Washington, Jan 14 (PTI) Scientists have developed acrawling robotic baby, that may help understand how dirt andgerms on the floor affect human infants in the first year oftheir life.
The research showed that when babies crawl, theirmovement across floors, especially carpeted surfaces, kicks uphigh levels of dirt, skin cells, bacteria, pollen, and fungalspores.
The infants inhale a dose of bio bits in their lungs thatis four times what an adult would breathe walking across thesame floor.
While this may sound alarming, scientists from PurdueUniversity in the US said that this may not be a bad thing.
"Many studies have shown that inhalation exposure tomicrobes and allergen-carrying particles in that portion oflife plays a significant role in both the development of, andprotection from, asthma and allergic diseases," said BrandonBoor, assistant professor at Purdue University.
"There are studies that have shown that being exposed toa high diversity and concentration of biological materials mayreduce the prevalence of asthma and allergies later in life,"Boor said.
Scientists have previously done studies to determine howmuch dirt and biological material is kicked up and resuspendedinto the air when an adult walks indoors, but this is thefirst study to look at what happens with infants and theirunique forms of locomotion.
As babies roll, slide and crawl on the floor, theirmovements stir up more particulates into the air, and theirmouths and nostrils are much closer to the floor where theconcentrations are greater.
To study just how much of the floor debris babiesbreathe, researchers built a robotic crawling baby and testedit crawling on actual carpet samples they had removed fromhomes. Then the researchers measured and analysed theparticulates in the breathing zone.
"We used state-of-the-art aerosol instrumentation totrack the biological particles floating in the air around theinfant in real-time, second by second," Boor said.
"The instrument uses lasers to cause biological materialto fluoresce. Most bacterial cells, fungal spores, and pollenparticles are fluorescent, so they can be distinguished fromnon-biological material in the air," he said.
The researchers found that a concentrated cloud ofresuspended particles forms around the robotic babies, andthat the concentrations around them can be as much as 20 timesgreater than the levels of material higher in the room.
"For an adult, a significant portion of the biologicalparticles are removed in the upper respiratory system, in thenostrils and throat," Boor said.
"But for very young children, they more often breathethrough their mouths, and a significant fraction is depositedin the lower airways - the tracheobronchial and pulmonaryregions. The particles make it to the deepest regions of theirlungs," he said.
"Exposure to certain bacterial and fungal species canresult in the development of asthma, but numerous studies haveshown that when an infant is exposed to a very high diversityof microbes, at a high concentration, they can have a lowerrate of asthma later in life," Boor said. PTI MHNMHN.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.