The Grossest Things You Will Breathe on the Subway
Rotting Wood, Mushrooms, Mystery Fungi
Of the myriad “fungal sequences” found in the subway air, most of them were pretty typical, comprised of mushrooms, mildews, plant pathogens, and yeasts. Gross, but not so different from essentially everywhere else on the earth. A good 20 percent of these “had no counterparts” in the outside world, however, and there was an unusually high occurrence of “wood rot fungi,” which researchers suspect is a function of wooden track structure. Rotting wooden track structure.