When was the last time you dusted your house? That fine layer of soft, grey-white dust that settles on your knick-knacks & side tables seems pretty innocuous, but it’s actually quite a trouble-maker. Dust is something like a potpourri of allergens. Dead skin cells, dust mites & their excrement, animal dander, pollen & spores are commonly found in your average dust bunny. So basically, if there is something in this world that will trigger an allergic reaction or just irritate your airways, you can find it in dust.
If you take a pinch of dust out of your vacuum bag & put it under a microscope, here are a few or the things that you would find:
- Paint particles (which depending on the paint, can contain lead)
- Plant & insect body parts
- Smoke particles
- Particles from auto & industrial emissions
- Heavy hydrocarbon waste from your oil or gas heater
- Dust mites & their feces
- Mold spores
- Constructions debris (saw dust, drywall dust, etc)
- Rodent excrement (which becomes airborne as it dehydrates)
- Bacteria
- Asbestos
- Specks of metal from door hinges or other places where metal is creating friction against metal
- Heavy metals (lead, cadmium & mercury)
- Try to clean high traffic rooms like bedrooms & living rooms on a weekly basis, paying careful attention to areas where dust can accumulate (corners, picture frames, door frames, window sills, etc.)
- If you have allergies or asthma, you should have a non-allergic person dust & vacuum for you
- It takes about 20 minutes for dust to settle after sweeping or dusting, so after cleaning, step outside for a few minutes so that you will not get your lungs filled with dust
- There is no hard & fast solution to keeping dust from being produced, because every situation is different. The amounts of dust you find in your house may correlate to its age or simply to the part of the country you live in. Typically, using a HEPA quality furnace filter ( like those made by Dynamic ) will help reduce the overall amount of dust in your air.
Even if you happen to have lungs of steel or commit random acts of dusting (like the ladies in the Swiffer Duster ads), for all those with allergies or asthma, it’s important to keep dust levels down inside your home. Depending on the size & make-up of dust particles, they can stay afloat in the air for many hours up to a couple of days!
Even non-allergic individual persons can be affected by dust, simply because some of the elements can be absorbed through the skin as well as inhaled. This means that asbestos & lead dust from the paint in an older house or building as well as other heavy metals can be harmful if they land on your skin. An element like rodent waste that has become dehydrated is easily inhaled with other dust particles & has the potential to cause some serious health risks (an outbreak of acute pneumonia was attributed to inhaling the fine dust of rodent urine & feces–not a pleasant thought, is it?).
Things to keep in mind while dusting:
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