Microbial Map Reveals Potential Health Threats at Major Tourist Attractions

Do you ever think about what’s crawling all over your favorite tourist attractions? Atlas Biomed, a DNA and gut microbiome personalized healthcare company, recently created a microbial map of monuments throughout Europe. The study showed most bacteria you find on these monuments are harmless, but there are a few outliers that could be dangerous to tourists.

Here’s how the study went down. The Atlas Biomed team visited 13 major tourist cities across Europe to collect swab samples from 24 different tourist attractions. These included famous spots like the lion statues in Trafalgar Square in London and the Juliet Capulet statue in Verona.

Across all the samples, the team found 29 different bacterial genera, including bacteria typically associated with plant diseases and two genera only found in human intestines. Some bacteria found can lead to serious health issues, such as sepsis, conjunctivitis, cystitis, endocarditis, folliculitis and ear canal infections. Out of all the landmarks tested, the Oscar Wilde statue in London showed the highest bacterial diversity in Europe, while the Bender’s Book monument in Saint Petersburg showed the least bacterial diversity.

However, the company says there’s not too much reason to be alarmed.

“The diversity of microorganisms that are present in, on and around humans comprise a significant component of overall health. It’s important to remember that, just because a bacterium has the potential to make us ill, it doesn’t mean it will. There are a lot of factors that enter into this equation, like the quantity of bacteria present (our swab samples didn’t allow us to assess this) and how weak or strong a person’s immune system is,” said Sergey Musienko, CEO, Atlas Biomed.