A new book chronicles the science of life in the air

Air -born
Carl Zimmer
Dutton, $ 32

On March 10, 2020, the 61 choir members repeated in a church hall in Skagit County, Wash. As they sang, a microscopic of the microscopic shaken through the air. Before the end of the month, 58 members were infected and five were seriously ill. Across the United States, the virus destroyed the havoc. Within weeks, thousands of people died, schools and businesses were closed and 700,000 people lost their work.

Many scientists determined in 2020 that Coronavirus spread into the air, but would take public health agencies months longer to accept this. The SuperSpreader event of the Skagi District assisted the World Health Organization and US centers for the control and prevention of diseases to consider Covid-19 air transmission. But to date, some scientists believe that the delay in calling the virus in the air was a mistake – the one that stalled public health life and allowed the disease to spread faster. In his new book, Air -bornScience journalist Carl Zimmer ruins the “mistake” in the past of a historically neglected field: aerobiology, or the science of air life.

Zimmer begins his chronicle in the 19th century with the Summit of Louis Pasteur a wonderful glacier in the French Alps. As part of a magnificent experiment, the microbiologist scored a glass room in the sky, withdrew from life and proved that microscopic germs sailed in the air. The pasteur discovery inspired generations of scientists to seek air life itself, including pathologist Fred Meier, who fled Petri’s dishes from various aircraft and eventually appointed the field.

Through unmarked stories, Meier and dozens of other scientists, Zimmer intersects together for centuries of aerobiology science. He richly humanizes the characters with honesty and complexity, at the same time emphasizing publicly revered and unheard of. His sharp, sharp and accessible tongue gives life to fascinating experiments, such as those performed by hot -air balloons, as well as the unbearable ones that are directed at the university basements.

But aerobiology is more than Jyrides charged by science throughout the sky. The field was introduced into the darkest moments of mankind, which Zimmer brings from shadows and in the light. Aerobiologists were essential to debating how life -threatening diseases such as black death, cholera and tuberculosis spread. And while some scientists worked to fight air infections, others were committed to their creation, writes Zimmer. During World War II, the United States were one of the countries to create biological weapons. Some American scholars helped build an arsenal of deadly germs and spores to potentially use the country’s enemies. For years after the war, aerobiology remained secretly covered and was largely ignored by public health officials. It was not up to Covid-19 that this began to change.

Readers will end the book with a better understanding of how high life can fly and how public knowledge has come about aerobiology. It is a reminder that the current decisions people make about air life is informed by a deep story. Zimmer ends his chronicle with a vision of harmonious coexistence with the life that accumulates in the atmosphere: “As long as there is life on earth, it will fly, and as long as we are here, we will breathe.”

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