Microbial Safety in Space

Microbial hygiene is an important aspect of our daily life and prevention and combating microbial infections is becoming more and more important in our society. In hospitals, strict monitoring and control is performed on microbial hygiene, both on people and infrastructure alike. In modern buildings, air conditioning systems are screened for presence of harmful bacteria like Legionella. More recently, concerns about SARS (virus) and anthrax (bacteria) have added pressure to the scientific community to come up with adequate monitoring and control techniques to assure microbial hygiene. Additionally, the use of biotechnological recycling and cleaning processes in order to achieve sustainability brings along the need for reliable monitoring tools and preventive or risk reducing strategies as well. In the manned space environment, similar questions need to be solved and efforts have already been made to study behaviour of micro-organisms and microbial hygiene on board of space stations.