Florence Nightingale believed that letting sunlight into hospitals had health benefits for patients. Looks like she may be right!

Research conducted by the University of Oregon, compared sun exposure in multiple different rooms for 90 days. Turns out grandma was right, letting sunshine in can help keep you healthy, or at least kill harmful bacteria.

“Rooms exposed to daylight have fewer germs. In fact, the study showed that the lit rooms had about half the viable bacteria (those that are able to grow), compared with dark rooms. Rooms that were exposed only to UV light had just slightly less viable bacteria than ones exposed to daylight.” 

This study gives us new insight on the correlation between daylight and bacterial count indoors. Considering we spend so much time inside, this could have big impacts on how we design our homes and commercial spaces to help optimize the health of our community. 

Now we are able to say “daylighting” a room has an impact on air quality, even killing certain microbiomes that are tied to respiratory disease. This might have future implications for the design of hospitals and health care clinics.   Take home message; If you can, let the light in! 

To learn more: Grandma Was Right: Sunshine Helps Kill Germs Indoors – NPR

Happy Veterans Day and we will never forget!

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