Dead Microbes, or Lots of Tiny Floating Corpses

[ThinkMinty]

How many dead microbes are in a cubic meter of fresh air, approximately speaking?
...and a cubic foot, for that mater.

[Telok]

How many dead microbes are in a cubic meter of fresh air, approximately speaking?
...and a cubic foot, for that mater.

Which air?

The air in a tropical forest or around ground level in a swamp probably has more microbes than an ice shelf in Antartica or a mile above the Sahara desert. In interior spaces it would be a question of air circulation and running water, bathrooms and kitchens would have high counts while your attic is probably lower.

I'd start here (https://www.google.com/#q=microbes+per+cubic+area).

[Eldan]

And from that, this article: Natural atmospheric microbial conditions in a typical suburban area. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC242393/)


airborne mesophilic fungi, 0 to 7,220 with a geometric mean of 273; thermophilic fungi, 0 to 193 with a median of 2.1; Aspergillus fumigatus, 0 to 71 with a median of 1.0; aerobic bacteria, 4.2 to 1,640 with a geometric mean of 79; and fecal streptococci, 0 to 5.7 with a median of 0. No fecal coliforms were recovered.

[aspi]

And from that, this article: Natural atmospheric microbial conditions in a typical suburban area. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC242393/)
But these measurements are in colony forming units, meaning that they're living bacteria (and fungal spores one would assume). I'm not entirely sure how one would actually measure the number of dead microbes as requested by the OP. Maybe get a count of overall organic particles and then subtract everything else? However, that seems like there would be a huge margin of error at the end of that computation.