How healthy is your home?. The House Dust Mites are tiny bugs (up to 0.3 mm long) related to ticks and spiders. These nasties are turtle like creatures with eight legs and are they cannot be seen with the naked eye. They live on the dead skin flakes in household dust – skin that we lose every time we move or scratch etc. There’s virtually no house in the USA or Europe without them.
The strange thing is the number can vary wildly between houses in the same street, some containing huge numbers and others almost none. The Mites’ survival does not only depend on the amount of dust, but rather on how humid the house is. They must have high humidity just to keep living.
When they encounter these optimum circumstances, Dust Mites can to live for anywhere up to 3-4 months. The females can lay up to 25 to 50 eggs, with a new “crop” produced every twenty one days!
Incredibly, it is not the Mite itself that is the problem. It is their droppings that are the problem. They need help (an enzyme) to break down the shed skin before it can be digested. This is the problem (or rather what happens when the digestion is completed). The chemical along with the digested skin passes into the droppings.
Remember that the mite is so incredibly tiny and its droppings will be many times smaller yet. A mite will produce maybe twenty droppings every day. Each of these droppings holds something like 10-12 bundles of sub pellets that are about 2-10 micron in size and contain their left over enzymes. Once disturbed, by a gust of wind or someone walking through a room, these droppings fly into the air. They are so light that they can stay up in the air for hours.
Unfortunately, this is right where your nostrils are pulling in their air from.As we breathe, we also inhale the mite droppings. Sadly, these come complete with the powerful protein enzymes that digest our skin. The trouble is that these enzymes do not know the difference between live or dead skin.
So they go to work on the linings of your nose and bronchial tubes (what you use to breath and stay alive!
Over a period of time this carries on unabated until you become “sensitised”. By this time the linings have become damaged and reduced in size. You are vulnerable to have an attack. These can be set off by various things… pollen, pollution, car fumes, paint, VOCs (volatile organic compounds). This is when the body decides it has had enough and throws up an allergic reaction. How can we prevent this?
Two things help. Ventilation and good vacuum cleaner filtration. Increase the ventilation of the house and make sure the bag is replaced regularly
If you can, use a water filtration vacuum cleaner. They pass the dust over a container full of water. Dust and debris gets captured by the water and is not sent back up in the atmosphere as it is with some systems. Have your carpets professionally cleaned. Make sure they are done properly and dried off quickly (a poor cleaning job will leave the carpets warm and damp – ideal conditions for mites to multiply). Ask your carpet cleaner to use mite killer and then apply an anti mite protector. This way you’ll have twelve month protection.
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