The study was presented by Dr Soutrik Banerjee of the Department of Environmental and Prevention Sciences at the University of Ferrara in Italy, working with the French technology company Alten S.A. Speaking at the Congress, Dr Banerjee explained the motivation behind the research. Scientists already know that indoor air quality in schools can be influenced by a wide range of factors, including pollutants, humidity, ventilation, temperature, dampness, and biological agents such as fungi and bacteria. What has remained far less clear is whether the specific types of bacteria growing in classroom dust are linked to the lung function of the children who breathe that dust every day.

To answer that question, the research team focused on two bacterial groups with a particular ecological profile: Streptomyces and Mycobacterium species. Both are found naturally in soil, dust, and water systems, which means they can make their way into buildings through tracked-in dirt, airborne particles, and moisture. Streptomyces are filamentous bacteria famous for producing antibiotics, while certain Mycobacterium species are known to trigger immune responses in the airways. The researchers wanted to determine whether higher exposure to these microorganisms in the classroom environment was associated with differences in children’s lung health across Europe.

The investigation drew on data from the SINPHONIE study, a large European project covering 22 countries and almost 300 classrooms. This breadth gave the team an unusually rich picture of school environments across different climates, building types, and regions. From each classroom, the researchers measured the amount of Streptomyces and Mycobacterium species present in the dust, creating a quantitative profile of the bacterial burden in the rooms where children spent their school days.

Lung function was assessed using spirometry, the standard breathing test used in respiratory medicine worldwide. In a spirometry test, a child takes a deep breath and then blows out as hard and as fast as possible into a measuring device. The test calculates the total volume of air the lungs can hold and the speed at which that air can be exhaled. Reduced lung function means the lungs cannot hold as much air as normal, or that air cannot flow in and out of the lungs as easily as it should. This limits the amount of oxygen the body takes in and impairs the ability to clear carbon dioxide, which can lead to fatigue and shortness of breath.

Because many factors can influence a child’s lung capacity, the researchers carefully adjusted their analysis for a wide range of potential confounders. These included age, gender, body mass index, passive smoking exposure, pet allergens, socio-economic indicators, the age and region of the school building, and local levels of outdoor air pollution. This statistical rigor is essential in observational research, where associations can easily be distorted by differences between schools and populations. Even after accounting for all of these variables, the link between bacterial levels in classroom dust and reduced lung function persisted.

The results revealed two distinct patterns. Children in classrooms with higher levels of Streptomyces had a forced vital capacity (FVC) that was 0.08 litres lower than average. FVC measures how much air a child can blow out maximally after taking a deep breath, essentially reflecting the total capacity of the lungs. Meanwhile, children in classrooms with higher levels of Mycobacterium showed slightly lower values on two other spirometry measures: their forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) was 0.06 litres lower, and their peak expiratory flow (PEF) was 0.13 litres per second lower. FEV1 captures how much air a child can blow out in the first second of exhalation, while PEF records the maximum flow rate achievable.

Dr Banerjee was careful to put the size of the effect in context. Although the reductions found for each individual child were modest, he noted that they were statistically significant and could matter at the level of the wider population. Children are exposed to their school’s indoor environment every weekday, often for years of their lives, and a mild to moderate reduction in lung function during childhood may serve as a precursor to preventable lung disease later in life. In public health terms, small shifts across an entire population of schoolchildren can translate into a substantial burden of respiratory illness in adulthood.

What remains uncertain is the precise mechanism behind the association. Dr Banerjee suggested that bacteria in dust may irritate the airways directly or activate immune and inflammatory pathways within the lungs. He also raised an alternative possibility: that these bacteria may function as markers of broader classroom conditions, such as dampness, inadequate ventilation, poor cleaning practices, or outdoor dust entering the building. In other words, the bacteria may either exert a direct biological effect on children’s lungs, or they may simply be indicators of other indoor environmental factors that influence lung function. Distinguishing between these explanations will require further research, but either interpretation points toward the same practical conclusion: the physical condition of school buildings matters for respiratory health.

Independent experts welcomed the findings while cautioning against overreaction. Professor Alexander Möller, Head of the European Respiratory Society’s Paediatric Assembly and Professor of Paediatric Pulmonology at the University Children’s Hospital Zurich in Switzerland, who was not involved in the research, said the large European study shows that children’s lungs seem to suffer when two common types of bacteria are growing in classroom dust. He emphasized that not all bacteria are harmful, but the findings suggest the classroom environment is important in children’s lung health and support the idea that healthy school buildings matter. The practical message, he stressed, is not that schools should become sterile environments. Rather, schools should focus on good indoor air quality through adequate ventilation, control of dampness and mould, regular cleaning, and proper building maintenance. Because children spend so much of their time in the classroom, he argued that investment in indoor air quality, building maintenance, and monitoring of environmental conditions is money well spent, and that understanding how to keep this environment safe and healthy is essential for protecting the next generation’s lungs.

