Most infectious bugs can't survive outside the human body for more than a day or two. Bugs prefer non-porous surfaces. Most books have porous pages, which is good, but of course the covers are non-porous.
I would have thought that the headline alone would be sufficient enough to provide that answer. In order to remove any further doubt, millions of books are still in circulation, after more than a century since the scare/panic. This should be considered as a fact that books are not infectious ─ not in the medical sense, at least.
A Kindle is probably likely to harbour more germs than an average book. Furthermore, the chemistry of books possibly does not allow harmful organisms to survive for too long.
Yes, but instead of categorically starting it, the article merely implies it, giving the reader some doubt. But I suppose there is still some possibility that books could be contaminated with disease causing microbes/ parasites or even harmful chemicals.
My son is 4 and we get a lot of kids books out of the library. I do wonder occasionally whether he can catch a cold from the books since kids are sick quite a lot and they like to put their hands in their mouths, etc
More to the point, how are you going to transmit viruses without a liquid medium of some kind? (Any virologists out there? Does that ever happen?)
A very small number of viral particles isn't usually enough to cause disease, as I understand it, and I definitely don't see how you'll pick up enough from dry paper to become sick. If that sort of thing were possible, people would be getting diseases like warts and herpes from the toilet paper in public restrooms. Library books would be pretty far down my list of concerns.
The modern version of this scare (possibly more real) is bedbugs in library books. Our local library had to close for a few days recently due to a bed bug infestation. It is 50% library, 50% homeless shelter, unfortunately.
Had them in our library as well - also suspected to be from the homeless folks who go in and out.
Public libraries serving as defacto shelters is beyond their designed and intended use. This is a problem in many public space. Private spaces like shopping malls can remove people. How does a public library decide who to remove?
I've had bed bugs in my apartment from library books too unfortunately. I'm not sure if there is an easy solution for public spaces - especially libraries where you have air conditioning, electricity, washroom facilities, and comfortable areas to sit and read.
How about instead of wondering how to evict the homeless you tackle the issue of homelessness. This is far from a hard problem to solve with a bit of wealth redistribution.
If you are the person in charge of running the library your job isn't to "solve the issue of homelessness", nor have you the authority to do "a bit of wealth redistribution" - your job is to make sure all users of the public library are safe and don't get random bugs from just borrowing books - which means stopping the source of the bugs from coming in in the first place.
Systemic issues need larger-scoped solutions. "cleaning" the library is just masking up the problem so people that are well off can pretend homelessness doesn't exist and isn't a systemic issue and they're definitely not part of the problem just let me get a book from the public library.
There is also the problem of homed people having bed bugs too. Lower income school districts have to deal with that as well. Hopefully both problems (everyone's bedbugs and homelessness) can be solved without neglecting the other.
My wife works at a public library. It's not the books that are the problem, but the disgusting patrons certainly are.
We have had a marked uptick in homeless using the library as a de facto daily shelter. They sleep in the chairs, make disgusting messes (I won't go into further details), break the computers and the 3D printer, and generally liven up the place with all the attendant police interaction usually involving public drunkenness. There is "shot glass man" who likes to print out shotglasses on the 3D printer, he's clever. And there's the guy who dried his socks out on the radiator after a rain storm.
It's not just the homeless that are problematic, the public in general is full of misanthropes who get banned for various acts of public indecency or harassment of employees.
There is also a contigent of "mobile homeless" as we refer to them, people who live out of their vehicles. There is a guy with a beat up camper, one with an old Volvo with two kayaks inexplicably attached to the roof and the whole car filled with, I would guess, items stolen from local garages. Another vagabond operates a rusty old Dodge with its characteristic plastic roof box containing all his or her world possessions. We play "junk car bingo" and often just drive by the library to see who is camping there this week. The kayak car is parked there nearly 100% of the time but moves around to different spots, so it is not abandoned.
These are the people in our neighborhood.
Recently, our small city has had an outbreak of Hepatitis. Coincidence? You decide.
With regard to the books themselves, they get nasty treatment from patrons. Everything from food, gum, puke, and feces can be detected and some books just get thrown out when shelvers inspect them. The shelves themselves are a superfund site: Patrons will leave food, cups, gum, and so on all over the library and they don't dust there much, so I imagine that dust to be mostly dead skin of the homeless.
So anyhow, public libraries probably are disease vectors, but not necessarily the books?
Here’s information from NHS on how long some viruses can live outside the body: https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/infections/how-lo..., I think this indicates that (1) yes, viruses can, in principle, be transmitted through books, (2) time window for this is rather small, and (3) probability of infection is further reduced since we usually just handle the book and not, e.g. lick pages (so there might be greater probability for young children’s books). Altogether, looks like the danger level is on par with interacting with the regular outside world, e.g. door handles, staircase railings.
Conceivably, however, books could be a suitable attack vector for deliberate contamination with toxic substances and bacteria pores.
You don't need to go to fiction to find toxic books. Paris green(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_green#Uses) was at one time used heavily in a large number of seemingly innocuous applications, including book covers.
lawl, so another public resource being demonized? this like those posts regarding the trouble of public transportation. only the stupidest people will buy into these kind of social media brainwashing. anything the wealthy do not use will be demonized.
Spread of disease is unavoidable in a society of public restrooms and shared infrastructure. Sick people contaminate their environment at points of contact like handles, toilet seats, keyboards, the air around them, etc. The damages caused by sick people at work are poorly estimated at $150B (https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/11323-cost-of-coming-to-wo...).
