We were cleaning out under our bed the other day, throwing out broken stereos, some adult videos from the mid 1990s, a VCR, when we got thinking (and breathing and sneezing) dust. We worked in a museum once that was so dusty that our bags were literally covered in a few millimeters of it whenever we picked them up from the floor under our desk at the end of the day. Our workstation was just outside the registrar’s office, very close to a large table where documents were handled every day. At least they washed their white gloves. Obviously an enemy (and yet ominipresent force) of collection houses everywhere, we went and wikipedia’d that shit.
Here are some wonderful factoids:
+ Dust ain’t dust if it’s diameter is more than 500 micrometers
+ Much of indoor dust comes from skin cells — and your body sheds its entire outer layer of skin once every two days!
+ According to the German Environmental Survey, approximately 6 mg/mÂ²/day of house dust is formed in private households
+ Nearly 1000 dust particles per square centimeter settle on domestic surfaces every hour
+ If dust gets airborne its categorized as an aerosol–which we just figured out means a solid thats in the air! Brill.
+ Space Dust! The zodiacal light seen in the dark night sky is produced by sunlight reflected from particles of dust in orbit around the Sun
+ Most obviously awesome and gross, dust mites: they are everywhere, in all dust, and they eat it and poop it out, creating even more dust. Yum.