The claim that household dust is mostly dead skin is widespread; if you google it, you’ll find a lot of articles both supporting and debunking it. [*] Part of why this is hard to pin down is that household dust isn’t any one specific thing. It’s just a disgusting salad made from whatever happens to be lying around your house. It can include soil, pollen, cotton fibers, crumbs, powdered sugar, glitter, pet hair and dander, plastic, soot, human or animal hair, flour, glass, smoke, mites, and countless blobs of hard-to-identify gunk stuck together. There’s definitely some skin in there, but it’s
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