Talk:Dust

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[edit] Boomerang Contribution

My contribution to this page has again been removed - this time by Madchester. I thought that I had resolved all problems with Sam Blanning. Sorry if this comment is in the wrong place but the system is confusing to a novice. John Bolton MBICSc 01:01, 19 April 2007 (UTC) John E Bolton

[edit] Headline text

Somebody added the lines " dust sucks " and " say no to dust ". I cannot find these in the " edit page " fan. Could somebody please remove this vandalism?

I removed the following text:

Dust is a band made up of 3 young guys living right in Vancouver, B.C. The people that make up Dust are - Simon Marmorek, Anton Lipovetsky, and Koby Shuster. They have been playing in this band since May of 2002. They write all of our own music and lyrics to go along with it. Their current plans are to record some demo tracks and play lots of gigs. If you have one available, let them know at (604) 874-1153 or visit their website at Dust.i8.com.

There is an ongoing discussion on whether fame and importance should be a factor for including info in Wikipedia at Wikipedia_talk:Fame_and_importance. If you disagree with text removal, please argue here. Paranoid 18:30, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Defy the laws of physics with dust

The physical behavior of dust follows laws that are not always comparable with that of solid or fluid matter. For example, the pressure on a box full of dust need not be uniform.

I'm removing the above because it is sufficiently enigmatic as to impart no actual information to the reader. Tempshill 17:09, 27 April 2006 (UTC)


[edit] dust in popular culture section?

i came to this wiki to answer a question: is it accurate when movies/books portrary an ancient secluded ABANDONED room--like an old attic-- as filled with dust? like the attic in Goonies. if dust is caused by human sloughing and human presence, then dust in popular culture is an unrealistic method of signifying the age of something. if i can formulate this in a better way i might add it to the wiki. i'm pretty sure i've never seen any dust on anything in my attic-- i presume because nobody lives in there.

Well, my attic is mostly covered in dusgusting house dust and hair, then again i go up in there to cut the cheese when relatives are present in my household, so maybe that has something to do with it. mikhal astinov

The average room or attic is not sealed meaning that as the temperature or barometric pressure rises and falls air with dust will seep in through cracks, openings for electrical wires and plumbing, etc. Some of the dust falls and remains in the room. When I was a young teenager I found an underground room (I think it was an old water storage cistern) that had been sealed for over 50 years and it had no dust, no spiders, nor any other creepy crawly things. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 06:35, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What is the complete distribution of house-dust sources?

If 70% of housedust comes from skin sloughing off the inhabitants, where does the other 30% come from? How much comes in the house on our clothes? How much comes in on our feet? How much comes through open windows and ventilation? Where does the rest of it come from? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 170.252.11.11 (talk) 19:01, 19 February 2007 (UTC).

Actually, 80% of dust is HUMAN skin, shed...the author of this article is implying that dust is made up mostly from pets. NOT SO. HUMANs, folks. HUMANS. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.47.55.57 (talk) 16:23, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I would also like to see some much more detailed cites on this subject. You see, I have heard the same dust = human skin quote, but began to wonder if it is not an urban legend. You see, I have been looking at our own household dust with a digital microscope, among other things. More than 90% of it is fibrous and hence probably not skin cells. Furthermore, the claims about the mass of skin cells being shed daily only make sense if one never bathes; I strongly suspect that a very high percentage of mine get washed down the drain. Indeed, it makes no sense that there would be a constant composition; it would surely depend on the local environment, house construction, number of occupants, cultural effects, and so on. So, can someone cite some actual research? -- Securiger (talk) 11:06, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] No mention of air cleaners

Why no mention of air cleaners or filters like HEPA or electronic ion? Do they work, and if so how effective are they. I think this article could be longer. --70.48.68.155 02:18, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Frustrated With House Dust.

We have had the air ducts professionally cleaned in our home, Feb 2006 and Apr 2007 . We use premium air filters that are changed every month.Within an hour of dusting the house, coffee tables and such, the dust comes right back on everything after the furnace has shut off when set temp. has been reached. Can anyone help with suggestions on how to reduce this frustration?

Leave the fan running. Our heater system has a low speed fan that's left running 24-hours a day. If that's not enough then look into a heating/aid conditioning a system that provides positive pressure. It will pull fresh air in from the outside through filters and into the house. Related to this is to get an electrostatic pre-filter followed by an ionization filter. Some ionization filters also include UV lights to also kill bacteria that may be resident in condensation particles. I believe UV can also kill dust mites.
Overall, you should talk with a heating/air conditioning person as there are pros/cons with the systems such as the ozone from an ionization filter. In my own house I use just an electrostatic filter combined with running the fan continuously and have very little dust. I personally consider duct cleaning services to be a waste of money. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 01:17, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dead Skin Cells.

