NPR

Grandma Was Right: Sunshine Helps Kill Germs Indoors

All kinds of bacteria live with us indoors, and some can make us sick. A new study shows that rooms exposed to light had about half the live bacteria found in rooms that were kept in darkness.
University of Oregon scientists used real dust from inside homes around Portland to test the effects of sunlight, UV light and darkness on bacteria found in the dust.

Even before Florence Nightingale advised that hospitals be designed to let daylight in, people observed that sunshine helps keep you healthy. But there was not much research to explain why that's the case, especially inside buildings.

Researchers at the University of Oregon set up a study of dusty, dollhouse-size rooms to compare what happens in rooms exposed to daylight through regular glass, rooms exposed to only

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