85% of Americans don’t realize the air in their homes may be a health hazard. Dust mites can be a threat to your health.
✓ Researchers estimate that 22 million homes (23 percent) have beds with levels of dust mites … believed to be associated with symptomatic asthma. — American Family Physician. August, 2000
✓ Most people spend 60% – 90% of their time indoors. —American Lung Association
✓ Environmental Protection Agency studies of human exposure to air pollutants indicate that indoor levels of pollutants may be 2-5 times, and occasionally more than 100 times, higher than outdoor levels. — US EPA. Website June, 2000
COMMON HOUSE DUST MITES are microscopic animals found in dust, which produce a common allergen, Dust mites, although much smaller, belong to the same family as spiders and ticks. They live primarily in mattresses and in upholstered furniture. 15,000 mites can be on one speck of dust, an estimated 2 million per double bed. The bulk of their food is flakes of human skin. A dust mite lives for only two to four months, but during that time it produces 200 times its own body weight in waste or fecal matter. Over time, the dust mite feces, breaks down into tiny particles, mixes with dust, and then can be inhaled. It’s the waste product or fecal matter of the dust mite that actually cause allergy symptoms, not the mite itself.
The house dust mite can actually cause asthma to develop in the first place. —National Asthma Campaign. Asthma News, Spring 2000
✓ House dust mites are now accepted as the single greatest cause of indoor allergies, and they can be found in abundance in most beds. — Saturday Evening Post, May 1999
✓ Each year more than 50 million Americans suffer from allergic diseases, costing the health care systems more than $18 billion, employers’ highest rate of absenteeism, and children lost time in school. ABCNews.com, March 2001 Childhood asthma accounted for 10.1 million days missed from school annually. —American Lung Association, March 2002
Avoiding allergen exposure in infancy reduces the development of asthma. —American Academy of Allergy, March 2001