Subject of Research: Association between bacterial content of classroom dust and lung function in schoolchildren

Article Title: Bacteria in classroom dust associated with reduced lung function in children

Article References: Bacteria in classroom dust associated with reduced lung function in children. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: classroom dust, children's lung health, Streptomyces, Mycobacterium, spirometry, indoor air quality, SINPHONIE study, European Respiratory Society, school buildings, ventilation, respiratory health, public health

The study is grounded in a long intellectual tradition. Sociologists from Ibn Khaldun to Montesquieu speculated about the relationship between climate and social organization, and modern researchers have built an increasingly rigorous evidence base on the topic. Econometric studies have shown that extreme weather events reduce schooling and educational attainment in settings as varied as Madagascar, Ethiopia, and the global tropics. Research published in Nature Human Behaviour found that heat exposure inhibits learning both internationally and within the United States, with each additional hot school day measurably reducing achievement. Laboratory work in ergonomics has demonstrated that both hot and cold temperature exposure degrade human performance, while building science has documented how classroom air quality and thermal comfort affect students’ subjective perception, physiological responses, and learning outcomes. What has been missing, the Turkish authors contend, is a fine-grained sociological account of how these forces play out inside actual schools, in the words of the people who inhabit them every day.

To fill that gap, Gürbüz and Sever designed a qualitative study using a phenomenological approach, a method that seeks to capture the essence of lived experience rather than to measure variables statistically. They deliberately chose two contrasting provinces. Ağrı, in eastern Turkey, is defined by a cold, continental climate with long, harsh winters in which temperatures routinely plunge far below freezing. Siirt, in the country’s southeast, endures a hot climate in which late spring and summer bring punishing heat. The comparison allowed the researchers to ask whether the same underlying mechanism, the interaction between climate and educational practice, manifests differently under opposite thermal regimes.

The research group comprised 82 participants: 27 students, 27 teachers, and 28 school administrators drawn from schools across both provinces. Participants were selected through maximum diversity sampling, an intentional strategy designed to capture as wide a range of perspectives and circumstances as possible rather than to produce a statistically representative sample. Data collection and analysis followed established interpretative phenomenological procedures, and the study received ethics approval from Ağrı İbrahim Çeçen University in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The findings were then organized around three intersecting contexts that the authors identified as the main channels through which climate reaches the classroom: the sociocultural, the economic, and the educational.

The sociocultural channel proved to be among the most striking. In Ağrı, the long winter season reshapes the rhythm of social and family life, and with it the rhythm of schooling. Snow, ice, and extreme cold affect student attendance, complicate journeys to and from school, and restrict outdoor activity during breaks, a problem that connects to broader research showing that season and weather strongly influence physical activity levels. In Siirt, the equivalent disruption arrives with the heat. As air temperatures climb in late spring and summer, the study found that negative effects on educational practices intensified, echoing earlier work in Şanlıurfa, another hot Turkish province, which documented how climate characteristics affect the learning and teaching performance of secondary school students and teachers. In both cases, the climate does not merely make people uncomfortable; it restructures the social conditions under which education takes place.

The economic channel operates through family livelihoods and school resources. Seasonal agricultural labor, a well-documented feature of rural Turkey, pulls children out of school during certain periods of the year, and the timing of that labor is itself dictated by climate. Weather-dependent work patterns shape when families can afford to prioritize schooling and when economic necessity wins. At the institutional level, schools in both provinces were found to be vulnerable to climate impacts and, in the authors’ assessment, weak in terms of climate interaction, meaning that school buildings and routines had not been designed with regional climatic conditions in mind. This vulnerability was most severe in schools constructed without consideration of local climate, where problems multiplied.

The educational channel is the most direct. The study found that hot and cold weather conditions had a more negative impact on educational practices than cloudy, windy, or rainy conditions did. Extreme temperatures interfere with concentration, lesson pacing, the scheduling of the school year, and the physical usability of classrooms and schoolyards. In Ağrı, educational practices were more negatively affected overall, because the extended winter season prolongs exposure to disruptive cold. In Siirt, the damage was concentrated in the hottest months, when overheated classrooms undermine the very conditions learning requires. These findings align closely with the international quantitative literature: a meta-analytic review of temperature and performance found that both heat and cold degrade task performance, and studies of school buildings in cold climates, from Russia to China, have emphasized the importance of thermal design for educational quality.

What makes the study distinctive is its insistence that climate is not simply a background variable but an active participant in the social institution of education. The authors frame their work within ecological models of human development, in which children’s growth is understood as nested within overlapping environmental systems, from the family to the school to the broader culture and physical environment. Seen through this lens, a snowed-in road or an unventilated classroom is not an inconvenience at the margins of education; it is part of the ecological structure that determines what schooling can actually deliver. The research also resonates with historical evidence: an analysis of school logbooks from the Outer Hebrides of Scotland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries showed that extreme weather repeatedly disrupted schooling and exposed social vulnerabilities that persist in different forms today.

The policy implications are straightforward but consequential. The authors recommend that regional climatic conditions be taken into account when establishing educational programs and institutions, in order to safeguard the quality of education. In practice, that means school calendars that reflect local seasonal realities, building codes and architectural standards suited to cold or hot climates, investment in heating, insulation, and ventilation where they are most needed, and curricula and scheduling decisions that anticipate the disruptions that weather reliably brings. As climate change intensifies heat extremes and weather volatility across the globe, the study suggests that educational planners can no longer treat climate as a fixed given. The classrooms of the future, the research implies, will succeed or fail in part on how well societies learn to design education around the atmosphere that surrounds them.

Subject of Research: The interaction between regional climate conditions and educational practices in schools

Article Title: A sociological research regarding the interaction between educational practices and climate

Article References: Gürbüz, M., & Sever, M. (2026). A sociological research regarding the interaction between educational practices and climate. SN Social Sciences, 6(10), Article 449. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-026-01745-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43545-026-01745-6

Keywords: climate, education, sociology of education, qualitative research, phenomenology, school buildings, heat exposure, cold climate, Turkey, student attendance, educational attainment, school policy