Fungus foray: Which London tube line is mouldiest?

The Jubilee line is the youngest and smartest of all London Underground lines, but it is mouldier than the much older Central and Bakerloo lines.

Daniel Henk, now at the University of Bath, UK, and colleagues collected fungal cells lurking on the platforms at 12 stations across the three lines. They then compared these levels with those in a London hospital and in one of the city's parks.

People travelling on the Jubilee line ? which opened in 1979 and was extended in 1999 ? breathe in fractionally more fungal cells than those on the Central line, which opened in 1900. In both cases, it was just over 1 fungal cell per minute. This is twice as much as you would get in the park and, reassuringly, four times as much as in the hospital. On the Bakerloo line, which opened in 1906, people take in 0.75 cells a minute.

Strangely, the Jubilee line had the fewest Penicillium cells ? from which penicillin is produced ? though it is one of the most common fungal species in the outside air.

Why the differences among the lines? "It's an open question," says Henk, but it's likely to be down temperature, humidity, the influence of other microbes, and how the underground stations are connected to the outside.

Most fungal spores are harmless to healthy people, says Catherine Pashley at the University of Leicester, UK, who was not involved in the work. Many of these will be filtered out by the hairs that line our noses. Any that do get to the lungs will be dealt with by the immune system.

The London Underground is also home to its own species of mosquito, the aptly named Culex molestus, which has evolved to be genetically separate from the species living on the surface.

Journal reference: Fungal Ecology, doi.org/m66

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