Carl Zimmer

And you can see pictures in places like Delhi in India and so on.

There are lots of avoidable deaths in the United States as well because we're starting to realize that even what we thought were nice low levels of air pollution probably are still killing more people than we realized.

One way in which the aerobiome intersects with what we're talking about is that those little particles floating around, things can live on them.

And certain species can ride along on these little particles of pollution, and then we inhale them.

And there's some studies that seem to suggest that maybe pathogens are really benefiting from riding around on these particles.

And also, the wildfire smoke is not just lofting just bits of dead plant matter into the air, it's lofting vast numbers of bacteria and fungal spores into the air as well.

And then those blow very, very far away.

It's possible that long distance winds can deliver fungal spores

and other uh other organic microorganisms that that can actually cause certain diseases um sake disease or valley fever and so on so um yeah so so everything we're doing is is influencing the aerobiome we're changing the world in so many ways we're also changing the aerobiome

Well, I've seen some of those studies, and it wasn't clear to me

I'm not sure that, you know, SARS-CoV-2 can really survive like long distances outdoors, but it may be that people, you know, it becomes sort of, you know, kind of weakens people and also, you know, sets up their lungs for a serious disease.

I'm not...

as familiar with that research as I'd like to be.

It's the dark side of our biology.

I think that's a really important question, and it sounds odd, but that's only because it's unfamiliar.

And even after all this time and after the rediscovery of a lot of scientists who had been long forgotten, there's still a lot we don't know.

So there is suggestive research that when we read

We breathe in air that's blowing over vegetation, forests, and so on.

That's actually, in some ways, good for our health.

We do have a relationship with the air, and we've had it ever since our ancestors came out of the water and started breathing with their lungs.