Implementing these basic health tips will go a long way to reducing the causes of health problems in the home. Cleaning and airing Aerate your home No bedding
hand-me downs Be sensible about pets Moulds
You lose a litre of body moisture every night, creating a perfect breeding ground in your mattress for bacteria and dustmites. The dustmite is found in every home, particularly in bedding, mattresses and undersheets where they thrive in large numbers.
A speck of dust may contain fabric fibres, human skin scales, animal dander, insect parts, bacteria, moulds, pollens and other organic and synthetic materials. A person may be allergic to one or more of these substances. Of the many components of house dust, microscopic creatures called house dustmites cause the most trouble. They feed on skin scales and dander shed by humans and are proving to be the major allergen in house dust. Most recent studies show that as much as 30% of the population are allergic and 80% of allergic asthmatics had a positive skin test to mites. People become allergic to proteins in mites and mite faeces, each mite producing 10-20 waste particles per day. The proteins are so light that they float in the air when disturbed, releasing large amounts of mite proteins, causing some people to have an allergic reaction. Mites are members of the arachnid family (related to ticks and spiders) and cannot be seen without a microscope. They are hardy and thrive in warm, humid conditions, surviving and multiplying best when relative humidity is 75-80% and the temperature is 20-21ºC or more. The life cycle from egg to adult is 30 days and their numbers reach a peak in mid summer. They love bedding and survive vacuuming because they burrow deep in the bed and pillow fibres and are equipped with sucking, sticking pads on their feet. Unprotected mattresses. As many as 2 million mites have been counted in unprotected mattresses and it only takes 4 months for an unprotected mattress to become infested.
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