Stop for a moment and take a deep breath.
Ah. Fresh air smells good, right?
Well, a recent study has come out that shows that the air you breath – especially if you’re living in an urban area – contains more than its fair share of CANINE FECAL MATERIAL in that air. The study, entitled SOURCES OF BACTERIA IN OUTDOOR AIR ACROSS CITIES IN THE MIDWESTERN UNITED STATES was commissioned to identify what types of bacteria would be found in urban areas. Would there be differences based on urban population, the season, or other elements?
See, it started as researchers doing just a casual study of air quality in urban areas, such as Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland. What they found was that in urban areas with large dog populations that there were large amounts of canine fecal material in the air — and these samples were taken at 12 feet off the ground too, so you can only imagine that if that’s what was found at 12 feet high, how dense those poop particles would be at the average 5-to-6 feet off the ground where one is typically breathing!
Hello, dog park! Doesn’t seem like quite as nice a place to visit now, does it?
As a side note, the average dog population is about 37% of the human population – or about one dog for every three people.
So the question remains — now that they’ve identified that there’s poop in the air, does it really affect us negatively? Web Watch doesn’t know if we want to be part of that study, unless we’re in the “poop-free” control group. We would hate to be the ones subjected to breathing air with extra poop in it.