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生活在已開發國家的人們一生中有90%的時間都待在室內，他們於其中呼吸、接觸著億萬種肉眼看不見的生命形態：微生物。建築物是複雜的生態系統，它是一些對我們有益微生物的重要發源地，也是一些對我們有害的微生物發源地。是什麼決定了室內微生物的種類和分佈呢？建築物被空氣中的微生物所佔據，它們藉由窗戶及機械通風系統進入室內，或是被人類及其他生物帶進室內。室內微生物的命運取決於其與人類以及人類所創造的環境之間複雜的交互作用。如今，建築學家和生物學家正共同合作，致力於探索智慧型建築物的設計方法，為我們創造對健康有益的建築物。
我們有大量時間身處在環境受到嚴格控制的建築物中，就像我們現在身處的這棟建築，有機械通風系統控制整個環境，包括了過濾裝置、暖氣裝置及空氣調節裝置。既然我們有大量時間身處在室內環境，瞭解它如何影響我們的健康是非常重要的。在生物學與建築環境中心我們，在醫院裡展開一項研究，我們對醫院的空氣進行採樣，並提取空氣中微生物的DNA。我們觀察了三種不同類型的房間，我們觀察了擁有機械通風系統的房間，即圖上藍色的數據點；也觀察了自然通風的房間。院方准許我們關閉了大樓側翼部分的機械通風設備，並撬開已經不再使用的窗戶，但院方為了我們的研究而將它打開。我們也取樣了室外的空氣。
如果你觀察圖上的X軸，你會發現，我們一般希望做的是阻止室外空氣進入，我們藉著機械通風設備達到這個目的。如果你看一下綠色數據點，它代表室外的空氣；你會看見其中龐大的微生物多樣性，或者說其中有各式各樣不同種類的微生物。但如果你看一下藍色數據點，它代表的是機械通風系統的數據，它的多樣性就沒那麼強了。但微生物的多樣性較少未必對我們的健康有利，如果我們看一下圖上的y軸，你會發現，在機械通風系統下，將會有更高的可能性遇到潛在的病原體或是病菌，相較於身處在室外的條件下。
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以下為系統擷取之英文原文
Humans in the developed world spend more than 90 percent of their lives indoors, where they breathe in and come into contact with trillions of lifeforms invisible to the naked eye: microorganisms. Buildings are complex ecosystems that are an important source of microbes that are good for us, and some that are bad for us. What determines the types and distributions of microbes indoors? Buildings are colonized by airborne microbes that enter through windows and through mechanical ventilation systems. And they are brought inside by humans and other creatures. The fate of microbes indoors depends on complex interactions with humans, and with the human-built environment. And today, architects and biologists are working together to explore smart building design that will create healthy buildings for us.
We spend an extraordinary amount of time in buildings that are extremely controlled environments, like this building here -- environments that have mechanical ventilation systems that include filtering, heating and air conditioning. Given the amount of time that we spend indoors, it's important to understand how this affects our health. At the Biology and the Built Environment Center, we carried out a study in a hospital where we sampled air and pulled the DNA out of microbes in the air. And we looked at three different types of rooms. We looked at rooms that were mechanically ventilated, which are the data points in the blue. We looked at rooms that were naturally ventilated, where the hospital let us turn off the mechanical ventilation in a wing of the building and pry open the windows that were no longer operable, but they made them operable for our study. And we also sampled the outdoor air.
If you look at the x-axis of this graph, you'll see that what we commonly want to do -- which is keeping the outdoors out -- we accomplished that with mechanical ventilation. So if you look at the green data points, which is air that's outside, you'll see that there's a large amount of microbial diversity, or variety of microbial types. But if you look at the blue data points, which is mechanically ventilated air, it's not as diverse. But being less diverse is not necessarily good for our health. If you look at the y-axis of this graph, you'll see that, in the mechanically ventilated air, you have a higher probability of encountering a potential pathogen, or germ, than if you're outdoors.
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因此，要瞭解為什麼會這樣，我們把獲取的資料放入序列分佈圖中。這是一種統計學圖示，可顯示在不同的取樣中，各個微生物群之間的關聯性為何；距離越接近的數據點，表示其中所擁有的微生物群相似程度越高。你從這個圖中最先能看出的是，如果你看一下藍色數據點，即代表機械通風系統的點，它們不僅是代表室外空氣之綠色數據點的一個子集。
我們發現的是，機械通風系統看起來跟人類很像，其中存在著一些通常跟我們皮膚、口腔及唾液有關的微生物，這是因為我們身上隨時都有微生物脫落，因此在座所有人現在都正與他人分享著彼此身上的微生物。當你在戶外時，空氣中存在的微生物類型通常與樹葉及灰塵有關。
為什麼這很重要？因為衛生保健產業在美國是第二大能源密集型產業，醫院消耗的能源是辦公大樓的2.5倍，我們所研究的醫院建築模式，以及許多不同的建築都屬於封閉模式系統，這種模式也許未必是對我們健康最有利的選擇。大量的院內感染或所謂的醫源性感染都提醒我們，是重新審視我們現狀的時候了。
就像管理國家公園一樣，必須提高某些物種的生長數量，並限制其他物種的數量。我們正致力於思考，讓建築物運用一套生態系統框架，增加存在於建築物內一些有益於人類的微生物種類。我聽過有些人說，健康取決於腸道健康，因為這個原因，很多人吃益生菌、優酪乳，這樣就能使有益腸道健康的菌落增加。我們最終想做的是，運用這個概念，使有益健康的室內微生物群落增加。
謝謝。
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So to understand why this was the case, we took our data and put it into an ordination diagram, which is a statistical map that tells you something about how related the microbial communities are in the different samples. The data points that are closer together have microbial communities that are more similar than data points that are far apart. And the first things that you can see from this graph is, if you look at the blue data points, which are the mechanically ventilated air, they're not simply a subset of the green data points, which are the outdoor air.
What we've found is that mechanically ventilated air looks like humans. It has microbes on it that are commonly associated with our skin and with our mouth, our spit. And this is because we're all constantly shedding microbes. So all of you right now are sharing your microbes with one another. And when you're outdoors, that type of air has microbes that are commonly associated with plant leaves and with dirt.
Why does this matter? It matters because the health care industry is the second most energy intensive industry in the United States. Hospitals use two and a half times the amount of energy as office buildings. And the model that we're working with in hospitals, and also with many, many different buildings, is to keep the outdoors out. And this model may not necessarily be the best for our health. And given the extraordinary amount of nosocomial infections, or hospital acquired infections, this is a clue that it's a good time to reconsider our current practices.
So just as we manage national parks, where we promote the growth of some species and we inhibit the growth of others, we're working towards thinking about buildings using an ecosystem framework where we can promote the kinds of microbes that we want to have indoors. I've heard somebody say that you're as healthy as your gut. And for this reason, many people eat probiotic yogurt so they can promote a healthy gut flora. And what we ultimately want to do is to be able to use this concept to promote a healthy group of microorganisms inside.
Thank you.
