Sun Beam & Dust!

[orin stepanek]

Hi! The other day; while sitting in the Living room; I noticed a scene I've noticed a thousand times before! Only thing is; I have never reflected on it! The dust particles were floating around in the beam like stars in the galaxy. Probably strange that I should compare the dust particles to the stars.

[Chris Peterson]

Probably strange that I should compare the dust particles to the stars. :wink:

I don't know. Most of that dust is the dead skin of the people and animals in your house. And we're all just stardust, right?

[neufer]

Probably strange that I should compare the dust particles to the stars.

I don't know. Most of that dust is the dead skin of the people and animals in your house. And we're all just stardust, right?

Is House Dust Mostly Dead Skin?
By Benjamin Radford, Live Science Contributor | December 11, 2012

<<Sometimes a specific percentage of dust is said to be skin, usually about 70 or 80 percent, but unless you’re a molting bird or reptile (or you work in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory), very little of your environment is composed of dead body parts. There are far more common sources of dust pollutants, including animal dander, sand, insect waste, flour (in the kitchen), and of course lots of good, old-fashioned dirt. Every time we open a window or a door, we stir up and move around tiny, airborne particles that eventually settle around the house. Humans do shed dead skin, but most of it is carried away by water when we shave or bathe, ending up not on our floors but in our sewers.>>

[Chris Peterson]

Probably strange that I should compare the dust particles to the stars. :wink:

I don't know. Most of that dust is the dead skin of the people and animals in your house. And we're all just stardust, right?

Is House Dust Mostly Dead Skin?
By Benjamin Radford, Live Science Contributor | December 11, 2012

<<Sometimes a specific percentage of dust is said to be skin, usually about 70 or 80 percent, but unless you’re a molting bird or reptile (or you work in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory), very little of your environment is composed of dead body parts. There are far more common sources of dust pollutants, including animal dander, sand, insect waste, flour (in the kitchen), and of course lots of good, old-fashioned dirt. Every time we open a window or a door, we stir up and move around tiny, airborne particles that eventually settle around the house. Humans do shed dead skin, but most of it is carried away by water when we shave or bathe, ending up not on our floors but in our sewers.>>

I think this is wrong in many cases. I have an air sampler which I've used for classroom demonstrations, and it always collects more skin flakes than anything else when used inside people's houses or inside classrooms.

There is more silicate dust on surfaces (as when you dust), but the stuff floating in the air seems to be mostly skin.

[neufer]

The Debunker: Is Most Household Dust Really Human Skin?
by Ken Jennings 2 years ago

<<Every hour, you lose over half a million dead skin cells. In fact, eight hundred of the little guys just flaked off while were reading this sentence.

So it seems plausible, right, the common claim that as much as 80 percent of household dust is human skin? There is organic material in dust—all that discarded "you" has to go someplace—but it turns out that there's so much tiny stuff floating around your room (about 10 million particles in every cubic meter of household air!) that skin isn't even a drop in the bucket. In 2009, Paloma Beamer of the University of Arizona catalogued household dust for the journal Environmental Science and Technology, and found that two-thirds of it blows in from outdoors: dirt tracked in on floors, as well as particulate matter from the air. The other third is mostly carpet fiber. Not much skin.

There's a similar scare statistic that gets passed around about mattresses. In 2000, The Wall Street Journal quoted academics and industry experts to the effect that a mattress will double in weight after just ten years of use, as a result of the accumulated carcasses and poop of tiny "dust mites." Let's get the nightmare fodder out of the way: yes, "dust mites" are real. They're microscopic arachnids of subclass Acari that live by chowing down your dead skin. But it's not true that there's a hundred pounds of them living inside your Posturepedic. The researcher cited in the article later complained to Cecil Adams that he had never said any such thing, and that there's no academic basis whatsoever for this factoid. It's time to send this stuff to the dustbin of history.>>

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[orin stepanek]

You know what they say; dust to dust! Some day it may be part of a star again!

[neufer]

You know what they say; dust to dust! Some day it may be part of a star again!

Or else you'll be a dwarf planetary nebula.

[Ann]

Well, for those who love the specific teal and 656 nm colors, and various mixtures of them, a future evolution into planetary nebulas may make us singularly beautiful again.

Ann

[orin stepanek]

You know what they say; dust to dust! Some day it may be part of a star again!

Or else you'll be a dwarf planetary nebula.

What else would you expect from a Plutopian?

[orin stepanek]

Well, for those who love the specific teal and 656 nm colors, and various mixtures of them, a future evolution into planetary nebulas may make us singularly beautiful again.

Ann

Aw Ann; everything is beautiful in its own way!

[Chris Peterson]

The Debunker: Is Most Household Dust Really Human Skin?
by Ken Jennings 2 years ago

<<Every hour, you lose over half a million dead skin cells. In fact, eight hundred of the little guys just flaked off while were reading this sentence.

So it seems plausible, right, the common claim that as much as 80 percent of household dust is human skin? There is organic material in dust—all that discarded "you" has to go someplace—but it turns out that there's so much tiny stuff floating around your room (about 10 million particles in every cubic meter of household air!) that skin isn't even a drop in the bucket. In 2009, Paloma Beamer of the University of Arizona catalogued household dust for the journal Environmental Science and Technology, and found that two-thirds of it blows in from outdoors: dirt tracked in on floors, as well as particulate matter from the air. The other third is mostly carpet fiber. Not much skin.

My personal, experimental evidence is contrary to this conclusion. Skin was the dominant component of dust collected from the air between floor and ceiling. Of course, it likely depends very much on the location and other conditions.