Hi All,

My name is chirag and I would like to try to build a couple permanent pages to share very accessible ways to use biology and our laboratory community and space to improve the quality of life for all New Yorkers, pets, plants to obtain sustained engagement. Digital visual assets help map biotech ideas to illustrate ways life in the city could be more sustainable and durable for wellness and community growth. In short, the space would be a launchpad for sharing essential biotechnology to potential community members with emphasis on popular activities or current concerns.

I will add to this after the meeting today to provide instructions on contributing to this thread to help develop the digital visual assets.

Thanks for posting Chirag I appreciate your bravery/determination, jumping into working with our Loomio platform without any in-person training. One pointer would be that ensure the context alone can be read and understood by folks coming to the thread. As the thread develops comments might get buried by others. The context can be edited or updated as needed and should give the reader everything they need to jump into a discussion. I suggest to revise the context to include some of the information in your first comment as it elaborates on what you mean by virtual space (it seems like you're talking about a website). The following may also be useful.

To add on from what I remember from when you first proposed this idea 2 meetings ago:

• the capacity to organize the creation of useful infographics would both be marketing and mission-aligned outreach

• QR codes on posters pasted in relevant areas would be one way to direct foot traffic to digital traffic

• we would need help researching and vetting specific "tips / facts" that we would want to disseminate

Also I am interested to hear you elaborate on the examples you suggest in the title of the context.

Thanks again, Danny.

So I am going to flesh this proposal out and add a pool to the community at large to inform the next steps.

I am a chemical engineer focused on biological transport in tissue to stop disease. It would be useful to brainstorm essential knowledge and practices to avoiding toxicity in the city at the nanoscale. Since we want to collect scientists, I think it would be useful to maybe establish interdisciplinary bridges to welcome more people to the community.

History: Asbestos and lead have been characterized as toxic but were indispensable building materials decades ago. Biotechnology is essential to inform and instruct on safety for daily life in the NYC.

A. Transportation: contamination risks sever

1. Subway - Viral exposure in air and surfaces, extremes in O2/CO2 levels, lack of sunlight, Solutions: Avoid subway

2. Pavement - No shock absorption, disrupts normal blood flow, breaks down joints

   Solutions: Use a bike or scooter

B. Pharmaceuticals: contamination risks sever

1. Side effects - Liver and kidney disease. Solution: Avoid pharmaceuticals

2. Shedding - Metabolites of drug spread to others after use across the ecosystem. Solution: Limit use and increase awareness of drug risks.

C. Genetic Stability : moderate risks

1. Compromised immune systems reduce mRNA stability. Solutions: Avoid sedentary daily routines, increase sunlight exposure, avoid processed foods.

2. Depression and isolation reduce immune function. Solutions: Promote cooperation and in person social cohesion for public well being.

D. Water - Thinking about water at the nanoscale.

E. Air - Dangerous Risks

1. Indoor air quality poor and leads to disease. Solution: Decrease time indoors and develop outdoor space for community engagement.

F. Plants

1. Urbanization has degraded plant and animal stability in the city. Solution: Curate open spaces and promote awareness on benefits of plants and the harms of missing them.

2. Public awareness is poor on planting and farming basics. Solution: Highlight benefits of food policy advocacy and recruit sustained engagement and support.

G. Digestion - How to interpret chemical signals of stool and sweat to live longer.

H. Pets - How do be better pet owner.

I. Offspring - How to grow better kids

This recent study really goes into plastics at the nano and microscale. Toxicity at this level devastate developing living systems and it is planet wide even on the top of Mt. Everest. The data seem to support children and babies as the most vulnerable to micro and nano plastic. It would be great to develop awareness of this recent pioneering study and some solutions that can be implemented in as a significant and meaningful deterrent to toxic exposure in air or water in everyday life.

that's a great idea. let's continue this idea - where can it take us ?

Thanks for the paper. :)

I don't know much about them, but I think microplastics in our environment are a great subject to study. In general, I think that environmental surveillance of pollutants and pathogens is an area in which community biolabs could play an important role, and governments are not supporting this type of research as much as they should. Yet people are naturally interested and concerned. Cheap testing and filtration methods would be really important.

This could also tie into some other interests of the community in plants or fungi and myco-remediation. What do the plants/fungi do with microplastics (if anything)?

I know that plankton are trying to eat them, and I assume the microplastics make their way up the food chain. https://twitter.com/PlanktonPundit/status/1501272875533221891

https://twitter.com/PlanktonPundit/status/1507382407678287874

Just collecting the relevant papers and outlining the results would be a service to the community.

@chirag raval here is a link to some potential resources concerning this issue that I mentioned at our meeting on Monday.

I'm reached out with the linked message to the owners of several Zotero group libraries that are already created for collecting this research. I haven't gotten any response from them so I renamed a group we have been using for some Newtown Creek microbiology to have a broader scope of Environmental Contamination. This the subfolder in that group where we may add interesting references related to microplastics. I updated the collection with the links posted in this thread prior to and including this comment.

I'm really enjoying the new (Zotero) version's ability to sync annotations and I think it would be a great way to collect relevant research and share notes/summaries for those who can use the software and serve as a basis for some of the work you are suggesting in this thread.

I use Zotero at work and like it a lot.