10_IN_NJeremijenko_m&a:Maquetación 1
26/6/08
17:03
Urban Space Station Project, 2007-2008
156
Página 156
Traditional clinics are built around the keeping of medical records, and similarly the backbone of the xClinic is the recordkeeping or informatics that are relevant to this inside out approach to health. Instead of blood pressure, and cholesterol levels, the xClinic will baseline the indoor and outdoor air quality, before prescribing a Greenlight, for example, and monitor its effectiveness at remediating formaldehydes and other common indoor air pollutants. Another lab procedure asks Impatients to provide a “mouse sample”, rather than a urine sample, and provides an elaborate and spectacular (humane but entertaining) mouse catching strategy for deployment in their home or office. The xClinic then does blood and hair work on the organism including heavy metal assessment. The animals is not sacrificed, however the body burden of industrial contaminants in this model organism makes a good referent for the combined effects of local contaminants, diet and their interaction with mammalian biology. Although people and their resident mice share the same environmental stressors and largely the same diet, people have more complex territorial ranges. It is difficult to ascertain if exposure occurred during childhood, from occupational activity, or from a recent vacation. This project—part also of OOZ—demonstrates cohabitation in social ecological systems and allows interpolation to traditional lab mouse models on medical health effects. It also provides readymade ongoing bio-monitoring and demonstrates the “information value” of cohabitants—more commonly known as pests. This geospatially specific serves to inform the prescribed remediation strategy, and provides in-place follow up monitoring for any design intervention.