You Could Be Sleeping With Billion Dust Mites : Health: Dust contains many allergens, including these tiny creatures that feed mostly on flakes of human skin.
Feeling unappreciated?
Remember, if it weren’t for you and the skin particles flaking off your body, the billions of dust mites living in your bed would go hungry.
I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were still eating breakfast.
Well, there is no time to dilly-dally over your cornflakes anyway. It’s time to pull out the furniture and herd out those basketball-size dust bunnies. Actually, if you can roll out those dust balls without suffering coldlike symptoms, you’re one of the lucky ones. Not lucky to have Gargantuan dust hunks but fortunate that you are not among the estimated one-third of Americans allergic to dust.
For those with a dust allergy, exposure can mean being plagued by one or a number of coldlike symptoms: runny nose, watery eyes, coughing, sneezing and wheezing. To the susceptible it can even bring on asthma attacks.
Dust is the detritus of our home environment. It may include--but is not limited to--human and animal hair, dander (dry skin flakes) from us and our pets, disintegrating bits of dead insects, mold spores, pollen, bacteria, lead (if there is peeling lead paint in the house), silica, dried pet saliva, strands of various fabrics and fecal matter from rodents and insects.
Oh, and dust mites.
Dust, especially dust collected in moist, warm areas with plenty of human traffic (like overstuffed couches and mattresses), is often home sweet home to either Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus or Dermatophagoides farinae, or both. They are sightless, eight-legged arthropods that dine primarily on shed scales of human skin.
“Everyone has them (mites),” said Dr. Bruce Gordon, a Hyannis, Mass., surgeon and allergist who is an assistant surgeon at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston and a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. He estimates that a bed can have billions of the tiny critters, although the number can vary greatly. “If it’s comfortable for humans, it’s comfortable for dust mites.”
However, dust mites are a source of discomfort for many people who can’t handle dust. The most serious allergens (substances that may cause an allergic reaction) are contained in the fecal pellets of the otherwise harmless mites. The primary culprit is a protein that comes from the mite’s digestive tract. Dust also contains other allergens, including cat dander and decaying bits of dead cockroaches and other insects.
“At the moment, they (mites) are considered the most significant allergen,” said Dr. Andrea Apter, chief of allergy-immunology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington. She notes that until recently, few scientists have been swept up in the study of dust and that new dust allergens are still being discovered. (The allergy to cockroach remains was discovered recently.) She says that there may be elements of dust that are irritating to non-allergic people as well as to allergy sufferers.
If you think you’re allergic to dust, you may want to try some simple, low-cost anti-dust measures to see if your symptoms improve. Only a doctor can determine what your specific allergies are. You cannot hope to rid your home of mites, Gordon said, “and still have other living things around.” But you can reduce the population and possibly reduce the sniffling or hacking they’re causing.
“For the allergic individual, we concentrate on the bedroom, because that’s where they spend the most time,” Apter said. Gordon encourages his dust-sensitive patients to make the bedroom “an oasis.”
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For starters, you need to get rid of various items in the room that collect dust. Bare wood or linoleum floors--surfaces that can be damp-mopped at least weekly--are the way to go. Get rid of carpets, which are favorite dust-mite colonies. “Put in little area rugs that you can easily launder,” Gordon suggested. There is a product called Acarosan that is available in most drugstores. It is a moist powder that is applied to carpets twice a year, and vacuumed off, to control mites. Steam cleaning of carpets can help, but it must be done while the weather is dry so that no moisture remains in the carpet.
Eliminate as many dust-catching objects as you can: wall hangings, knickknacks, stereo gear, books and bookcases; try to strip the room down to the basics. Use blinds instead of curtains, or use curtains made of washable fabric. Keep closets closed, clean and clutter-free.
Obviously, if you think cat allergen (found in dried cat saliva) is what is getting you sneezing, try to keep your cat out of the bedroom.
The simplest way to control dust mites in bed is to buy zip-up plastic-lined covers for your box spring, mattress and pillow. Gordon recommends getting rid of old pillows and buying polyester fiber pillows and putting them in the dryer once a week. Use washable blankets and comforters that can be washed regularly in hot water. Obviously, water bed owners don’t have to worry about mites in the mattress. But they should wash the fabric pads on top of the beds.
You also can buy appliances and systems to clear the air of dust. (“What’s important isn’t what’s on the floor but what they breathe in,” Apter said.) Buying costly cleaners and vacuum systems should definitely be a last resort, both Apter and Gordon said.
Rita Rooney, health education specialist with the Asthma & Allergy Foundation of America, believes that portable air filters--the “high efficiency particulate air” (HEPA) types are recommended--are good investments for those suffering from allergies. Several models cost about $250, and they are small enough (the size of a small footstool) to go on vacation with the allergy sufferer.
Also, if a home is equipped with central forced-air heating and cooling, HEPA or electrostatic filters can be added to the furnace to clean the air in the house.
Outside of the bedroom, carpeting and overstuffed chairs and sofas are the main dust mite motels. Gordon’s best advice to allergy sufferers is to get rid of such furniture or to encase upholstered sections of antiques in plastic.
If all else fails, allergists can suggest over-the-counter allergy medicine or prescribe drugs that will alleviate allergy symptoms. Gordon says an effective prescription drug for allergy symptoms--Seldane--may be available in non-prescription form in a year or so. Allergy shots also are available, as a last resort for the highly allergic.
Having said all of this about avoiding dust mites, your problem with dust could be rodent droppings or cockroach bits or even high doses of lead from flaking lead paint. To solve these problems, you’ll have to rid yourself of the pests or have your house tested for lead.