Air-Borne Allergies: Dust | Allergy

Air-Borne Allergies: Dust

by Allergy Guy

dust-X-12k

household dust x12,000

Dusting the house always seemed like something you had to do, because if you didn’t your house was dirty. That was about it. If you are busy and don’t care about a “dirty” house, you can let the dusting slide, right? After all, dust just consists of tiny particles, how can something so small be bad? I have better things to do!

Unfortunately, there are solid health-based reasons for dusting, as any asthmatic will tell you. Can you therefore ignore the dusting if you aren’t asthmatic, and not about to become one any time soon?

Dust is bad for everyone. If you have allergies, then it is very definitely bad for you.

200px-House Dust Mite

dust mite

Until I underwent allergy testing years ago, and reacted to the dust serum, I didn’t take dusting too seriously. Since then though, I have noticed two things:

  1. If I keep my living quarters dust-free, I feel much better.
  2. If I am exposed to a lot of dust all at once, I feel much worse.

I have also noticed that if I get lazy about the dusting, I slowly feel worse and worse, its just that I don’t notice the gradual deterioration. Then, when I do the dusting, I feel really bad from stirring up the dust.

A few hours after doing the dusting, I feel better again.

Yes, doing the dusting is worth the effort.

Controlling Dust

There is more to controlling dust than using a vacuum cleaner. In fact, a vacuum cleaner could be your worst enemy.

Take your average vacuum cleaner. It sucks up everything in site, traps the larger particles in a bag, and sends the much finer, much more harmful particles straight out the exhaust. No wonder people hate vacuuming: it is noisy, and doesn’t do all that much good. And there is a good chance that you are allergic to dust, so you will feel much worse after doing the dusting than before.

Here are some quick hints to help reduce the dust in your home:

  1. Get a vacuum cleaner with a built-in HEPA filter.
  2. Get a HEPA filter installed in your furnace
  3. Get lots of ventilation in your home. Even if it is very cold or very hot outside, open all the windows for a few minutes to get an exchange of air and let the dust particles go flying out.

Suggestions 1 and 2 are expensive. I’ll be discussing some cheaper options in other sections of this website.


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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

1 supermom April 23, 2007 at 21:37

Dust MItes and how to protect yourself from them

I have been tested and my kids for dust mite allergies and everyone in my family has always had worse allergy symptoms while we sleep, I found it its my mattress and pillows, more importantly what is inside them, dust mites and their feces. I tried a bunch of different protectors and found that cleanrest brand is the bets of the choices out there, their fabric has the smallest pore size available, less then 1 micron. check them out at cleanrest.com

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2 admin April 24, 2007 at 10:50

Thanks for your tip

Thanks for your tip, Supermom! I bet your children sleep much better now.

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