{"id":16211,"date":"2026-05-14T00:25:43","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T00:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/14\/tiny-bacteria-in-the-fog-may-be-helping-clean-the-air-sci-news\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T00:25:43","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T00:25:43","slug":"tiny-bacteria-in-the-fog-may-be-helping-clean-the-air-sci-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/14\/tiny-bacteria-in-the-fog-may-be-helping-clean-the-air-sci-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Tiny Bacteria in the Fog May Be Helping Clean the Air – Sci.News"},"content":{"rendered":"

A study of radiation fog events over Pennsylvania has found that bacteria living inside fog droplets are actively growing and feeding on toxic chemicals like formaldehyde, revealing an unexpected biological force at work in the atmosphere.<\/strong>
A foggy field in Pennsylvania has a little secret: its suspended water droplets form a habitat for helpful bacteria that eat air toxins. Image credit: Thi Thuong Thuong Cao.
\u201cThe atmosphere contains thousands to millions of bacterial cells per cubic meter,\u201d said Thi Thuong Thuong Cao, a Ph.D. student at Arizona State University, and colleagues.
\u201cHowever, it remains unclear if microbes are at all active or growing in situ or whether they are merely being transported in an inactive state.\u201d
\u201cThere\u2019s very limited knowledge about what kinds of bacteria are present in fogs, which are like clouds at the ground level.\u201d
To gain insights into the role of atmospheric droplets as microbial microhabitats, Cao and colleagues conducted an experimental campaign encompassing 32 radiation fog events over central Pennsylvania spanning two years.
They found that fewer than 1% of fog droplets contain bacteria. But averaged together, they represent an astounding amount of life.
\u201cWhen you take all of the droplets together, the concentration of bacteria is the same as in the ocean,\u201d said Professor Ferran Garcia-Pichel, also of Arizona State University.
\u201cA thimble\u2019s worth of fog water has some 10 million bacteria.\u201d
One group of bacteria stood out: methylobacteria. Samples of dry air collected before fog events contained less of these bacteria than samples collected immediately after. That suggests fog briefly boosts their numbers.
Methylobacteria eat simple carbon compounds, which include nasty chemicals like formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is a common pollutant that adds to ozone smog and harms human health.
\u201cWe observed them under the microscope to see that, yes, the bacteria are getting bigger and they\u2019re dividing, so there is growth,\u201d Cao said.
\u201cWe also found that they\u2019re using the formaldehyde as food to support their growth.\u201d
In fact, the bacteria cleared such large amounts of formaldehyde so quickly that the researchers suspected they weren\u2019t just eating it.
At high levels, the chemical is toxic to the bacteria, so they break it down into carbon dioxide to keep the levels low. It\u2019s a win-win for microbes and humans alike.
\u201cIt\u2019s relatively new that people are starting to look at biological activities in clouds, so there\u2019s still a lot which we don\u2019t understand,\u201d said Arizona State University\u2019s Professor Pierre Herckes.
\u201cAt nighttime, for example, there isn\u2019t that much atmospheric chemistry going on. Chemistry is largely driven by the Sun and by light. But if the bacteria are still doing their thing even during the nighttime, they can be important.\u201d
\u201cWhat\u2019s truly boggling is how much we still don\u2019t know about these miniature worlds in fog and clouds. Are there different bacteria in fog depending on where it forms? What might these other bacteria eat? And how do they affect our air quality?\u201d
\u201cThe sky\u2019s the limit, no pun intended,\u201d Professor Garcia-Pichel said.
The results<\/a> were published this week in the journal mBio<\/em>.
_____<\/span>
Thi Thuong Thuong Cao et al<\/em>. 2026. Growth and formaldehyde degradation of photoheterotrophic Methylobacterium<\/em> within radiation fogs. mBio<\/em> 0:e00463-26; doi: 10.1128\/mbio.00463-26<\/span><\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A study of radiation fog events over Pennsylvania has found that bacteria living inside fog droplets are actively growing and feeding on toxic chemicals like formaldehyde, revealing an unexpected biological force at work in the atmosphere.A foggy field in Pennsylvania has a little secret: its suspended water droplets form a habitat for helpful bacteria that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16211","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}