From the article:
“Disasters themselves are nothing new. However, a colloquium of 31 microbiologists first called for the creation of a disaster microbiology field in 2021 to respond to the accelerating rate of natural disasters due to climate change. When Daniel Smith, a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins, read their report, he responded with a paper that broadened its proposed definition to include anthropogenic disasters like oil spills and nuclear accidents. “Those are also disasters, and microbiology is involved. I think those are important aspects that would be overlooked otherwise,” he says.
“We could say ‘Oh a disaster should only be from this list.’ But right now, with this changing climate and changing world, I think we need to be looking into anything that is unusual,” says Lizbeth Dávila Santiago, an environmental microbiologist at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, who was one of the presenters in Houston. She and Smith agree that now is the time to understand the microbiological impacts of disasters before they become more frequent in the coming decades.”
Read the full article HERE
