Yes, it’s true. You are not alone in your office. Even if you are not at work, there’s someone (or something) living right under your desk, in your office’s restroom, or inside of your keyboard. How is that? Researches from the University of Oregon in Eugene (USA) examined 155 rooms of a University building – offices, classrooms and toilets. According to a paper, published in the “PLOS One” magazine, they identified about 30,000 different species of bacteria. A few of them could be found in each of the rooms, some only lived in certain spaces.

The researches identified basically Proteobacteria and Firmicutes cultures. Those are common to be found inside of buildings and close to humans, plants or in the soil. They also lived in the restrooms, alongside bacteria strains that live on skin or inside humans, such as gut bacteria (for example Lactobacillus or E. coli). No big surprises here.

What does that mean for the office people? After all, it’s us who work and live with tens of thousands of those species every day. It does not mean a lot yet. Research has to go on now to estimate if the bacteria do have a bad, good or at least any influence on the human wellbeeing. But the examinations already showed that design and facilities of different rooms do have an influence on the bacteria found in the rooms. If the room was air conditioned it was mainly filled with strains that are heat- or drought-resistant. Rooms with a regular ‘natural’ ventilation were crowded with bacteria that usually lives outside of buildings.

Lots of money and effort has gone into awareness raising, public health campaigns and law suits in a bid to wean the world off smoking. Lots of money and effort also continues to go into the prevention and treatment of malaria. But there’s another type of smoke that some three billion people around the globe can’t escape and that, according to recent findings, kills more than Malaria.

According to the World Health Organization almost half the world’s population cook their food and heat their homes using open fires or leaky stoves that run on wood, coal or biomass. And nearly two million people die prematurely as a result of inhaling the smoke day in and day out. That makes it a greater killer than malaria. Women and children are particularly affected as they tend to spend more time at home while men are working outside.

But there are also other problems with open wood fires. They emit CO2 and the wood used for cooking is often logged unsustainably. GLOBAL IDEAS has reported on clean and safe alternatives.

Efficient stoves in Peru Click here to learn more

Solar cookers in India Click here to learn more

“Water in an Urbanising World” is this year’s theme of World Water Week currently taking place in Stockholm. The 2011 installment of the annual event draws experts from science, NGOs, business and politics to debate the issue of water (and the lack of it). In the words of the organizers the conference “focuses on new thinking and positive action toward water-related challenges and their impact on the world’s environment, health, climate, economic and poverty reduction agendas.”

Watch the live stream from the conference here: