Dyson On: Why we study dust
Dyson has spent years studying just what’s in your carpet and floors, find out why.
2 April 2020
Dyson has spent years studying just what’s in your carpet and floors, find out why.
2 April 2020
Tyler Hudd, our household dust technician weighs and measures the amount of dust picked up in a real home.
At Dyson, we make it our mission to understand what’s in your dust. In fact, we have dedicated laboratories that analyse the components of household dust and spend millions of dollars each year on dust samples so that we know the machines we make are optimised to pick dust up properly – even the dust you can’t see. But why do we go to such extreme lengths? Our engineers and microbiologists answer questions about why we study dust and share their knowledge on what’s really lurking in your home.
Household dust is much more complex than the various sized particles used by standard vacuum cleaner tests. Real dust is a complex matrix of components including dust mites, dust mite faeces, bacteria, mould, small insects and particles. Dust mite droppings, dead bodies of dust mites, and small insects are included as allergens. Hidden to the naked eye, they are widely spread on various surfaces of your home including floors, sofas, and beds. A simple action such as sitting on a sofa causes particles to float in the air and can trigger an allergic reaction. Many of these cause components trigger allergies. These allergens are microscopic. The size of dust mite allergen, mould spores and other insect allergens is often between 0.5 to 5 microns. To provide context, the diameter of a human hair is around 50 microns.
Dyson’s microbiology facilities were built almost 18 years ago and as far as we know
we’re the only floorcare manufacturer to have in-house microbiology labs in the world. We wanted to really understand what was in household dust, but couldn’t find the expertise anywhere so decided to build our own lab. Standard tests for assessing vacuum cleaners tend to use particulate matter, meaning just different sizes of similar particles. Our microbiology and household dust lab allow us to investigate the components of real dust and debris found in real homes. By understanding this, we can better enable our vacuum cleaners to deal with the conditions they face in real homes.
We get it from real homes, mostly collected by employees. We also have a colony of dust mites that we look after and study. Using dust samples collected at home, a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) analysis creates images which allow us to identify components of household dust which then informs our product development.
Dyson microbiologists analyse the biological components of household dust, which include dust mites.
We’ve been researching the technology around moving dust and its particulate matter from homes for well over 15 years. UVC light – ultra violet light that is a kind of radiation – is often quoted as a method of destroying dust mites in the right conditions, which is true. However in practice, UVC needs to be applied directly to the thing you’re trying to kill over a long and sustained period of time, which is not the way in which owners use vacuums. Essentially, it’s a misapplication of the
technology. Ionizers are another example of misapplied technology on a vacuum cleaner; in usage, there’s too much air movement and not enough ionizers being produced.
All of our research has shown us that the best way to remove bacteria, pollen and dust mite allergens is to remove them from your home completely. This is why we focus our efforts on developing vacuums that pick up dust from surfaces, have cyclones that are incredibly efficient and advanced filters and seals that prevent dirty air from being expelled back into the home. We spend a lot of time developing our filters and seals to make sure that we capture not only the dust you can see, but also the dust you can’t. We also want to make sure that the air being expelled from the vacuum is clean – in fact, Dyson machines can capture 99.97% particles as small as 0.3 microns. For context, the diameter of a human hair is around 50 microns.
Jonthan McGaughey, our Separation Systems engineer, tests the filters and seals of our vacuum cleaners to ensure the air expelled from our machines is clean.
Email: Alexander.mack@dyson.com
1330 West Fulton Street, 5th Floor, Chicago IL, 60607
1 Robert, J.W. et al. (2009) Monitoring and reducing exposure of infants to pollutants in house dust, Revue of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, 201:1-39. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19484587
2 Dunn, R.R. (2013) Home Life: Factors Structuring the Bacterial Diversity Found within and between Homes, PLOS. Available at: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.006413
Barberán, A. et al. (2015) The ecology of microscopic life in household dust, The Royal Society: Biological Sciences. Available at: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2015.1139