Your kids’ case for getting a pet just got a lot more compelling — and it’s all based on science: New research led by Fukushima Medical University’s Hisao Okabe examining the effects of pet ownership on the prevalence of allergies in children suggests that fetus and infant exposure to pets actually reduces the risk of allergic diseases, the Wall Street Journal reports. The study examined 100k fetuses in Japan, with pregnant mothers responding to questionnaires on a broad range of questions from maternal history of allergies, to cleaning habits in the household, to the children’s nutrition.

Interestingly, the study found that while exposure to pets did reduce allergies among young children, the type of allergies differed based on the type of pet the family owns and the allergen type. Having an indoor dog in the house, for instance, reduces the likelihood of being allergic to eggs, milk, and nuts. Cats, on the other hand, reduce the incidence of sensitivity to eggs, wheat, and soybeans.

Why is that? “Pet exposure may increase abundance of certain gut microbes as well as contribute to the diversity of gut bacteria,” all of which are factors that could have a positive impact on the tendency of allergies to develop in children, Okabe said, according to the WSJ.

Your next hotel stay probably isn’t going to have daily housekeeping: Household hotel chains like the Marriott and Hilton will no longer be cleaning rooms daily — unless guests specifically request it, the New York Times reports. Save for top-tier luxury hotels like the St. Regis and the Ritz-Carlton, hotel guests need to manage their expectations in terms of their rooms’ tidiness and cleanliness. Some hotels even put “incentives” like additional loyalty points to dissuade visitors from what is now portrayed as an unnecessary practice.

The reason? A combination of factors according to hospitality professor and expert Bjorn Hanson, NYT reports. Chief among those is cost and staffing, as expected. But sustainability and guest privacy are also allegedly factors behind the change: “Some guests may have varying levels of comfort with someone entering their rooms,” a Hilton spokesman was quoted as saying in the article.

We’re not quite sure that’s the real reason: If guests need more privacy, the “do not disturb” sign is always available. It’s more likely that cutting costs during the pandemic is one legacy the industry wants to maintain — even as occupancy rates are projected to bounce back to 64% in 2023, after covid-19 cost the industry USD 108 bn between 2020 and 201, according to a report by the American Hotel & Lodging Association and Kalibri Labs.

And hotels’ cleaning staff aren’t too thrilled, either. While the change in cleaning schedules may form a minor inconvenience to hotel-goers, it has much more serious ramifications for the establishments’ staff: Over USD 5 bn in cut wages per annum for cleaners —with women of color being particularly vulnerable to their hours being reduced, a 2021 report (pdf) by Unite Here has found. And the immense financial blow aside, cleaning rooms less frequently is actually more taxing physically on hotels’ staff, seasoned hotel staffer Elena Newman is quoted as saying. The reason is simply that as dirt and trash pile-up, they simply become more time consuming to clean up.

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