Abstract
The indoor environment is an important source of microbial exposures for its human occupants. While we naturally want to favor positive health outcomes, built environment design and operation may counter-intuitively favor negative health outcomes, particularly with regard to antibiotic resistance. Indoor environments contain microbes from both human and non-human origins, providing a unique venue for microbial interactions, including horizontal gene transfer. Furthermore, stressors present in the built environment could favor the exchange of genetic material in general and the retention of antibiotic resistance genes in particular. Intrinsic and acquired antibiotic resistance both pose a potential threat to human health; these phenomena need to be considered and controlled separately. The presence of both environmental and human-associated microbes, along with their associated antibiotic resistance genes, in the face of stressors, including antimicrobial chemicals, creates a unique opportunity for the undesirable spread of antibiotic resistance. In this review, we summarize studies and findings related to various interactions between human-associated bacteria, environmental bacteria, and built environment conditions, and particularly their relation to antibiotic resistance, aiming to guide “healthy” building design.
Original language | English (US) |
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Journal | Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology |
Volume | 30 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 1 2020 |
Funding
Acknowledgements We acknowledge the feedback from the Hart-mann lab group in the preparation of this manuscript. This work was supported by the Searle Leadership Fund.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
- Pollution
- Epidemiology
- Toxicology