Dust mites are microscopic creatures that live in pillows, mattresses, blankets, carpets, and other soft materials. They are often thought of as insects, but are actually tiny arachnids, relatives of spiders and ticks. They do not live on people, but live near them. Their food is the dead skin scales that we all shed every day.

Dust mites avoid the light, and require at least 50% relative humidity to survive. They are therefore plentiful in soft materials, such as pillows, mattresses, and blankets, where they can burrow into the fabric to get away from the light. Beds provide the warmth, darkness, high humidity, and shed skin scales that mites crave, and they are the source of the biggest mite exposure for most of us. A mattress may contain over a million dust mites. A female mite lays about 60 eggs in her lifetime. Each mite lives for about 80 days, during which time it produces one thousand allergy-causing waste particles.

Live mites themselves are not inhaled. Rather, it is the waste particles that they have produced, and the body fragments of dead dust mites, that become airborne, are inhaled and cause allergy symptoms. This is because mites do not live in the air, but are burrowed in soft materials. Mite waste particles become briefly airborne when one walks on a carpet, sits on an upholstered chair, places one's face on a pillow, makes a bed, or otherwise disturbs the soft materials where the dust mites are living.

Dust Mite Avoidance Video