Housing, Superbugs, and Mosquitoes
My topic for this particular post is germs and environments. I’ve spent a good deal of time daydreaming about the discussion I planned to bring to this “table.” Kay Holt shared a few links regarding building development.
In truth, I could waste entire days looking at the architecture on some of these sites. Many of these architects focus on the environmental impact of their designs. There is an additional concentration on cost for many of the projects. In my entries to come in the fall, I plan to revisit these housing innovations while focusing on urban development.
I keep thinking about the housing of today and that of the future. I consider New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Many districts were completely flooded out and are having to be rebuilt, reborn. People lived in temporary housing consisting of trailers. Some still live in FEMA housing including those electing to participate in the buyout program.
ISO containers have been approved for use as earthquake relief housing in Haiti. These containers might be used in France and are already in use in Amsterdam as dorm housing. New York City residential and retail spaces are in development for the heart of downtown. Moving from container housing to the prefab pop-up variety, I looked at how different housing might be in a few years in America and around the world.
Currently, I want to discuss the building materials in relation to my previous post about superbugs and antibacterial surfaces. I’d already been planning this post when my last one went up, excited by the possibility of homes that protect the people residing within from more than just the elements.
What if equal consideration was given to the ability of these housing units to eliminate surface bacteria, filter incoming air, repel mosquitoes and other pests, purify water (both incoming and possibly outgoing), and provide a germ-free environment for its inhabitants? In community planning after a disaster, could it be possible to improve the health of residents while diminishing their carbon footprint? Daycare centers, gyms, and hospitals already utilize materials resistant to bacteria such as hospital gowns and linens, brass touch plates/doorknobs, and plastic toys. What impact would rebuilding an entire city with structures capable of warding off germs have on its residents?
What impact will it have on the bacteria? This is the question I wasn’t considering in my first post. It was promptly pointed out to me, and I am grateful. It was right in front of me. I described the amazing ability of superbug bacteria to evolve to resist the antibiotics used to kill them. What would the bacteria’s evolution involve in the face of this resistance tactic? Would it surpass all measures to exterminate it? Or, what if it was wiped out completely? How would that affect the entire ecosystem?
Months ago I researched yellow fever and other diseases carried by mosquitoes for a story, I realized what an impact such a small creature has on the world. I mean, I was aware in a small way already. You can’t learn about the installation of the Panama Canal without realizing the huge toll collected by malaria carrying mosquitoes. Currently several charities exist with the sole purpose of providing mosquito nets to those living in heavily infested areas around the world.
I was reading Scenting the Dark and Other Stories by Mary Robinette Kowal this week. “Some Other Day,” a story in this collection, features a biologist whose father engineered a “Frankenskeeter” that wiped out mosquitoes. This extinction had a much grander impact on the ecosystem than anticipated. This story added a new perspective to that. I am still thinking on this, both in reference to mosquitoes, to superbugs, and other germs and bacteria.
Have you read or written any fiction that touches on these topics? I’d love a recommendation and welcome discussion.
Polio was a twentieth century disease which resulted from cleanliness. Infants were no longer exposed to the virus, and so had no immunity. What new epidemic slouches toward Bethlehem amid all this anti-bacterial madness???
Meanwhile, the single best law ever written in the Soviet Union was the one requiring that any entity dishcharging waste water into a river or stream place their intake downstream of their own discharge. A friend once mentioned to me that Nebraska has a much lower cancer rate than Louisiana, and attributed this our clean environment. I pointed out that Louisiana is downstream from damn near everybody.
One hopes the cities and even homes of the future will recycle their own waste, possibly in a fully-self-contained system.
Thank you for your comments, Stacy.
good stuff, interesting
Thanks for reading, Mark.
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“Doing away” with bacteria would be a disaster for both internal and external ecosystems. We, and all life on earth, literally cannot live without them.
Houses that are too well insulated build up imbalances of all kinds, from fungal takeovers to buildup of toxic volatiles. The best environmental response is to use local materials, build the structures in shapes that take the local climate into account, and ensure that local vegetation is kept as intact as possible.
Anything made of plastic is made of petroleum, so nothing green there. Worse yet, most types of plastic take forever to degrade — and there’s nothing less cuddly than a plastic toy. Wood would be far better, or even compacted paper.
Athena, In the last post I made here, the harm of wiping out bacteria and completely shielding humans from it was mentioned. I do understand and agree with you.
You mentioned what happens to a home that has been too well insulated. I should have known better on that count based on my experience with home inspection data from my day job. The connection slipped my mind. Would you mind if I contemplated that in future posts(with credit of course)?
