Health Beyond the Blog: Carl Zimmer and “Air-Borne”

Zimmer’s new book sheds light on airborne diseases and the field of aerobiology

by Ananya Dash

SARS-CoV-2’s transmission route was a mystery to scientists and public health officials in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Scientists debated extensively before concluding that the virus spread in the air. This controversy made Carl Zimmer, an award-winning science writer and New York Times columnist, wonder about the science of life in the air — aerobiology. His new book, Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe, explores what lives in the air and how it reaches humans and other organisms.

Air-borne brings the forgotten field of aerobiology and its unsung scientists into the limelight. Fred Meier, a plant biologist featured throughout the book, investigated how diseases spread between plants and would fly among the clouds to catch airborne pathogens. Another duo of scientists, Mildred and William Wells, worked on how pathogens could travel between people as they expelled droplets into the air. These discoveries caught the public’s attention, but Meier’s untimely death halted the field’s progress. 

As he described in the most recent installment of the Health Storytelling series, Zimmer observes that popular culture often adopts a myopic view of science as human-independent and self-correcting. He reminds his audience of the importance of the real people conducting research. Specifically, charismatic scientists that unite others to investigate a problem are an inherent part of the stories of scientific discovery and progress. In the case of aerobiology, Meier had that power. With his death, the Wellses could not emulate his captivating leadership of the field and, thus, aerobiology slowly vanished. Thus, the idea that the air was harmless started to hold consensus among scientists once again.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists are rediscovering the works of forgotten researchers in aerobiology, particularly as it relates to infectious disease. The past work done in the field of aerobiology is finally getting the attention it deserved. 

Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe is available on Bookshop.org. The Health Storytelling Author Q&A series is available on YouTube and continues at 7pm on April 16^th with Jaap De Roode. Please RSVP here for De Roode and his new book Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes, and Other Animals Heal Themselves.