Shedding light on dust as a household hazard

In the years to come we’ll look back on dust as a household related health and indoor environmental challenge the same way we now view second hand smoke

Here in Canada our winters are a time of darker days, with the sun setting much earlier in the day – if we’re lucky enough to see it at all.

And certainly, when the sun does pour through our windows, it’s a glorious feeling. But also as you take in those rays, it’s hard not to notice just how much dust is hovering in the air.

Dust that you and I are breathing day in, day out without much thought to how these floating, microscopic objects represent an indoor health hazard.

According to the U.S.-based National Center for Healthy Housing, exposure to dust inside homes can have adverse health outcomes, such as respiratory problems, asthma, allergic reactions and even lead poisoning (if the dust contains lead).

If lead poisoning sounds like a bit of a stretch, consider that when Health Canada conducted their Canadian House Dust Study a few years back, they found that 90% of homes have dust lead levels between 8 and 225 parts per million.

Thirty-three percent of those were older homes with lead-based paint being the main culprit. However surprisingly, 10 per cent of the homes with higher levels of lead were built after 1980.

The starting point in tackling our dust problem is to understand where it comes from in the first place. Typically, dust is carried in from outside on our shoes as well as through our doors and windows.

And it’s a problem made worse during the winter months, when those same doors and windows are mostly closed – essentially sealing in the dust. It is a problem amplified even more by the harmful particular matter produced by indoor fireplaces and wood stoves.

So what do we as homeowners do to counter our indoor environmental challenge of dust? If you’re willing to drop a couple of grand, not including installation fees, one logical solution is to put in a whole house air purifier.

A much less costly solution albeit, one more geared for one room is to purchase a portable one, such as the Dyson HEPA air purifier that I wrote about last year.

Whether whole house or portable, Dyson or another manufacturer, the key is to ensure that it’s a solution that uses a HEPA (high efficiency particulate air) filter – meaning that it is capable of removing particles as small as .3 microns (putting that into perspective, the human hair is 70 microns in diameter). Filters that can capture up to 99% of airborne dust.

Another reality to contend with is whether opting for a whole house or room air purifier, is neither solution is going to remove the dust that settles on your floors and other surfaces.

One company in particular that is taking that challenge seriously is – you guessed it, Dyson, which has discovered that unlike vacuums that use LED lights to try and detect dust (but really just illuminate the floor along with the dust), green laser beams are one of the most effective ways we humans can see dust on surfaces.

Accordingly, they’ve incorporated this green laser technology into some of their latest models, including the V15 vacuum I tried recently.

The most shocking thing I found when I fired up the V15 is that prior to turning it on, our hardwood floors looked perfectly clean. But when I started the unit, it was much like when the sun shines in.

Only in this case it was the green laser that showed much to my embarrassment and concern, just how much dust was on our floors. – dust that we trudge through and stir up on a daily basis without even knowing.

Apart from my green light awakening, what I appreciated about the V15 is that not unlike Dyson’s air purifiers, the vacuum also uses a sealed HEPA filter meaning the dirt and dust are fully captured and kept within the container until you’re ready to empty the contents.

As opposed to products that fail to meet this standard where some of the dirt and dust are vented back out of the exhaust.

There’s still a lot to learn about the harmful impact of dust in our homes… including such noteworthy initiatives as DustSafe, which is conducting ongoing analyses of dust samples from homeowner’s vacuums in countries that include the U.S., the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

This initiative’s website puts our household dust problem into perspective with their observation that “the urbanization of global populations has resulted in people spending 90 percent of their time indoors,” and “consequently, health exposure risks to environmental contaminants are dominated by indoor air particulates, like dust.”

My prediction is that in the years to come we’ll look back on dust as a household related health and indoor environmental challenge the same way we now view second hand smoke.

But thankfully, we don’t have to wait any longer to reduce the amount of dust in our homes. We can start by embracing proven air purification products in tandem with vacuums that effectively detect and capture dust as in the case of the Dyson unit I tried.

Mark Wessel lives in Ridgeway, Ont. and is a passionate advocate for living more sustainably at home and in the greater community. Visit www.markdouglaswessel.com.