I could imagine micro terrorists or psychos who actively try to spread disease. Sick people who go to work do the same thing, just without evil intentions. It would be relatively easy to cultivate bacteria or viruses and spread them across the human environment.
Examples:
- Go to the airport and mist some Norovirus around
- Enter a couple stalls and drip some E-Coli on the seats or contaminate a whole role of toilet paper or drying paper
- Contaminate a few ketchup bottles at a restaurant or mist the silverware bucket
It would be extremely difficult to pinpoint these people as the damage is anonymous, random, and highly distributed. Damages could dwarf any previous terrorist attack or serial killer. It's likely that such people exist.
Preventative measures: quarantined society, minimized travel and human contact, private or limited use facilities, increased isolation, enhanced and more frequent sanitation at point of use, and enhanced air treatment.
Sanitation is currently done by chemical (Clorox), heat (autoclave or flame), light (UV, X-Ray, gamma), filtration, or pressure treatment. These are highly functional, especially when used in tandem.
I have a library of old (1870's-1930's) books on bacterial and fungal taxonomy, and I'm cautious not to breathe too deeply when I handle some of them. Many of these may have been used in non-sterile microbiology labs, likely including my copy of A Manual of Tropical Diseases (signed by Catellani himself). Bacterial spores (e.g., Bacillus, can survive in dehydrated states indefinitely). Some of the notes in margins, covers, bookplates and stamps show snapshots of where these have been.
32 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 84.8 ms ] threadA Kindle is probably likely to harbour more germs than an average book. Furthermore, the chemistry of books possibly does not allow harmful organisms to survive for too long.
https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/why-do-books-smell-so-good...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/07/the-smell-of-o...
A very small number of viral particles isn't usually enough to cause disease, as I understand it, and I definitely don't see how you'll pick up enough from dry paper to become sick. If that sort of thing were possible, people would be getting diseases like warts and herpes from the toilet paper in public restrooms. Library books would be pretty far down my list of concerns.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/garden/bedbugs-hitch-a-ri...
Public libraries serving as defacto shelters is beyond their designed and intended use. This is a problem in many public space. Private spaces like shopping malls can remove people. How does a public library decide who to remove?
I think you’re drastically underestimating the difficulty of solving this problem.
Solving homelessness is an easy problem: provide housing and supportive social services to everyone that needs them.
But it IS an expensive problem. And frequently, the people with money want us to think the expensive problems are too hard, so that we won't bother.
We have had a marked uptick in homeless using the library as a de facto daily shelter. They sleep in the chairs, make disgusting messes (I won't go into further details), break the computers and the 3D printer, and generally liven up the place with all the attendant police interaction usually involving public drunkenness. There is "shot glass man" who likes to print out shotglasses on the 3D printer, he's clever. And there's the guy who dried his socks out on the radiator after a rain storm.
It's not just the homeless that are problematic, the public in general is full of misanthropes who get banned for various acts of public indecency or harassment of employees.
There is also a contigent of "mobile homeless" as we refer to them, people who live out of their vehicles. There is a guy with a beat up camper, one with an old Volvo with two kayaks inexplicably attached to the roof and the whole car filled with, I would guess, items stolen from local garages. Another vagabond operates a rusty old Dodge with its characteristic plastic roof box containing all his or her world possessions. We play "junk car bingo" and often just drive by the library to see who is camping there this week. The kayak car is parked there nearly 100% of the time but moves around to different spots, so it is not abandoned.
These are the people in our neighborhood.
Recently, our small city has had an outbreak of Hepatitis. Coincidence? You decide.
With regard to the books themselves, they get nasty treatment from patrons. Everything from food, gum, puke, and feces can be detected and some books just get thrown out when shelvers inspect them. The shelves themselves are a superfund site: Patrons will leave food, cups, gum, and so on all over the library and they don't dust there much, so I imagine that dust to be mostly dead skin of the homeless.
So anyhow, public libraries probably are disease vectors, but not necessarily the books?
Conceivably, however, books could be a suitable attack vector for deliberate contamination with toxic substances and bacteria pores.
Famous literary example is the poisoned copy of Aristotle’s Second Poetics in the Name of the Rose (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Name_of_the_Rose)
https://theconversation.com/how-we-discovered-three-poisonou...
Only the stupidest people will not determine from the article, or at least infer from the headline, that this panic was over a hundred years ago.
Ain't no hubris like tech bubble hubris.
I could imagine micro terrorists or psychos who actively try to spread disease. Sick people who go to work do the same thing, just without evil intentions. It would be relatively easy to cultivate bacteria or viruses and spread them across the human environment.
Examples:
- Go to the airport and mist some Norovirus around
- Enter a couple stalls and drip some E-Coli on the seats or contaminate a whole role of toilet paper or drying paper
- Contaminate a few ketchup bottles at a restaurant or mist the silverware bucket
It would be extremely difficult to pinpoint these people as the damage is anonymous, random, and highly distributed. Damages could dwarf any previous terrorist attack or serial killer. It's likely that such people exist.
Sanitation is currently done by chemical (Clorox), heat (autoclave or flame), light (UV, X-Ray, gamma), filtration, or pressure treatment. These are highly functional, especially when used in tandem.
Views of a dystopian world?
Seemed like it was just UV, though I didn't ask.