What Are Bed Mites And Their Symptoms With Human Allergies
Just thinking of these bed mites living in your pillow and on your sheets by the millions and eating your dead skin and hair is enough to make a person sick — sick in the sense of repugnance and revulsion.
A Bed Mite
A single bed mite produces about twenty waste droppings each day— each containing a protein to which many people are allergic. These bed mites are a major cause of asthma and allergies. Especially in vulnerable individuals, such as children and the elderly. According to the American College of Asthma, Allergy, and Immunology, ten percent of Americans exhibit allergic sensitivity to bed mites. The fall and winter months are a particular problem, because people start closing up their homes against the cold and concentrations of bed mites and their feces increase threefold.
Where Bed Mites Live
Bed mites like to live in cigarette ashes, combustion products, organic fibers, synthetic textile fibers, wool, cotton, paper, silk, fingernail filings, food crumbs, glass particles, several kinds of glue remnants, graphite from pencils, hair, insect fragments, soot, paint chips, plant parts, pollen, polymer foam particles, salt crystals, sugar crystals, skin scales, soil, spores, fungus particles, stone particles, tobacco grains, and wood shavings and sawdust.
What Are Bed Mites?
What are bed mites and what do they look like? Bed mites are microscope arachnids that primarily live on dead skin cells regularly shed from humans and animals. Looking at them under a microscope, one is reminded of a miniature sea crab. These bed mites are often called dust mites and are harmless to most people. They do not carry diseases, but they can cause allergic reactions in asthmatics and other people who are allergic to their feces. It is the protein in the combination of feces and shed skin that causes these allergic reactions. Depending on the person and exposure time, symptoms and reactions can range from a runny nose, itchy eyes, to real asthma attacks.
Dander
These bed mites live on skin cells and scales, commonly called dander, and are concentrated in sleeping areas, mattresses, frequently used and upholstered furniture, and associated carpeted areas. These items and places often harbor large numbers of these microscopic bed mites. The average human sloughs off about one third of an ounce of dead skin a week; this gives bed mites a lot to eat.
What Kills Bed Mites?
1. One of the simplest ways to kill dust mites that have infested your bed linens is to wash all your linens in hot water above 130 Fahrenheit — anything less will not kill bed mites.
2. There is an alternative method for killing bed mites which involves freezing them. Place your pillows, stuffed toys, and other small bedroom items in the freezer for about a day, this kills bed mites. Then wash these items to remove the residue as it can still cause allergies.
3. Low levels of humidity and extended exposure to sunlight will also kill bed mites.
