I knew it.  But the social scientist in me says he doesn’t really offer details about this evidence.  How would it be obtained, one wonders? Randomized trials from birth to age 25? Track the Reading West Africa students for ten years after their “exposure” to Burkina!  But anyway, one more benefit of not being germ-obsessed… I’ve always been the opposite…

Increasing evidence suggests that the alarming rise in allergic and autoimmune disorders during the past few decades is at least partly attributable to our lack of exposure to microorganisms that once covered our food and us. As nature’s blanket, the potentially pathogenic and benign microorganisms associated with the dirt that once covered every aspect of our preindustrial day guaranteed a time-honored co-evolutionary process that established “normal” background levels and kept our bodies from overreacting to foreign bodies.

via Let’s Add a Little Dirt to Our Diet – NYTimes.com.