Microbial, environmental and anthropogenic factors influencing the indoor microbiome of the built environment

Abstract

A built environment is a human‐made environment providing surroundings for human occupancy, activities, and settlement. It is supposed to safeguard humans from all undesirable and harmful pollutants; however, indoor concentrations of some pollutants are much greater than that of the outdoors. Bioaerosols infiltrate from the outdoors in addition to many indoor sources of bioaerosols including the use of various chemicals as well as activities like cooking, smoking, cleaning, or even normal movement. They are also associated with a number of serious health concerns. Various ecological factors associated with the generation, the persistence as well as the dispersal of these microbial components of indoor bioaerosols, are discussed in this review, that have not been considered all together till now. The factors like microbial taxa, environmental factors, and anthropogenic activities (human occupancy, activities, and impact of urbanization) are addressed in the review. Effects of both indoor environmental factors like architectural design, lighting, ventilation, temperature, humidity, indoor/outdoor ratio, particulate matter, indoor chemistry as well as outdoor environmental factors like geography, seasons, and meteorology on the microbial concentrations have been discussed. Efforts are underway to design selective pressures for microbes to create a healthy symbiotic built microbiome as the “right” indoor microbiome is a “healthy” indoor microbiome.

Seasonal variations of the airborne microbial assemblages of the Seoul subway, South Korea from 16S and ITS gene profiles with chemical analysis

“…However, some other significant and relevant factors are necessary to profile the total microbiome of an environment. For example, human activities, lifestyles and ventilation might have an extraordinary role in the making of these microbiome profiles 44 . A Comparison of β-diversity of bacterial compositions between sample types according to UniFrac distances.…”

Assessment of bio-contaminants during COVID-19 outbreak from the indoor environment of Hail city, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

“…Our results agree with previous studies that major sources of micro-contaminants attributed by humans' activities and human occupancy in residential areas [ 26 - 28 ]. Similarly, some other studies also reported that the nature of human contact and human behavior has great influence on in door environment [ 29 , 30 ] for instance, presence of bacteria in the kitchen surface area is influenced by the various kind of food [ 31 ], and surfaces area most often affected by hands containing higher concentrations of skin flora [ 32 ]. In commercial or social settings, bacteria of outdoor origin may be a more significant source for surfaces, although normal skin flora or microbes are also present in high concentration [ 33 ].…”

The Influence of Nutrition on Intestinal Permeability and the Microbiome in Health and Disease

“…The composition of the microbiota also depends on the host’s genetics, diet, and cultural and geographical factors, which make it even more difficult to identify an ideal, universal profile of the healthy microbiome ( 8 , 9 ). Furthermore, lifestyle can significantly influence the microbial community; consequently, different microbiomes and microbiota are present in healthy rural and urban people ( 10 – 13 ). Due to this high variability, no conclusions should be drawn about the healthy microbiome and microbiota composition based on taxonomic classification, and as a result, more useful data could be provided by the metabolic functions ( 14 – 16 ).…”