Ill Winds
New research confirms that airborne dust can affect the health of people and ecosystems by transporting attached bacteria hundreds of miles across the landscape during windstorms.
Yinon Rudich and colleagues at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science found that some of those bacteria could even carry genes for antibiotic resistance.
The researchers found that during a dust storm, the concentration of bacteria and number of bacteria species in the air rises sharply, meaning people walking outdoors during these storms are at a higher risk of infection.
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