Dust Mites

We live in Florida and decided to take a family trip to Wisconsin for the Summer.  We spent six weeks in Haywar, which is pretty far North in the state.  Anyway, one of my daughters developed itchy watery eyes, sneezing and overall fatigue with in a few days of being up there.  We figured she just had a cold or something.  It turned out that she had a severe allergic reaction to sdomething in the environment.

We took her to the local hospital and it was verified that she was allergticv to dust, or more specifically, dust mites. nd she was basically given an OTC allergy medicine.

She suffered with these symptoms for the entire trip despite taking the medicine recommended by the physician.

As soon as we returned home to Florida her allergies cleared up and she’s been fine since.  After doing some research on dust mites on this site, I realize that they can be controllled even if your environment is riddled with dust and dust mites. As a precaution, we had professionals come into our house to take care of the dust mites.  My wife bought a HEPA filter and we installed it on our air conditioning unit.   I recommend it for anyone who struggles with dust-related or dust mite aller 

From: Chris L.
Sept. 19, 2008

Kawasaki syndrome was what my soine was diagnosed with..  The doctors have no idea what caused it but I’m 100% sure it was dust mites.  The allergist I hired said that dust mites have not been known to cause kawasaki disease but that doesn’t mean it didn’t.  I’m writing you because I want people to make sure that if they have children, they need to keep their homes clean and free of dust.  I recommend getting all hardwood or non-carpeted flooring.

In case you’re not familiar with Kawasaki disease, here is some general information: Kawasaki disease can’t be prevented, but usually has some symptoms and signals that appear in stages.

At first the kid gets a nasty fever, sometimes 105* or more.(CALL 9-1-1) and lait can last for aslmost one week.  Boy was that scary!

Some other stuff was:

• red, itchy eyes
• a rash on the whole lower body region including my son’s balls
• dry lips
• and a swollen up tongue

**The red itchy balls were the worst!  I cringed just watching my son jam on his inflamed red testicles like Slash on an electric guitar.  So parents, please, please, keep your houses clean and free of dust mites!

From: Frank D.
Sept. 15, 2008
My name is Frank Dikindamauf and when  I first heard of dust mites I thought they were similar to tertmites.  I figured they were little bugs that would spend their days chomping on wood and eating houses and stuff. I was very surprised to learn that they’re actually microscopic organisms. I leanred about them when our daughter started showing symptoms of Athsma.  We took her to her doctors and theyt ran some tests and said she had seasonal allergies.

It turned out she had dust or dust mite allergies.  We were able to reduce her symptoms, which after three months after b eing diagnosed, had become so severe that she required an inhaler and could not participate in her gym class.  Her homo gym teacher told us that she HAD to participate or fail.  We threatened to take his anus to court and the school quickly came around and allowed her to sit out of class.

This lead to many of her schoolmates making fun of her and mocking her for not being in good enough shape to play dodgeball or whatever fruity games they play in gym class these days.  In my day we played basketball, football and baseball.  And if someone got hurt, they were hurt, we didn’t mock them for it.

Anyway, my wife decided to have our air ducts and heating and air conditioning system completely cleaned out.  We live in an older house and had never had this service done before.  Shortly after the cleaning the ducts our daughters allergies were 80% better.  She was able to return to gym class, avoid harassment and eventually played on her high school soccer team without ever having to use an inhaler.  So in my opinion, dust mites are just dust particles.  And if you get rid of the dust, you get rid of the dust mites.

Nice site!

-Frank 

From: Richard S.
Sept. 10, 2008
My wife and I recently moved into a brand new home in Colorado. Our little 3 year olf nephew was over and he was playing around on the carpeting (also brand new) with some of his toys.  All of the sudden he started sneezing like crazy.  His eyes turned red and he actually developed a mild rash all over his body.  He was coughing and appeared extremely agitated.

We originally though that is was something is the carpet (brand new carpeting).  Possibly some kind of chemical treatment used at the factory or something.  But the carpet manufacturer assured us that no chemicals were used to treat the carpeting at the factory.  And the carpet retailer assured us they had used mo treatments either.

My nephew ended up going to his doctor and they ran a series of tests and eventually found that he has an extreme allergic reaction to dust mites.

After talking to our neighbors, we learned that some of their children have been exhibiting some of the same symptoms as our nephew.  Apparently they’re prevailent in the area.

So we did some research (most of it on this site) and have taken some precaustions to prevent and rid our home of dust mites.  We got a dehumidifier installed on our furnace. We also had the HVAC system cleaned because the builders created so much dust that regular daily dusting was not really eliminating the dust in our home. We boiught a HEPA vacuum cleaner with a double-layered micro cloth bag system.

Two months after our nephew’s initial visit, he returned and exhibited NONE of the allergic symptoms and reactions he did the last time he was over.  So thank you for providing us with this information.  It wasd extremely easy to “dust mite proof” our new home.  It might be more difficult to do in older dwellings but i’d highly recommend it to anyone who has small children.

Thank you!

-Richard and Carmella

From: Sam M.
Sept. 7, 2008
Well I thought we have dust mites and am worried about it (my 3 year old has been wheezing and is on medication for that). But what’s confusing me is the description of mites: My eyesight is particularly sharp and I can see white/clear tiny things scampering around some of our plastic toys that have been undisturbed in their open (and a little dusty) boxes for a while ( If I look with a magnifying glass). But there also are Black ones. These are slightly bigger - half a mm I’d say and I notice them with the naked eye when they move. I squash them and they make a brown smear. Under a magnifying glass they appear to have a large round body, a tiny head, and I can see two legs from the body. What are they? Giant(!) dust mites???? Please help with some advice.

From: K.S.
Sept. 5, 2008
I work in the basement at my work place. In this basement there is cardboard boxes of real old paper documents. These boxes are on dusty shelves . and the documents in these boxes are dusty. Around these shelves are bins of old unused paper documents that’s been in the bin for several months. On the floor of the basement is dust, paper food raps. This basement do not have windows and poor lighting. This basement also have old furniture,old phones, and thousands of other old documents in boxes. This basement is use for storage. There is no clean up crew that clean the area. I have sustain dust mites bites on leg, neck, shoulder, back. These bites itch and the bites has turn black.