Congratulations, You Have Your Own Personal Germ Cloud - TIME
You did a lot more in the last 24 hours than you think. Yes, you got up, went to work, took care of the kids. But in your spare moments, you also found the time to shed at least 24 million biological particlesâbacteria, viruses, spores and moreâinto the air around you, or a nifty 1 million nasties per hour.
If itâs any consolation, youâre not alone. We all continually emit our own microbial cloud into the air and onto nearbyâand not so nearbyâsurfaces. Now, according to a new study in the open-access journal Peerj, scientists can distinguish the make-up of the cloud is uniquely yoursâa personal marker that is as particular to you as your fingerprints or your genome. Thatâs a biological calling card that could have implications for epidemiology, environmental engineering or even, intriguingly, criminal forensics.
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