Can farts spread disease like other body aerosols?
In: Biology
Theoretically, but clothing usually filters anything out and people don’t tend to have their faces in a location that would cause it to commonly be an issue
Yes and no. Microbes tend to spread based on where they “live” in the body. Most respiratory illnesses multiply and divide in the respiratory system, so they cause damage there and spread from there (coughing, sneezing). Other illnesses like cholera tend to live in the intestines, so they spread from there (fecal matter).
So it would be very unlikely for a rhinovirus to make its way from your nose through your digestive tract and into your gut to be ejected by your flatulence and spread that way. Likewise, it would be very unlikely for cholera hanging out in your GI tract to make its way up to your nose and be sneezed out to infect someone else.
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