Culture
A Microbial Map of the City
Urban sewers are rich repositories of information on human health and behavior, MIT researchers believe.
Show some love for your sewer system. Besides seamlessly handling your waste (most of the time), sewers fight disease. Cholera, typhoid, dysentery, and many other fatal infections that once spread rampantly via poor sanitation no longer plague cities of the developed world, thanks to underground pipes and treatment plants.
We’ve been enjoying these luxuries long enough to forget that they’re luxuries. Now, at the cusp of the “smart city” era, our underground networks are beginning to take on new duties as servants to public health.