions you might use. Now, granted Marta it's all hard plastic. There are very few trains. There might be one or two that still have the cushiony chairs, but they are very not terribly cushiony. They're mostly vinyl and no padding. So uh, anyway, but if you were to use sort of a cotton upholstery, you could have a silver nanoparticle

infused cotton. Silver has anti microbial uh effects. Somehow that sounds expensive. Well, here's the thing. We're talking nanoparticles, right, so you don't need a lot of silver started into a bunch of nanoparticles. So I'd imagine almost any kind of nanoparticles are probably kind of expensive a little bit. But the nice thing but we actually do use silver right now and things like um like uh bandages, there are bandages that have silver nanoparticles in them because of

that antimicrobial effect. Yeah. There, it's incredibly effective. It is. Uh. Usually you're looking actually at an eye on the silver and it ends up disrupting the bacterial cells and killing them. So it's very effective in that. So imagine that you had this stuff used to upholster a seat. Then that anti microbial effect would mean that any bacteria that landed on that at least any bacteria that are um vulnerable to silver would not be viable for very long. They

would they would they would die. Now, there are some types of bacteria that are resistant, they don't they aren't affected by silver in that way. But again, you're looking at the best way to eliminate or at least decrease the number of pathogens to you know, increase the chances that no one on board is going to get a disease. Now, this might actually be the answer to a question that we asked in the podcast about the future of fashion, about whether people are ever gonna just be naked all

the time. And of course the problem was it's not really sanitary. Yeah, that's that was the conclusion. But yeah, if if you just made everything that people might publicly sit on or whatever out of all the silver stuff there, you go, well, I mean, it'll kill the bacteria, but you know, it's still be gross. Yeah, still be pretty gross. Like I'm thinking about the heat wave we're currently experiencing in Atlanta and how much I personally am sweaty, and

I don't want to subject anybody else to that. And I knew they don't want me to do it, because they've told me. But but yeah, to to talk about the silver and nano particles, I mean, they've actually proven that a a some cotton that has been infused with silver nano particles and cured, And it's not just that you dip it in the stuff, you have to actually treat it. Um can reduce the cell counts of certain types of bacteria like E. Coli. In fact, it can

reduce it by n That is really significant. Yeah, yeah, that's great. So are we going to see silver cotton door knobs in the future and silver cotton handrails? That sounds delightful. Unlikely though, I mean, you could technically work in the silver nano particles into other things besides cotton. That's just what they've used in the experiment. So all of this, you know, as kind of scary as it can sound, it's not by any means meant to to

scare you guys. No, no, really, we were wanting to look at what are the potential ways that we could limit pathogens from spreading. But to be honest, they don't spread that quickly in aircraft, at least not according to a study that was performed in two thousand nine by the European Center for Disease Control, they were looking at

disease transmission. I think they were looking at a list of twelve different diseases and they looked across a broad range of flights and found that the rate of onboard transmission of diseases was really pretty low. Like, it's not a frequent occurrence, so it's not something that is again like anywhere close to an epidemic level. It's just one of those things like how can we make it better.

It's not that it's a broken system or that you're guaranteed to get sick the next time you get on an aircraft, it's just how can we make those chances even lower? Right, So that's that's good news. There are, of course exceptions. So sometimes if if someone is infected with a really contagious disease, whether that's another passenger or a flight attendant, there are opportunities for that disease to

pass on to other people, particularly flight attendance. I mean, they're going to be stopping at a lot more people and have potentially contact with lots more people, including handing over things like snacks and drinks that kind of stuff. Sure, there are also differences between a first class passenger being

infected and an economy class passenger being infected. Another study that was published in two thousand nine, this one out of U c. L A, looked at the spread of influenza A H one and one on commercial air flights and it found that yes, being in the larger population larger cabin area and less personal space of an economy class cabin does lead to higher rates of passenger infection.

So you know, if you can afford to fly first class, it might be worthwhile, especially if you're taking very long flights. You also get infected by a much more affluent class of bacteria, right right, you know, it's it's the kind of bacteria that go really well with uh, with caviare and they do, and they really have those neutrals worked out this year. Um. But uh, other than other than that, you know, mostly just be aware of your body's defense mechanisms.

