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me_irl (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/me_irl@lemmy.world
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[–] 50 points 1 year ago (8 children)

That is to say, a significant portion of dust is actually skin cells shed by humans.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    not necessarily. if you live on a delta or a river bank the soil is very fine. particularly in dry seasons, it travels far (more than sand) through air and comes through opening of a house. fine particles stay suspended in air for long. so even if you close the windows you will see dust depositing on surface, especially electrically charged ones.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    I live near a volcano, and I'd say most of the "dust" in our home is actually very fine volcanic ash.

    There's definitely some skin cells and pet dander in there. There's just no way that those things are a majority of what we sweep up every few days, because our collective mass cannot possibly be dwindling that quickly.

    A quick search suggests that one square inch of skin has 19 million skin cells. At a rate of 1000 per hour, it would take 19,000 hours (791.6 days) for one person to shed enough cells to equal one square inch of skin. Two humans live in my household, so we'll say for us together it would take roughly a year.

    I'm sweeping up multiple cubic inches of dust multiple times a week. If dust were "mostly" skin cells, we should only need to dust a little bit once a year.

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