Never Home Alone by Rob Dunn

With the holidays upon us, what a better title to review than Never Home Alone? This ain't no Christmas movie, though. This is a great resource from perhaps the most knowledgable author on the subject matter. Instead of criminals and scary neighbors, Never Home Alone stars critters from microbes to millipedes, camel crickets, and honeybees, that share the natural history of where we live. In other words, this book is about the 200,000 critters that share our homes, ensuring we will never be truly home alone. 

I read this book for several reasons. First, a good friend of mine recommended it. My friend literally wrote the book on ventilation in homes, so I took his recommendation seriously. Second, I don't talk about my profession at all, but I will say this: My real job includes making homes more healthy. This book is all about healthy homes and people, but with a twist that I have not considered until now. And last, but probably the real reason I gravitated towards and loved this book so much, is the fact that my heroes have always been scientists. My favorite authors are all scientists (E.O. Wilson, Jane Goodall), or the next best thing, science writers (David Quammen, Mary Roach, Susan Casey). The author, Rob Dunn, is a biologist and university professor with an impressive resume. I'm not sure if I should call him Doctor or Professor. I hope to meet him soon so he can tell me, but also to discuss healthy homes. Keep reading and you'll see why. 

Never Home Alone tells the extraordinary stories behind the limited number of studies that have been performed on the critters that live in our homes, from bacteria to insects to rodents. Some of those studies discovered there are an average of 100 insects living in American homes. In Chapter 12, Rob Dunn estimates he and his colleagues have found roughly 200,000 species of bacteria, fungi, insects, etc., living in each one of our homes.

I learned quite a bit about bacteria and pathogens from this book. I won't give away all the details, but I want to list some of my key takeaways that will hopefully garner your interest enough to read the book.

1. Germs aren't that bad for us. In fact, of all the bacterial species in the world, fewer than 50 regularly cause disease. 50! (pg. 1.) With so few pathogens, and so many beneficial species, why do we waste so much effort trying to kill bacteria?
2. There are several approaches to ward off pathogens (pgs. 223 -224):
   1. Garden beneficial strains of bacteria that basically beat up pathogens like Macauly Culkin beating up on the Wet Bandits.
   2. Inoculate the body with a diversity of bacteria to promote a healthy, biodiverse ecosystem. Notice the Wet Bandits waited to break into the house until all the 'good' people had left? Pathogens do the same thing to your body. 
   3. Targeted killing, as with antibiotics. We are all familiar with the method our modern system has chosen to use, and we are all too familiar with the troubling results of this method. The book has an abundance of detail on this issue. 
3. It is highly likely there are insects going about their business in your home right now that are unknown to science. If you want an opportunity to discover new species, you can participate in studies about the insects in your home, among other studies, at robdunnlab.com 
4. Wash your hands... often. But don't use hand sanitizer. (Avoiding hand sanitizer is my own observation. The book doesn't talk about it, but pg. 250 has information about hand washing. Read the book and you'll easily see why I have drawn the conclusion to stop using hand sanitizer. Only 50 pathogens make you sick! There is no need to kill 99.9% of bacteria on your hands! You can get sick from a lack of good bacteria, you know.) 
5. You may have known this, but I did not: There are many strands of Staphylococcus and e. coli, but only one of each can make you sick. It has been proven (like 60 years ago!) that certain strands of Staphylococcus can prevent the bad Staphylococcus from making you sick. Yet, we are still getting staph infections because antibiotics created MRSA. Go figure. Dunn devotes an entire, amazing chapter to successfully inoculating babies with Staphylococcus. 

Some of you may be thinking this sounds like an anti-vax, essential oil, hocus-pocus take on bacteria. It's not. It was written by a scientist that authored most of the research papers on critters in homes. The book is stocked full of references and studies from all over the world. The content is fascinating and intelligently written, but now that you know my profession, you may consider me biased. I certainly do! Check it out for yourself and tell me your thoughts. This book has probably influenced how I will design healthy homes and programs for the rest of my life. I need to do more research, but I expect inoculating our homes with bacteria could, someday, be as popular as taking vitamins. I highly recommend this book for anyone that lives indoors.   

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