Researchers Use Metal Robot Baby To Stir Up Clouds Of Bio-Gunk

Any parent knows that when a baby reaches the crawling age, they will eat anything they find on the floor. There is another risk to crawling babies that parents have probably never considered. Researchers from Purdue had published a new study that has found that when babies crawl they stir up clouds of "bio-gunk" that has all sorts of nasty stuff in it.

The researchers say that the bio-gunk cloud the crawling baby raises includes high levels of dirt, skin cells, bacteria, pollen, and fungal spores. The tots inhale doses of that bio-gunk at levels four times higher per kilogram of body mass than an adult would inhale walking across the same floor. Before you freak out, the researchers say that this inhalation of bio-gunk isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Research has found that the inhalation and exposure to microbes and allergens in that portion of a child's life has a key role in the development of and protection from asthma and allergic diseases. The team says that the greater than adult levels of inhalation is because the baby is much closer to the floor. Babies also roll around on the floor much more than most adults.

The team used a terrifying foil robot baby in their study along with a "state-of-the-art aerosol instrumentation" pack to measure the particles inhaled by robot baby in real-time. One researcher notes that most bacterial cells, fungal spores, and pollen particles are fluorescent making them easy to distinguish from non-biological material in the air.

The study found that the contamination around a crawling baby can be as much as 20 times greater than the levels of material higher in the room. There has been research that shows that exposing children to an environment that is too clean may suppress the development of the immune system. So clean freaks, don't freak out about what your baby is breathing in.

SOURCE: Purdue