‘Black Death’ Spread Through Air, New Research Finds

LONDON—New evidence suggests that the “Black Death” was probably airborne and, thus, spread by coughs and sneezes instead of disease-harboring rats. The Black Death was a medieval pandemic that swept through Asia and Europe. It reached Europe in the late 1340s, killing an estimated 25 million people. It lingered on for centuries, particularly in cities. According to scientists working at Public Health England in Porton Down, for any plague to spread at such a pace it must have gotten into the lungs of victims and then been spread by coughs and sneezes of people in close proximity. It was therefore a pneumonic plague rather than a bubonic plague. The scientists confirmed this by extracting the DNA of the disease bacterium, Yersinia pestis, from teeth in some of the skulls retrieved from a construction site for a new railway in East London. While antibiotics and public health in general is much better now, the indoor air component of the spread of the disease remains an important factor to consider.

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