Habitat Contamination - Warning: Rambling Ahead!

Lots of philosophical questions ahead. Jump right in.

A whole disparate confluence of news events today has led me to
question how procedures in a Habitat might affect contamination
issues.

We've all seen reports that the Habitat environment will be able to
keep out weeds, pests, etc by careful screening at the entry docks.
I'm sure that they might succeed. But what procedures would they
have in place? Manual inspection? Radiate everything? Send it all
through a vacuum? How reliable are these procedures?

Now, when the larger Habitats are constructed all of their
atmosphere will be derived from lunar and NEO extraction, thus with
careful procedures no mold spores and other particulates in our
Earth air need be introduced. Is this a good idea? What would the
benefits be of living in a clean room environment and what of the
drawbacks. I'm aware that pollen would be produced by trees and
such. How much thought would be put into outgassing from products?
Would it be worth it? How about the restrictions that these
policies, if implemented, would put on the individual?

Would a Habitat society not be as extremely individualistic as the
US and other western nations? Do you think that it might evolve into
a more community ethos, more like Asian countries used to be. The
fact that everybody is living in a bubble and six feet below the
ground is sudden death for the unprotected might lead to different
governing principles. I wonder if this turned out to be the case,
would there be an attraction to immigrate for Western people used to
the way we do things now. I recall reading some guys thoughts on
only people from the developing world would put up with the cramped
quarters and hard work in building a Habitat. This is just adding to
his theme.

Taking the clean environment example to more extremes. What if it is
decided to "go clean" how will they insure that no earth air in the
shuttles leaks into the Habitat? Do you think that air filtration
can be that effective?

Taking this topic to another depressing level. I just finished
reading about the AIDS crisis in Africa. Combine that with anthrax
and smallpox scares, norwalk virus outbreaks on cruise ships,
peoples growing reluctance to practice safe-sex, etc. As a practical
matter, are we going to have to import condoms from Earth? What is
the chemical composition of latex?

What if as part of their society they try to screen out as many
infectuous diseases as possible, right down to the common cold. I
mean it doesn't develop spontaneously from nothing - it's
transmitted from person to person, through an endless chain during
which it mutates. Let's say they break the chain. Could such a
society function as a part of Earth society or would they be
isolating themselves completely. Sure they'd be 250,000 miles away,
person to person contact with earth people wouldn't be a common
occurance but still, do you think a sort of paranoia would set in?

If people entering the habitat had to go through a quarantine
period, would that work? How do you think that they would feel about
their personal liberties being affected? Would tourists put up with
such screening? Would this kill a tourist industry? What if a
citizen came back from Earth but had a infectuous disease? How much
do individual liberties rate against society's freedoms?

I know that a lot of the above is asking questions about matters
that have been resolved here on Earth, but I question whether we
should assume that the conditions which led to the resolutions here
will be the same in a Habitat. If not, then is it safe to assume
that the same resolutions will be arrived at?

Well, I warned you that there was a lot of rambling in this post. I
know that there's no "right" answer, but it sure would be
interesting to explore these issues from different peoples
perspectives.

TangoMan