‘…the project, called PathoMap, born. Over the past 17 months, a team mainly composed of medical students, graduate students and volunteers fanned out across the city, using nylon swabs to collect DNA, in triplicate, from surfaces that included wooden benches, stairway handrails, seats, doors, poles and turnstiles.
[….]
On the human front, Dr. Mason said that, in some cases, the DNA that was found in some subway stations tended to match the neighborhood’s demographic profile. An area with a high concentration of Hispanic residents near Chinatown in Manhattan, for example, yielded a large amount of Hispanic and Asian genes.
[….]
The study produced some less appetizing news. Live, antibiotic-resistant bacteria were discovered in 27 percent of the collected samples, though among all the bacteria, only 12 percent could be associated with disease. Researchers also found three samples associated with bubonic plague and two with DNA fragments of anthrax, though they noted that none of those samples showed evidence of being alive, and that neither disease had been diagnosed in New York for some time. The presence of anthrax, Dr. Mason said, “is consistent with the many documented cases of anthrax in livestock in New York State and the East Coast broadly.”….’
via Among New York Subway’s Millions of Riders, a Study Finds Many Mystery Microbes – NYTimes.com.