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The International Space Station Is Home To Potentially Dangerous Bacteria (sciencemag.org)

Posted by Soulskill on from the hope-we're-charging-them-rent dept.

sciencehabit writes: There's a little known, dirty story about the International Space Station (ISS): It's filled with bacteria and fungi. A new study has found compelling evidence that microorganisms from human skin are present throughout the station, and some of the bugs could cause serious harm to astronauts.The most concerning finding was from the "high-efficiency particulate arrestance" (HEPA) air filter used in the ISS: 99.65% of the viable sequences they retrieved came from Actinobacteria. The Actinobacteria phylum includes Corynebacterium and Propionibacterium; each genus was found in the ISS samples at a high level, which is "problematic," say the researchers, because they both have species that are opportunistic pathogens. Astronauts who live in microgravity for prolonged periods also can have compromised immune systems.

5 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. UV filtration? by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Doesn't intense UV light kill those sorts of bacteria? Generally speaking, I understand that the effectiveness of UV filtration of air is reduced with moving air flow (since effectiveness is a function of time and UV intensity), but on a space station, the same air is going to be re-circulated many thousands of times, so you have the advantage of repeated passes.

    Would that not be effective, or was NASA simply under the impression that a HEPA filter would be adequate for the job?

    --
    Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    1. Re: UV filtration? by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm not so sure. Isn't the concern more about the total amount of bacteria, not the fact that it was present at all? The point isn't to turn it into a clean room - that's a fruitless exercise with humans living there. After all, humans are pretty good at dealing with residual bacteria in our environment, so long as it's in reasonably small doses. The idea is just to reduce the airborne concentration a bit down to "normal" levels, not to sterilize the station.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  2. Remember Mir? by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    By the time it reached end-of-life, the first space station became famous for hosting fungus mats of an unknown species:
    http://www.straightdope.com/co...

  3. Re:Wouldn't they be dead already? by KGIII · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Whenever I see "potentially dangerous" I automatically assume "mostly harmless." So far, it has been fairly accurate. I figure, if it were really dangerous, they'd say stuff like, "HOLY SHIT!" When I see "potentially dangerous," I think butter knife.

    --
    "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  4. Re:Wouldn't they be dead already? by KGIII · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It'd probably help if they stopped lying to us on a regular basis.

    --
    "So long and thanks for all the fish."