Want to detox your living room? Looking for a simple way to kill all those indoor germs?
Open your blinds and curtains and let the light shine it. Why? Researchers discovered rooms exposed to daylight have fewer germs and half the bacteria. .
Florence Nightingale advocated for hospitals to let in daylight. She felt sunshine kept patients healthy.
She's quoted as saying: " The craving for ‘the return of the day’, which the sick so constantly evince, is generally nothing but the desire for light." Looks like this founder of modern nursing knew what she was talking about.
The study conducted used several dusty dollhouse-sized rooms. The dust was a mixture gathered from homes in the Portland, Oregan area. The rooms were exposed to A) daylight through regular glass, B) to only ultraviolet light or C) kept in the dark. They left the rooms outside, maintained at normal room temperature.
After 90 days they tested the dust in these 3 groups. The daylight rooms had fewer germs. These rooms had half the viable bacteria (germs that were able to grow) than the dark rooms.
Rooms exposed to only UV light had just slightly less viable bacteria than ones exposed to daylight." So visible and UV light performed much the same.
Also human-skin associated bacteria are known to cause respiratory disease. Some of the human-skin associated bacteria didn't survive in the daylight rooms.
An interesting, and somewhat gross, point of interest is that 90 days is how long dust can hang around even after vacuuming.
What do we do with this info?
With my house of four kitties and an old dog, I'm going home tonight and throwing open all the window coverings. And this is "Ms Sunscreen" talking, so you know this study has made an impression on me.
Are your allergies are flaring up this season? Do you have a respiratory condition? Then sunlight may be the answer.
Was this info useful. Will you be letting daylight flood your home today? Share your experience and comments.
Michelle of Tuscany Spa.
"Wise and humane management of the patient is the best safeguard against infection." -Florence Nightingale
PS: For more information check out the NPR article or the study published in Microbiome.