You know, if your immune system is compromised, or if you are in close contact with someone who's immune system is compromised, then talk to your doctor about you know, hand sanitizers and personal filter masks and any other countermeasures that you might be able to take. If you're healthy, you don't honestly need to worry that much. You know, get rest before and after you travel, Drink some water. Hydration is usually good. Eats and vegetables maybe, uh, try

not to touch shared surfaces and then immediately touch your eyeball. Um, yeah, that's good, good advice in general. And if you guys are sick, could cover your mouth and nose when you cough and sneeze. Were you raised by flying wolves? Yes? But still, I mean, you know, I have to conform to societies norms. When you fly on a plane. Do you ever wear one of those surgical masks just to

mess with people? Really, the surgical mask is better to be worn by someone who has some form of of that's not that yeah, yeah, because yeah, well as opposed to they're The thing is, I think the perception is that you wear it to prevent yourself from getting sick, but really you're wearing it to prevent other people from getting what you have, because it's it's a great filter for catching anything where you call for sneeze out because you've got a mask on, as opposed to filtering out

stuff that's coming in. Uh. That's why doctors wear them during the medical procedures, so they don't pass any germs onto their patients who are already in a compromised uh you know, their their immune systems may be compromised by whatever that procedure is. You don't want to sneeze into somebody's tour. So no, it's generally frowned upon so yeah, so what when if I were wearing a mask? So you're thinking of if people are aware of that fact,

they immediately assume that you have something. You're just assuming that everybody has a false impression that you're just being paranoid. I this is way too much time to spend on this. It's a safe assumption. And mostly what I want to put out there is that everyone should just dress cyber

goth whenever they go on an airplane. You know, I do kind of wonder about these these sorts of systems, like if we are able to continually in engineer environments that edge closer and closer to being totally pathogen free, would that be good for us? So the idea being that if we were to eliminate pathogens, or so close to eliminate them that it's practical to say they no longer exist, would it be good for us, because if we ever were to come into contact with the pathogen

system would go Yeah. I mean, I don't think we would ever create a world where they don't exist. I'm just saying like, in our environments, were increasingly controlling all the aspects who are of our environments to a very tiny level, and we're using air filteration to get rid of viruses and bacteria, and we're sanitizing all our surfaces with the UV radiation. I mean, what like, is that

going to be bad for our health? I would say, in at least certain applications, is absolutely necessary for things like hospitals. Well yeah, in other environments, I would really have to question the validity of the methodology because not not whether or not it was effective, but whether or not it was warranted, right, Like, what is the risk of contagion? What sort of diseases are we talking about? What what's the population like in that particular environment? Uh, yeah,

you know zombie outbreaks do happen? Then, yeah, wipe down those surfaces, real good guys, cover your mouth, cover your mouth zombies. Um, but I can't even get a good brains out because of the Coughing's right, right? But but yeah, I don't know. I'm I am kind of along the belief system of like occasionally you should eat some dirt and lick some surfaces, uh, just just to just to you know, refresh your immune system, get it working good, all that stuff. I mean, not not really, but I

I try really hard to not worry too much. About this kind of stuff, especially with all the research that we've done about anti microbial issues and building superbugs and you know so so for hospitals, Yeah, for for situation students in which people could be genuinely harmed by stuff,

all the all the cleanliness do it do. But I think I think in certain environments where you know, you have the risk of of diseases spreading quickly and potentially affecting a lot of people outside of that initial transmission area, then we need to think about it. So things like public transportation or aircraft or schools where you've got you know,

fairly large populations all in an enclosed space. Outside of that, I would say, you know, let's not worry about it too much unless you're talking about a really serious outbreak, in which case obviously you have to start reconsidering your options for day to day. I would say I would never have a house that would have all this technology built into it. I don't think that that would be warranted.

I think it would be an unnecessary expense. I think ultimately I would be get doing myself more harm than good. And I would recommend people, you know, be aware of this kind of stuff, but don't don't get obsessed with it, right, don't let that like dictate your decisions. Um, it's that's

going to end up causing you more grief than what's worth. Uh. You know, a couple of days being sick because you didn't remember to wash your hands before opening up the the you know, the the seatback or whatever on a plane is not that big a deal. So I was glad that we got to look at this because it is kind of interesting to look at the engineering challenges. Sorry, I just thought of a joke I never made this

whole time. Was that, Well, it would be something about if Howard Hughes had continued manufacturing airplanes, surely they would have to have like the maximum disease filteration. They would have the isolation booths and a little a little bowl for you to collect your various finger and toenails, um, so as you could have them separated by finger and everything and keep keep track of them. It would be an interesting world. However, we do not live in that world, sorry,

little Howard. So that wraps up this discussion. As weird as it was, now, this was fun. I'm glad you had a chance to to look into this. If you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of podcasts or or the video series. Maybe there's something you specifically want to hear about, like how is that going to work in the future. We're eager to hear from you. Send us an email our addresses f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or you can always drop us

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