Pros and cons of dirt and health

Exposure to dirt is an inevitable part of life, yet in modern times we have an increasing obsession with cleanliness. There is ongoing debate whether this obsession and reduced exposure to infection increases the risk of conditions such as allergy and asthma.

Living in the country I am particularly interested in studies showing that being raised in a farm environment has a protective effect against hay fever and atopic eczema. Reduced risk of asthma has also been related to a childhood spent on a farm, particularly with exposure to silage, hay making, spending time in animal sheds and pig keeping.

In relation to the subject of cleanliness, I was interested to read of a new exhibition on the history of “dirt” that will appear at the Wellcome Collection in London from 24 March until the end of August 2011.

The exhibition introduces six different places as a starting point for exploring attitudes towards dirt and cleanliness:

• a home in 17th century Delft in Holland
• a street in Victorian London
• a hospital in Glasgow in the 1860s
• a museum in Dresden in the early 20th century
• a community in present-day New Delhi
• a New York landfill site in 2030

It explores the 17th century Dutch obsession with cleanliness and Joseph Lister’s regime of cleanliness that transformed hospitals. But it also shows how hygiene took a darker turn in Dresden, where the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum was co-opted into the ideological horrors of racial purity and ethnic cleansing by the Nazis.

And, as the studies on farms indicate, not everything linked with dirt in the urban mind is harmful.