Airborne dangers: why breath should not be taken for granted

At the start of 2020, a small team of scientists tried and failed to convince public health organisations that COVID-19 was spread through the air we breathe.

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Until then, scientists thought that respiratory diseases spread through droplets, and that these droplets had a limited range. Coughed up, these droplets fell quickly to the ground, to use the disgusting terminology of the 1990s which health officials use while speaking about tuberculosis. In reality, however, breath has been a medium of transmission of most invisible things.

Such new insights into the living atmosphere were revealed courtesy of Carl Zimmer, through his book Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life we Breathe. The text follows the research of Louis Pasteur who caught germs from the air, and pursues groundbreaking experiments by Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh. It warns the world about airborne infections, and chronicles the dark side of aerobiology designed to spread anthrax, smallpox, and an array of other pathogens. Rather than be taken for granted, the importance of the natural process of human breath is once again established.Protecting the most vital of all life processes calls for a well-thought-out strategy. Breath is in itself of immense value — one breath in and one breath out is the manifestation of life. A breath alone brings a newborn to life, the body turns pink as the first breath gets in. And, the last breath accounts for life. The power that ripples through the whole universe comes in the form of breath.