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Apr 27, 2009 10:51 pm US/Central
Good Question: What Is Dust Made Of?
(WCCO)
Perhaps the least pleasant part of spring cleaning is the discovery of a giant pile of dust, lurking behind a TV or on a bookshelf. So what is in dust and why does it keep coming back?
"It's kind of a love/hate relationship with dust I have," said Meg Brown, co-owner of
Clean The Funk Up, an all-natural house cleaning service in Minneapolis.
Brown said she spends a lot of time around dust and she's developed allergies to the particles because she's wiping it up so often.
However, when it comes to pondering the contents, "I try not to think about it," she said. "Dust is troublesome."
"It can be disgusting," said Neil Carlson, an industrial hygienist and public health specialist at the University of Minnesota.
According to Carlson, from a scientific standpoint, dust is a small particle, typically from 1 to 1000 microns.
"It's like slicing the diameter of a strand of hair 75 times," Carlson said.
And dust is often made up of skin particles.
"People shed most of their skin probably within a couple weeks," he said.
Those flecks of skin end up as dust in our homes. But skin isn't necessarily the main source of dust.
"Primarily dust comes from pollen, hair, insect particles, insect fecal particles, fungal spores, fabric fibers, sheetrock particles," said Carlson.
"If it's in a kitchen area, you'll see lots of starch particles from the food," he added.
While it looks disgusting, unless you have asthma or allergies, there may not be much of a health hazard.
"There will be organisms that feast on skin and think dust is a tasty meal," said Carlson, referring to dust mites. "If you can do things to keep it clean, without being phobic about it, you should."
There is a reason why dust seems to reappear just days after it gets cleaned up and it's not necessarily because you're doing a poor job cleaning, said Carlson.
Especially in the winter, when the humidity is low, "there's a lot of static charge. It's really strong. When you wipe the dust off, it'll come back and deposit on it. That's why 3M has developed a statically-charged wipe cloth to more efficiently pull the dust off the surfaces," he explained.
Scotch Brite is a 3M name brand of electrostatic wipe and Swiffer has made billions of dollars selling its statically-charged wipe cloths.
"There's no way to keep it out for good, unless you're going to live in a plastic bubble," said Carlson.
"Dust pays the bills," said Brown, the house-cleaner. "But it's my nemesis."
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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