I respect your take on plastics. I had to be very careful with my son’s toys. He had his share of plastic toys. He had cuddly ones too.
Of course you can contemplate and expand on it, MG — that’s this blog’s mission!
Also, please don’t misunderstand me. Plastics have become indispensable to our lives. Nobody knows this better than I, who uses polystyrene and polypropylene galore in my labwork. However, depending on what goes in them, they can be problematic. So this is not a matter of personal preferences but, rather, of intrinsic attributes of plastics.
In terms of cleanliness, some plastics develop myriad cracks (much more easily than glass or ceramics) which are instant bacterial and fungal nexuses. Unlike glass and ceramics, they cannot be autoclaved and some release dioxin when burned.
For another, many constituents of plastics are toxic when monomeric (acrylamide, phthalates…). They become inert when they polymerize, but if they get trapped within the polymer during the processing, they act as potent poisons when they get released — they’re teratogenic and carcinogenic. You must have followed the bisphenol story, and many countries have banned a long list of plastic constituents as components of anything that can dissolve in tissue (from teething aids to dental sealants).
I think “protected” is the wrong approach, though of course we fragile humans do need to be protected from extremes of cold and heat, and a few other things.
But “suited to”, “sustainable in”, “part of”, “made from” the local environment, all of these are better long-term solutions. Energy-efficiency, local materials, adaptable for local climate and weather extremes: these must be the future of housing.
A lot of “protection” has unintended consequences, some especially unacceptable because by now we know enough to parse such outcomes.
One perfect example, mentioned by Stacy earlier in this thread, is that children’s immune systems remain increasingly immature in the First World, because of too clean environments. Result: an explosion in allergies, and loss of herd immunity (augmented by the fashionable phobia against vaccines). Humans are fragile in extremes, but otherwise hardy and adaptable.
Another is the use of “efficient” materials such as cement (in the Le Corbusier-wannabee era) and nowadays Tyvek and its cousins. The former, when not done exactly right, resulted in buildings that were brittle and fell even without the excuse of earthquakes. The latter has led to the infamous “black mold” infestations.
Today’s large cities are extremely fragile, spectacularly wasteful and literally sitting ducks for any ecological upheaval, including “butterfly effects” of non-local changes (a topic that Calvin is tackling in the next SiMF post from a different angle).
Several books are interesting in this connection. All read in part as as apocalyptic SF, but are real extrapolations. One is Jared Diamond’s Collapse (the lesser-known companion to Guns, Germs and Steel). Another is Alan Weisman’s The Future Without Us. Yet a third is Charles Mann’s 1491: The Americas before Columbus. And, of course, still supremely relevant is Jane Jacobs’ classic The Life and Death of Great American Cities.
“The latter has led to the infamous ‘black mold’ infestations.” Yes, this was exactly what I was saying I should have made the connection to.
Thank you for the recommendations. I appreciate it.
Sarah, thanks for the good discussion. When I was a kid, I wanted to live in a sod house like Laura Ingalls-Wilder. I’ve always had a fascination with what materials people build structures from. What happens when there are not enough local materials to sustain the population? I am thinking of lumber in this case. What alternatives are there then?+
There are lots of examples of alternative materials. One subset of the sustainability movement has developed housing construction methods using straw bales, rammed earth, adobe… all sorts of low-cost and low-impact materials available in the local environment. Not all are suitable for all climates, but the range is wider than you’d think.
Despite the simple materials, the buildings themselves are a lot more sophisticated than Laura’s sod house. A house with a green roof might look similar though.
I think this is a great topic, and I’m glad you’ve brought it up. What alternative futures are possible besides the giant glass skyscrapers?
Please note this is not a challenge to what you and Athena have said. I want to spend time thinking about it and your answers will help me along.
[...] Housing, Superbugs, and Mosquitoes — MG Ellington on low-end, critical futurism, at Science In My Fiction. [...]
I think it would be interesting to speculate about controlled exposure as a tool for human health. We do this with vaccination, but how far can we safely take it? We already know that people can survive without a lot of ammenities, and in fairly harsh conditions. How else could we have taken over the world?
I suppose climate change may force the issue of standard of living versus survival, but absent that (or ahead of that, rather) what would it take to sell people on the idea of deliberate exposure to things like germs or other discomforts in the name of hardiness?
Camping as medicine.
They even yous Containers for Big Container booths
like this one on a fashion fair in Berlin, germany
http://www.twotimestwentyfeet.com/p/hilfiger_s2011