Let’s face it, crowded train commutes are an absolute drag. You’re squished up against random strangers for what seems like an eternity, weird smells are wafting throughout the carriage, and there’s someone else’s bag or suitcase jammed up against your hip.
But as it turns out, you are sharing much more with your fellow passengers than just train space and the limited fresh air available.
According to a new study published in Cell Reports, train commuters swap and share microbes like a grotty 1960’s hippie party and it gets worse as the day goes on.
Using Hong Kong’s transit system – which services a whopping 5 million commuters every day – as a testing ground, scientists recruited several volunteers to ride the city’s eight train lines over the course of several weeks. The volunteers’ hands were washed prior to each trip and were swabbed after each train ride, which lasted about 30 minutes.
This method allowed scientists to track the changes of the microbial community of each train line and the results were, and I’m paraphrasing here, fascinating and terrifying.
One of the study’s senior authors Gianni Panagiotou said that the microbial communities of each Hong Kong train line was unique in its features during each morning. But as more and more people use the subway throughout the day, the microbial communities of every train line became similar until it was dominated by human skin bacteria.
Despite Hong Kong Metro doing their utmost best to clean every train surface, Panagiotou says the lack of personal space and the sheer number of train commuters mean that it is all for naught, which bodes well for Sydney and its crazily overcrowded trains.
So in short, y’all are a walking germ farm if you catch a train at any point of the day.
Thankfully for us, all the germs that cover the subway are perfectly harmless. But the rapid efficiency in how bacteria is spread throughout a city gives scientists some cause for concern should a deadly disease ever make its way to the transit system.
Maybe it’s time to start wearing a hazmat suit every morning. Or 24/7.