• gramie@lemmy.ca
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      12 days ago

      That is to say, a significant portion of dust is actually skin cells shed by humans.

      • serenissi@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        not necessarily. if you live on a delta or a river bank the soil is very fine. particularly in dry seasons, it travels far (more than sand) through air and comes through opening of a house. fine particles stay suspended in air for long. so even if you close the windows you will see dust depositing on surface, especially electrically charged ones.

        • nickiwest@lemmy.world
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          11 days ago

          I live near a volcano, and I’d say most of the “dust” in our home is actually very fine volcanic ash.

          There’s definitely some skin cells and pet dander in there. There’s just no way that those things are a majority of what we sweep up every few days, because our collective mass cannot possibly be dwindling that quickly.

          A quick search suggests that one square inch of skin has 19 million skin cells. At a rate of 1000 per hour, it would take 19,000 hours (791.6 days) for one person to shed enough cells to equal one square inch of skin. Two humans live in my household, so we’ll say for us together it would take roughly a year.

          I’m sweeping up multiple cubic inches of dust multiple times a week. If dust were “mostly” skin cells, we should only need to dust a little bit once a year.

      • Coskii@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        11 days ago

        I promise you most of the dust in my house is from me.

        Because I work construction, and I often forget to dust off before entering.

      • Zacryon@feddit.org
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        12 days ago

        Have you read your own linked article?

        From the article you’ve linked:

        And since an individual with the average amount of skin surface area sheds 1,000 skin cells per hour, that means a lot of the dust in your home, and many other places, truly contains a lot of dead skin.

        “[T]he debunkers are debunked,” Muller says in the video, adding that “dead skin cells do make up a significant portion of household dust.”
        […]
        Are you shocked to learn that this “myth” is, essentially, true?

        • Lumisal@lemmy.world
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          12 days ago

          A significant portion, yes, but not the majority of it. The majority of it comes from fabrics, or depending where you live and the air system you have, outside.

          If you watch the full video that point is made clear.

          • Zacryon@feddit.org
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            12 days ago

            That’s what the sarcasm flag is there for: “/s”
            which you put at the end of the specific sarcastic expression.

            Some people just have trouble understanding sarcasm. Be it, because the intended tone is not understood by the reader due to the mere text medium, or because someone has trouble understanding irony and sarcasm due to being neurodivergent.

            For irony and jokes I use “/i” and “/j” respectively in a similar manner.

            In the context here, I would have just written:
            “Sand is mostly shed human skin. /j”