Get Rid of That Dust—It Can Be Harmful in the Long Run!

Get Rid of That Dust—It Can Be Harmful in the Long Run!

January 13, 2020

Dust is present in every home. We don’t usually realize it until we run our finger across a surface and see the streak in the dust it leaves behind. Then, it’s out with the duster to give the whole house a quick but thorough sweep. Every few weeks, it’s rinse and repeat—the dust just keeps coming back. If you’re like most homeowners, you’re probably just about fed up with dust cleaning.

More than just being irritated with dusting as a chore, you should be concerned about what that dust might be doing for your health and quality of life. You might not realize it, but that little layer of dust could be harmful! It’s not something homeowners in Walla Walla County, WA want to think about.

What’s in your dust, exactly?

Harmful dust has all sorts of particles to be wary of. While dust itself is primarily just dead skin cells and microscopic debris, there’s actually a lot more than that lurking in your air.

According to the Washington Post, we spend about 90 percent of our time indoors, which means anything we’re bringing into our home’s contained air exchange system is staying there until it’s filtered out. That includes everything from decomposed insects, to smoke from cooking, to arsenic from the dirt you track in on your shoes! In fact, your dust could contain just about anything, and chances are, its overall makeup is harmful.

This isn’t to be alarmist. It’s meant to be a realistic look at dust, because we’re used to seeing it as an inconvenience, rather than as a danger.

The dangers of lingering dust

The true danger of dust in our homes isn’t so much as what’s in it, but in how long we leave it to accumulate. Most people perform dust cleaning once a week as part of a larger home cleaning… but even more people dust more infrequently. Sometimes, you might go weeks or even months without dusting!

The more time dust is allowed to accumulate, the more damage it can do to your health and immunity. All those nasty microscopic particles are allowed to gather in the spaces where you relax, eat, sleep and groom yourself. Even simple movements like settling into your easy chair can unleash a dispersal of unseen dust that’s quickly sucked up into your airway as you breathe deep. Suddenly, everything in your air is now in your lungs—and it’s your immune system’s duty to fight these pathogens off.

Consider that this happens every day and it’s easy to see how overworked our immune systems can become!

How to trap, control, and get rid of dust

What can you do aside from dusting your home compulsively every day? For starters, invest in a deep clean every once in a while, to eliminate harmful dust. Beyond that, using high-capacity HEPA air filters for your furnace is also a smart move. Use air purifiers with UV filtration in the most-used areas of your home, like the living room or bedroom. Together, this combined effort will attack and remove many of the most dangerous pathogens from your home’s breathable air.

Remember, we spend as much as 90 percent of our time indoors. Shouldn’t it feel like you’re taking a fresh breath of air every time you inhale? It’s something Walla Walla County, WA homeowners need to think consciously about.

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