What percentage of household dust is human skin?

Question

What does household dust consist of? I heard the human skin portion of household dust is between 75-80% yuck! But what else is in the vacuum and all over the home?

Answer 1

most figures say 75%, the remainder is hair,  dirt from outside soil, dust mites and their droppings, pollen and smoke particles and dust from outside (diesel particulates  or factory smoke etc). if you have pets then you need to apportion the 75% between you and the pets based on body-weight

Answer 2

Very little is skin-about 1-2%, the majority is just good old fashioned dirt.

Answer 3

Here are some numbers that might make you squirm: A typical used mattress can have 100,000 to 10 million mites inside, feeding on the 6 grams of dead skin you shed each week. Each mite produces 10-20 waste pellets per day, and each egg-laying female can produce 25-30 more mites every three weeks. Cold comfort that a mite only lives about three months, especially when its dead carcass is allergenic!

Check this article out if you dare:

http://www.gasdetection.com/news2/health...

According to this site 80%

http://www.achooallergy.com/blog/PBDE-in...

Answer 4

Pretty much all of it!

Answer 5

It is about 80%, the remainder is hair, dirt from outside soil, dust mites which live of dead skin and their droppings, pollen and smoke particles and dust and dirt from outside, the average person is carrying about 1 to 2 pound of dead skin all the time which is continuously being shed,

Answer 6

Sue elle is right.

It's a fallacy that it's mainly skin, it's actually dirt from inside and outside, air pollutants etc, and very little is actually skin.