TORONTO -They religiously monitor Asian newspaper articles, devour World Health Organization reports, scan medical literature. They debate the principles that drive the evolution of influenza viruses and critique government preparations for a flu pandemic.

But they aren't virologists, microbiologists, epidemiologists or public health leaders. (Well, most of them aren't, anyway.) They are regular folk - housewives, writers, college instructors - who share an obsession over what they believe is the looming threat of a flu pandemic.

Meet the Internet's dedicated and growing community of flu bloggers.

Some blog to educate themselves. Some blog to inform others. Some blog in the hopes of spurring public officials to action.

"We're like a little tribe of hunter-gatherers and we're kind of scattered around looking for things to eat under rocks," explains Crawford Kilian, author of a blog entitled H5N1 and an instructor of communications at Capilano College in North Vancouver.

"And once in awhile we find something: 'Hey, get a load of this iguana.' And everyone takes a look. And then we go scattering off looking for more iguanas. And in the process, we kind of keep each other informed."

The community is tiny, but the number of hits the sites are getting is on the rise, perhaps signalling a burgeoning public awareness of the growing concern in the scientific community that the H5N1 strain could be poised to trigger the first pandemic of this century.

"The blogosphere is making these issues a little more permeable," Kilian says. "It's slowly spreading the news."

The blogger or bloggers who run a site called Effect Measure first seized upon avian influenza's potential to spark a pandemic - and the seemingly anemic response to that threat - as a metaphor for the state of the U.S. public health system.

"Here's a freight train coming down the tracks and nobody's doing anything about it," says one of the editors, who post from behind the alias "Revere."

"I wanted to sort of goad people. Get some action at the leadership level."

That blog bears the disclaimer that the editors are well-known public health scientists or practitioners who choose to obscure their identity for maximum freedom of expression. (The Revere quoted here is indeed a recognizable name.)

Melanie Mattson is the author of Just a Bump in the Beltway, a proudly left-of-centre political and public affairs blog with a strong interest in pandemic flu.

A self-employed writer from Falls Church, Va., Mattson is an avid amateur epidemiologist who has been following developments with H5N1 since 1997. That's when the bird virus set off scientific alarm bells by becoming the first known strain of avian flu to directly infect humans.

She scours the web for flu science, sharing finds with people she deems to be "rational actors" and eschewing those she feels are trying to use the subject to support fringe views.

"This is citizen journalism at its best. And also its worst," she says. Why worst? "Because there are the people out there who are saying it's a CIA conspiracy."

Mattson, the Reveres and the blogger behind The Next Hurrah this week launched a Flu Wiki, a resource guide that will evolve from entries written and edited by visitors to the site. The wiki (the term is based on wiki wiki, the Hawaiian word for quick or informal) has been averaging about 1,500 hits a day since it launched, with the average reader viewing about 15 pages of the text per visit.

In general, the flu blogs and discussion boards that they interact with contain a broad mix of up-to-the-minute news, science, opinion and advice. Effect Measure recently ran an item on how long different foodstuffs last, for those putting aside supplies on the assumption the food distribution network could be severely disrupted by a pandemic.

Other discussions relate to how or whether to try to put aside personal stockpiles of oseltamivir, a prescription antiviral drug that blunts the blow of human flu and is believed to be effective against H5N1 as well.

One frequent contributor, known in the flu cyberworld as CanadaSue, constructed a lengthy scenario - posted on the Flu Wiki - that details what life could be like in her hometown, Kingston, Ont., during a pandemic.

CanadaSue - Sue Smith, a homemaker and former nurse - thinks people need to start putting some thought into how they might deal with the hardships a pandemic could provoke.

"My position is that individuals need to be thinking about it themselves and thinking about what they're going to do in their individual circumstances. Yeah, that might be food in the basement. For some it might be Tamiflu," says Smith, who adds she's not a proponent of personal stockpiles of the drug.

"I'm trying to make the public, those who are interested - and frankly, not that many are yet - I'm just trying to get them interested in thinking: OK, how will this affect me? How will it affect my family? How will it affect my job?"

Mattson shares that view.

"I think that it's responsible for people to know that there is this threat lurking out there," she says.

"Trying to strike the balance in tone between saying 'My God, we're all going to die,' and saying 'This could be nothing, it could be something, probably you should know about it,' is the daily balancing act that I'm trying to walk."

Kilian too worries about balance. In his case, it's the balance between opinion and fact - and whether blog surfers know how to distinguish one from the other.

"Just because I'm out there, shovelling this information onto my blog does not mean that I know what the hell I'm doing or what I'm talking about," he admits.

"And yet because the information's there and the blog looks kind of tidy it acquires a sort of false aura of expert knowledge. And that in itself can be a real hazard. That can be a downside of the web and blogging in particular. And that is that just because you're out there and you're shooting your mouth off, people start treating you like a guru." CP Health, Media, Software, Politics

Some blogs which focus on pandemic influenza:

-Crawford Kilian's H5N1, http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/

-The Flu Wiki, http://www.fluwikie.com/index.php?nMain.HomePage

-Effect Measure, http://effectmeasure.blogspot.com/

-Melanie Mattson's Just a Bump in the Beltway, http://www.node707.com/

-Epidemica, http://www.epidemi.ca/

-Avian Flu, http://avianflu.typepad.com/