The microflora of the human integument during prolonged confinement.

Under conditions of long-term isolation in a sealed environment the microbial contamination of the skin and upper respiratory tract of man was much more pronounced than under normal conditions. This intensification of the contamination went on in a series of periodic increases in the amount of micro-organisms. Every such increase in micro-organisms was much more prominent than the preceding one. The harmful nature of the rise of the level of microbial contamination of human epidermal tissues was expressed by the development of bacterial population shifts and periodic increases in the number of pathogenic microbial forms.