What you wanted to know but were really afraid of finding out....

Where do mites fit into the grand scheme of things? Mites have been on earth for over 400 million years with the house dust mite appearing around 23 million years ago. They are members of the Phylum Arthropoda, Group Arachnida and Order Acarina. Mites are not spiders or insects but a group of their own closely related to ticks. Although they don't bite, their waste products, when inhaled by sensitive people, cause ALLERGY SYMPTOMS

Hardy creatures with eight hairy legs, house dust mites are very small in size with translucent bodies that can only be seen with a microscope. The average dust mite is .3mm. About 3 mites could fit inside the dot at the end of this sentence. They only live for about 2-4 months, but during its life the dust mite produces about 200 times its weight in waste product and can lay up to 300 eggs!

Dust mites live in the fine layer of minute dust particles that seems to appear in your home from nowhere. They are scavengers whose diet consists mainly of human skin flakes. Since we continuously shed skin, as many as 50 million flakes of dead skin a day, the house dust mite has an abundance of food. Dust mites themselves are normally harmless - it is the skin they shed and the waste they produce that causes ALLERGY SYMPTOMS in millions of people.

The mites thrive in warm, humid conditions where their populations can explode! Unfortunately for humans, the beds in which we sleep are some of the warmer and more humid places year round. Dust mites live in mattresses, pillows, carpets, fabric furniture and stuffed toys. They like to burrow into the fabric and escape the light. We are exposed to the allergenic by-products of dust mites while we sleep. Although new homes or furniture are dust-free, within a month both are populated with dust mites that come from other areas in which people spend time, such as their vehicles, offices or other peoples homes.

Due to their light weight dust mites also become airborne. Routine activities such as making the bed or children jumping and playing can send them floating in the air where they are then distributed throughout the house and are inevitably inhaled as we breathe.

About 80 percent of what you see floating in a ray of sunshine entering your home is dead skin, and we can see only 10 percent of the airborne pollutants. Other floating particles include dead dust mites and their waste products. These waste-products, which are proteins, actually provoke the allergic reaction.

Although mites were observed in dust by a scientist in 1694, it was not until the 1960's that they were associated with allergies. Over the years dust mites have become a target of extensive research for their connection to allergies and respiratory ailments.

A national study suggests that a large number of US homes contain dust mite allergen levels which pose a significant risk for the development of allergies and asthma. The house dust mite can actually cause asthma in the first place according to the National Asthma Campaign. Even if someone does not currently have any symptoms, reducing exposure to these allergens may reduce the chance of developing allergies and asthma.

But there is proof that mite avoidance does work in some situations. According to the Allergy and Asthma Research and Information website:

• · Children sent to the Alps lose their housedust mite asthma while there. The effect is often dramatic. This has been known since the 1920s and is still practiced in the Netherlands, France, and other countries. There is ample evidence that the reason for the improvement is that there are far fewer mites in houses in the high alpine resorts.
• · People with housedust mite asthma consistently improved over a few months whilst kept in a mite-free environment. This was done by Professor Tom Platts-Mills at Northwick Park Hospital, and the results were published in The Lancet.
• · Mite control measures but not dummy measures improved features of asthma in children with housedust mite asthma. There have been a number of researchers who have shown this, though others failed. A consistent feature of the successful attempts has been the use of dust-proof bedding covers.
• · There is clear evidence that higher amounts of mite dust in houses are associated with more asthma in children and adults. This was shown (for adults) by the Dutch research workers who discovered the role of the housedust mite and by others in many different parts of the world. In the UK it was demonstrated for children by Dr Sporik and others, with results published in the New England Journal of Medicine