Confession: I'm Allergic to Humans

I was cleaning up today and at some point in time took a break to scratch and tweeted the following:

You see, I'm allergic to dust.  Now, you may think "mami, who isn't?".  I was actually tested! When they performed the allergy test on me, it was found that I was allergic to the 2 types of dust mites (who knew there were 2 types?).  The doctor used the word "severely" after the 2nd test brought about hives on my arms that took more than a week to disappear.  I was also found to be allergic to German roaches.  Of course, I was a little pissed off that no one told me they were injecting me with roach juice but, that's another story for another day.

The findings explain the fact that every once in a while I'd be in the office handling paperwork, I would touch my face and then would feel the hotness from an allergy start to flourish wherever I had just touched. It's tons of fun but, don't try this at home.

After having a few back and forths with my tweeps today, a convo with Not Blessed Mama got me thinking: where does all this dust come from? Well, I wish I hadn't asked (and if you keep reading, you will too)!

After thorough research (read: one Google search with the following words: where does dust come from in a house? I mean, I had to get back to cleaning, people!) here are the gross facts. Actually, it's only one but the plural sounds better:

70% of dust is made up of human skin!!!!!! WTF?!?

Here's a direct quote from Science Shorts:

Dry skin is a translucent grey colour.  Of course humans come in different colours, but the pigments which colour our skin are found beneath the layer that we shed.  Blood vessels, too, are much deeper down, and are not lost as skin sheds.  Therefore, there is neither blood nor pigment to colour the grey skin dust.

I should probably make this post more scientific by giving you more facts but, do you really care after reading that ONE? I know I don't! But being the responsible blogger that I am, I continued on and found that Science Daily begs to differ.  Apparently, 60% of the dust in our homes comes from outdoors.  That sounds much better, right?

But, who can get rid of the thought that we shed 30-40,000 dead skin cells each and every minute?  And that as you breathe in, you are breathing in someone's dead skin?  I can't unsee that and so, I share it with you because, I need company in my icky feeling.

So to my list of things I am allergic to I must now add humans.  Or would it be more accurate if I said dead humans? Sheesh, if the zombie apocalypse ever comes, I'll be a great zombie radar!  Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go bathe.