The ecology of microscopic life in household dust

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Abstract

We spend the majority of our lives indoors; yet, we currently lack a comprehensive understanding of how the microbial communities found in homes vary across broad geographical regions and what factors are most important in shaping the types of microorganisms found inside homes. Here, we investigated the fungal and bacterial communities found in settled dust collected from inside and outside approximately 1200 homes located across the continental US, homes that represent a broad range of home designs and span many climatic zones. Indoor and outdoor dust samples harboured distinct microbial communities, but these differences were larger for bacteria than for fungi with most indoor fungi originating outside the home. Indoor fungal communities and the distribution of potential allergens varied predictably across climate and geographical regions; where you live determines what fungi live with you inside your home. By contrast, bacterial communities in indoor dust were more strongly influenced by the number and types of occupants living in the homes. In particular, the female : male ratio and whether a house had pets had a significant influence on the types of bacteria found inside our homes highlighting that who you live with determines what bacteria are found inside your home.

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Most cited references 37

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The National Human Activity Pattern Survey (NHAPS): a resource for assessing exposure to environmental pollutants.

N E Klepeis, W C Nelson, W R Ott … (2001)

Because human activities impact the timing, location, and degree of pollutant exposure, they play a key role in explaining exposure variation. This fact has motivated the collection of activity pattern data for their specific use in exposure assessments. The largest of these recent efforts is the National Human Activity Pattern Survey (NHAPS), a 2-year probability-based telephone survey (n=9386) of exposure-related human activities in the United States (U.S.) sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The primary purpose of NHAPS was to provide comprehensive and current exposure information over broad geographical and temporal scales, particularly for use in probabilistic population exposure models. NHAPS was conducted on a virtually daily basis from late September 1992 through September 1994 by the University of Maryland's Survey Research Center using a computer-assisted telephone interview instrument (CATI) to collect 24-h retrospective diaries and answers to a number of personal and exposure-related questions from each respondent. The resulting diary records contain beginning and ending times for each distinct combination of location and activity occurring on the diary day (i.e., each microenvironment). Between 340 and 1713 respondents of all ages were interviewed in each of the 10 EPA regions across the 48 contiguous states. Interviews were completed in 63% of the households contacted. NHAPS respondents reported spending an average of 87% of their time in enclosed buildings and about 6% of their time in enclosed vehicles. These proportions are fairly constant across the various regions of the U.S. and Canada and for the California population between the late 1980s, when the California Air Resources Board (CARB) sponsored a state-wide activity pattern study, and the mid-1990s, when NHAPS was conducted. However, the number of people exposed to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in California seems to have decreased over the same time period, where exposure is determined by the reported time spent with a smoker. In both California and the entire nation, the most time spent exposed to ETS was reported to take place in residential locations.

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Exposure to environmental microorganisms and childhood asthma.

Markus J Ege, Melanie L. Mayer, Anne-Cécile Normand … (2011)

Children who grow up in environments that afford them a wide range of microbial exposures, such as traditional farms, are protected from childhood asthma and atopy. In previous studies, markers of microbial exposure have been inversely related to these conditions. In two cross-sectional studies, we compared children living on farms with those in a reference group with respect to the prevalence of asthma and atopy and to the diversity of microbial exposure. In one study--PARSIFAL (Prevention of Allergy-Risk Factors for Sensitization in Children Related to Farming and Anthroposophic Lifestyle)--samples of mattress dust were screened for bacterial DNA with the use of single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) analyses to detect environmental bacteria that cannot be measured by means of culture techniques. In the other study--GABRIELA (Multidisciplinary Study to Identify the Genetic and Environmental Causes of Asthma in the European Community [GABRIEL] Advanced Study)--samples of settled dust from children's rooms were evaluated for bacterial and fungal taxa with the use of culture techniques. In both studies, children who lived on farms had lower prevalences of asthma and atopy and were exposed to a greater variety of environmental microorganisms than the children in the reference group. In turn, diversity of microbial exposure was inversely related to the risk of asthma (odds ratio for PARSIFAL, 0.62; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.44 to 0.89; odds ratio for GABRIELA, 0.86; 95% CI, 0.75 to 0.99). In addition, the presence of certain more circumscribed exposures was also inversely related to the risk of asthma; this included exposure to species in the fungal taxon eurotium (adjusted odds ratio, 0.37; 95% CI, 0.18 to 0.76) and to a variety of bacterial species, including Listeria monocytogenes, bacillus species, corynebacterium species, and others (adjusted odds ratio, 0.57; 95% CI, 0.38 to 0.86). Children living on farms were exposed to a wider range of microbes than were children in the reference group, and this exposure explains a substantial fraction of the inverse relation between asthma and growing up on a farm. (Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the European Commission.).

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Dispersal in microbes: fungi in indoor air are dominated by outdoor air and show dispersal limitation at short distances

Rachel Adams, Marzia Miletto, John Taylor … (2013)

The indoor microbiome is a complex system that is thought to depend on dispersal from the outdoor biome and the occupants' microbiome combined with selective pressures imposed by the occupants' behaviors and the building itself. We set out to determine the pattern of fungal diversity and composition in indoor air on a local scale and to identify processes behind that pattern. We surveyed airborne fungal assemblages within 1-month time periods at two seasons, with high replication, indoors and outdoors, within and across standardized residences at a university housing facility. Fungal assemblages indoors were diverse and strongly determined by dispersal from outdoors, and no fungal taxa were found as indicators of indoor air. There was a seasonal effect on the fungi found in both indoor and outdoor air, and quantitatively more fungal biomass was detected outdoors than indoors. A strong signal of isolation by distance existed in both outdoor and indoor airborne fungal assemblages, despite the small geographic scale in which this study was undertaken (<500 m). Moreover, room and occupant behavior had no detectable effect on the fungi found in indoor air. These results show that at the local level, outdoor air fungi dominate the patterning of indoor air. More broadly, they provide additional support for the growing evidence that dispersal limitation, even on small geographic scales, is a key process in structuring the often-observed distance–decay biogeographic pattern in microbial communities.

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Author and article information

Journal

Title: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Abbreviated Title: Proc. R. Soc. B

Publisher: The Royal Society

ISSN (Print): 0962-8452

ISSN (Electronic): 1471-2954

Publication date Created: September 07 2015

Publication date (Electronic): September 07 2015

Publication date (Print): September 07 2015

Volume: 282

Issue: 1814

Page: 20151139

Affiliations

[1 ]Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA

[2 ]Department of Biological Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA

[3 ]Museum of Natural History, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

[4 ]Department of Statistics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA

[5 ]Department of Applied Ecology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA

[6 ]Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA

[7 ]Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA

Article

DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2015.1139

PubMed ID: 26311665

SO-VID: bd2cda83-51a7-4f3e-8d3b-de2385ed417d

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The ecology of microscopic life in household dust

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Most cited references 37

The National Human Activity Pattern Survey (NHAPS): a resource for assessing exposure to environmental pollutants.

Exposure to environmental microorganisms and childhood asthma.

Dispersal in microbes: fungi in indoor air are dominated by outdoor air and show dispersal limitation at short distances

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