Since the advent of soap, personal hygiene practices have revolved around removal, sterilization, and disinfection—both of visible soil and microscopic organisms—for a myriad of cultural, aesthetic, or health‐related reasons. Cleaning methods and products vary widely in their recommended use, effectiveness, risk to users or building occupants, environmental sustainability, and ecological impact. Advancements in science and technology have facilitated in‐depth analyses of the indoor microbiome, and studies in this field suggest that the traditional “scorched‐earth cleaning” mentality—that surfaces must be completely sterilized and prevent microbial establishment—may contribute to long‐term human health consequences. Moreover, the materials, products, activities, and microbial communities indoors all contribute to, or remove, chemical species to the indoor environment. This review examines the effects of cleaning with respect to the interaction of chemistry, indoor microbiology, and human health.

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Understanding the impact of the geometry and material composition of electrodes on the survival and behavior of retinal cells is of importance for both fundamental cell studies and neuromodulation applications. We investigate how dissociated retinal cells from C57BL/6J mice interact with electrodes made of vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes grown on silicon dioxide substrates. We compare electrodes with different degrees of spatial confinement, specifically fractal and grid electrodes featuring connected and disconnected gaps between the electrodes, respectively. For both electrodes, we find that neuron processes predominantly accumulate on the electrode rather than the gap surfaces and that this behavior is strongest for the grid electrodes. However, the ‘closed’ character of the grid electrode gaps inhibits glia from covering the gap surfaces. This lack of glial coverage for the grids is expected to have long-term detrimental effects on neuronal survival and electrical activity. In contrast, the interconnected gaps within the fractal electrodes promote glial coverage. We describe the differing cell responses to the two electrodes and hypothesize that there is an optimal geometry that maximizes the positive response of both neurons and glia when interacting with electrodes.