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An Investigation of Indoor House Dust Debris Blamed on a Heating/Cooling System Reveals Carpet Dust HeatAPedia © Enter your search terms Submit search form   Search This Website - InspectAPedia.com

Harmless house dust identified can ease client concern: Our site offers impartial, unbiased advice without conflicts of interest. We will block advertisements which we discover or readers inform us are associated with bad business practices, false-advertising, or junk science. Our contact info is at inspect-ny.com/appointment.htm. A client called about an ongoing dispute with an HVAC contractor who had recently installed new heating and air conditioning equipment and duct work in her home. Mysterious thick "blue dust" was appearing throughout the home, reappearing soon even after vacuuming and cleaning. While there were no serious health complaints nor people at unusual medical risk, the occupants were concerned, and believed that something in the ducts or air handlers was causing a problem. While the dispute had been going on for months, at the time of this call no one had performed a forensic examination of the dust itself. The client mailed me a representative sample of surface dust from the home. Here's one way surface dust can be easily collected and mailed. © Copyright 2008 Daniel Friedman, All Rights Reserved. Information Accuracy & Bias Pledge is at below-left. Use the links at page left to navigate this document or to go to Other Website Topics. Green links at left show where you are in our document & website.

Killer house dust - a case history: Mystery dust identified as cotton, ending dispute with contractor

We'd be concerned about finding high levels of problematic mold spores, and I'd not like to find a lot of fiberglass in the sample either, both because it may be a health concern and because it'd argue for sloppy work by the contractor.

House dust from an occupied home contains lots of stuff, usually dominated by skin cells and fibers from clothing and upholstery or carpets. Animal dander, particularly from dogs, cats, or mice, may be present at high levels too. In inner-city apartments I find lots of insect fragments as well, possibly cockroach allergens. And everybody's dust can be expected to have traces of dust mites, usually their fecal pellets. By examining the pellets I can often determine what the mites are eating, for example mold spores.

The dust sample was examined for homogeneity and then prepared for a look at high magnification in my lab, using both ordinary and polarized light. The latter helps quickly separate out synthetic fibers such as Orlon or Nylon, as well as distinguishing typical road grit and fiberglass.

Remarkably the dust sample from this West coast home was unusually clean. The sample was 90% cotton fibers, mostly blue with a few red ones included. There were incidental (not statistically significant) wool fibers present too. Skin cells were another 8% of the sample, and typical drywall dust and road dust made up the rest.

The sample contained no mold spores, no fiberglass, no heating fuel combustion products, no ash, no paint droplets, in other words, it was cotton from a mostly blue fiber source.

This is not your heating system folks. Without making a site inspection I can still offer some useful speculation: I'd look for something new in the home, carpets, drapes, upholstery, bedding, and I'd guess that mechanical disturbance like foot traffic, vacuuming, or other activity was combining with air movement from the HVAC system to spread dust around. Naturally, an investigator is a lot smarter when on-site than when speculating by telephone. But in any case, this was the end of arguing with the HVAC contractor.

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