Added some references for dust material composition levels. Does anybody really use the word sloughing in daily conversation? Think the percentages listed in this article are a little off, not quite sure how to interpret the data for percentages of what's what in dust. -JasonAltenburg —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.41.55.118 (talk) 10:00, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Needing cleanup

Is the 'needs cleanup' tag serious, or humourous? The page is no messier than a lot one sees - is there a specific concern?Dickpenn 17:10, 21 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Composition of dust

Dust in homes, offices, and other human environments is mainly generated by the inhabitants (especially domesticated pets such as dogs, cats and birds), and mainly from their skin cells that slough off.

Series 'E' - episode 6 ('Everything etc.') of QI claimed that this is a myth. The cite used in the article [1] seems particularly poor. Jooler 23:48, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dust...

If dust comes mostly from human skin, why then are vacant houses often so dusty? ~ UBeR 06:55, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

   Because their is no one to disturb the dust. Also it isn,t made of just dead skin cells.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.248.245.19 (talk) 14:36, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dubious tag on the composition paragraph

I have added a {{dubious}} tag to the composition paragraph, where we repeat the oft-repeated myth that household dust is 90% skin cells. I realise we currently have a cite to support the claim, but that cite is from a non-peer-reviewed source which is only peripherally concerned with the detailed composition of dust; it is entirely possible that the author simply repeated the myth as a gee-whiz by-the-by factoid.

So, I have been trying to find a suitable, definitive source on the composition of household dust, but without much luck. The reason seems to be that there is no single or representative composition (see, e.g. [2].) Even restricting ourselves to indoors, household dust in the USA, the composition varies by region, by season, by housing construction, by heating method, and even location within the house (dust on high surfaces having a different composition to that on floors.) Typical ingredients include, but are not limited to, microscopic natural mineral particles, mineral or synthetic particles sifting from building materials, microscopic plant matter particles, soot, fungi and fungal spores, bacteria, fibres from clothing and carpets, human hair, and yes, skin cells. However the closest I could get to hard numbers for this is not a peer reviewed paper but patent applications (this one and this one) in which it seems that human skin cell contribution is a maximum of 38% and usually much lower. To the extent that we can describe a "main" component for something so variable, in fact it seems to be cotton fibres, not human skin.

One peer reviewed study which did give hard data is this one, but it is for (Danish) office dust, not household dust. Not too surprisingly paper dust figured very highly in the organic fraction there, but more surprising was that the total organic fraction was only 33% by mass: 2/3 of Danish office dust is inorganic! (If this was a household dust study it would thoroughly debunk the myth, however one could quite reasonably claim that offices would have a lower skin cell fraction than homes due to a) reduced occupancy times; b) different cleaning methods; and c) personal grooming -- which tends to shed skin cells -- mainly occurs at home.)

These sources are not good enough, in my opinion, to rewrite the section but I do believe they cast grave doubt on it as it is written, hence I am adding the tag. -- Securiger (talk) 04:58, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I was the one who added the quotation, about a month ago. I found it on Google book search.[3]. Although it is only a secondary source, the author does cite primary sources for the information. Specifically, the two references for the claim that house and office dust is 70-90% human skin are these two:
  • Clark, R P and Cox, R N, "The Generation of Aerosols from the Human Body", Article 95 in "Airborne Transmission and Airborne Infection", Eds., J F P Hers and K C Winkler, Oosthoek Publishing Co., Utrecht, the Netherlands, pp 413-426, 1973.
  • Clark, R P, "Skin Scales Among Airborne Particles", Journal of Hygiene (Cambridge), Vol. 72, pp 47-51, 1974.
So the authors certainly weren't just repeating a myth, but it would be nice to see a proper analysis from some primary sources to back up this information. Singinglemon (talk) 02:13, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I've replaced the quotation with an alternative which seems to better reflect the highly variable nature of domestic dust. This article is still a long way from being half-decent. It needs a lot more analysis and references. And it badly needs a subsection on atmospheric dust. Singinglemon (talk) 01:30, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia

I just added the "trivia" tag. IMO few of the fictional references are noteworthy and that whole section could go if no one disagrees. The religious section is a little better where it explains the religious significance of dust, as long as it's not just a list of quotes. JRocketeer (talk) 04:02, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Irony

Does anyone else see the irony in the 'Dust' article requiring cleanup? Ndenison (talk) 19:01, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

yes, I did =)) very funny! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.233.101.52 (talk) 19:58, 3 June 2008 (UTC)