The Secret Life of Dust: From the Cosmos to the Kitchen Counter, the Big Consequences of Little Things

Amazon.com's Best of 2001
Leave it to an accomplished science writer like Hannah Holmes to unearth so much about so little. Zooming in on one of the great, often unnoticed constants of life on earth--dust, in all its myriad forms--Holmes traverses biology, astronomy, climatology, pathology, and host of other fields to dig up the serious dirt. Because while dust might be vital to life on our planet (and may, in fact, even be responsible for it), this "heartless little brute" could also be responsible for the deaths of millions. And she's not talking about dinosaurs. (Or at least not just yet.)

Tackling her topic roughly by the different roles that dust plays, Holmes alternately devotes chapters to specks of space dust ("They're everywhere," gushes one scientist she interviews, "[y]ou eat them all the time. Any carpet would have 'em"), Oviraptor-burying desert dust, particles of dust that go up instead of down (like sea salt and soot), and foreign pollution that heeds no borders (apparently, "Beijing fog" can be bad enough to cause traffic accidents). She saves the best for last with a couple of chapters on "unsavory characters" and "microscopic monsters," finding danger in the obvious (cigarettes and vermiculite mines) and the not so obvious (hot tubs and humidifiers). And you don't even want to know what's in pig dust.

We're swimming in it, we're covered with it, we might very well have come from it, and--surely, eventually--we'll become it. So we really don't have an excuse for not knowing more about it. Thankfully, Holmes is there, in the field and in the lab, with wide-eyed curiosity and a scientific eye for detail. And, "perhaps by tuning in to the news bulletins issued by some of the planet's smallest reporters," we can all have "a better sense of how things are going for the whole." --Paul Hughes


From Publishers Weekly
Despite its ubiquity, dust is not a popular subject among scientists, and lay people tend to brush it off. But Holmes, a science and natural history writer for the Discovery Channel Online, teases many tantalizing facts from this particulate microscopic substance. "[P]olar researchers are drinking water that fell as snow during the crusades," for instance. "Hundreds of years' worth of dust has piled up on the well floor," most of it "space dust," as "only a small amount of windblown Earth dusts" reach Antarctica. Some readers may be turned off or sent on a wild cleaning frenzy by much of the information: "you breathe about 700,000 of your own skin flakes each day," for instance, or "a cup of flour... isn't legally filthy until it contains about 150 insect fragments and a couple of rodent hairs." And some of her more harrowing facts might inspire minor lifestyle changes: household dust is comprised of all manner of toxic materials, like "widely produced" chromium and mercury metals, pesticides, and herbicides, and "the average child eats 15 or 20 milligrams of dust a day, and superslurpers eat 30 to 50 milligrams." While factoid set-pieces run the show here, Holmes's tours through the science behind them are lucid. Allergy sufferers and other interested parties will relish this book; others may prefer to remain blissfully ignorant of their particulate surroundings. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Can the ordinary subject of dust lead to discussions on planetary evolution, allergies, lung disease, dinosaurs, and pollution? Holmes, a writer for the Discovery Channel Online and contributor to Outside, Sierra, and other magazines, enthusiastically shows that it can, covering these areas and others in her enjoyable new book. Inspired by a trip to the Gobi Desert, during which she was inundated with dust, Holmes explores how dust has been crucial in the birth of planets, how it affects the earth's environment and weather, and how humans create it as well. Out to communicate straight facts and science, she considers technical points in language that is clear and comprehensible even for those lacking a science background. In addition to the bibliography, Holmes provides a listing of web sites for each chapter so that readers may easily obtain current information and graphics. Who would have known so much can come from so little? Strongly recommended for all popular science collections. Michael D. Cramer, Raleigh, NC Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Scientific American
Dust, science writer Holmes tells the reader, is so ubiquitous that "by the time you have read this far [11 lines into her first chapter], you may have inhaled 150,000 of these worldly specks." Billions of tons of dust rise from Earth every year, from deserts, volcanoes, oceans, living things and factories. Billions of tons fall to Earth every year, not only from what rose but also from space. This enormous traffic of tiny things has profound effects, good and bad, on Earth and on living organisms. Holmes makes an engaging story of the worldly specks.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Like Charles Dickens's Mr. Boffin, we have all sorted a lot of dust in our time, but most of us don't know what we've been raising. Science writer Hannah Holmes has decided to sift through all this insatiable dusky stuff. Among the fascinating dust facts she dislodges are astonishing statistics (billions of tons of dust rise into the air each year!), extraordinary history (dust killed the dinosaurs!) and frightening realities (60,000 Americans die each year of dust infestation!). If this book hits bestseller lists, watch vacuum cleaner sales soar.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Some see dust as dull stuff, useless at best, and sneeze-inducing at worst. But in the hands of writer Hannah Holmes, dust becomes a dazzling and mysterious force. As Holmes says, dust is a messenger, and air is its medium. And by the end of this fascinating journey through The Secret Life of Dust, we cannot help but agree.

Humble dust, we discover, built the very planet we walk upon. It tinkers with the weather and it spices the air we breathe. Billions of tons of tiny particles rise into the air annually -- the dust of deserts and forgotten kings mixing with volcanic ash, sea salt, leaf fragments, scales from butterfly wings, shreds of T-shirts, and fireplace soot. And eventually, of course, all this dust must settle.

The story of restless dust begins among exploding stars, then treks through the dinosaur beds of the Gobi Desert, digs into Antarctic glaciers -- and probes the dark underbelly of the living-room couch. And there is good company on this journey: Holmes gathers for us a delightful, and, by necessity, highly inventive, cast of characters -- the scientists who study dust. Some investigate its dark side: how it killed off dinosaurs and how its industrial descendants are killing us today. Others sample the shower of Saharan dust that nourishes Caribbean jungles; and still others venture into the microscopic jungle of the bedroom carpet. Like The Secret Life of Dust, all of them unveil the mayhem -- and the magic -- wrought by little things.

SYNOPSIS

It was while on an expedition to the Gobi Desert that science and natural history writer Holmes really noticed dust for the first time and began to investigate what was known about it. She does not include illustrations.

Annotation © Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Time Magazine

Nothing to sneeze at . . . dust did in the dinos and suffocated that Pompeiians; today its industrial version can kill. But without it? No earth. The planet, the author writes, is melted dust.

Publishers Weekly

Despite its ubiquity, dust is not a popular subject among scientists, and lay people tend to brush it off. But Holmes, a science and natural history writer for the Discovery Channel Online, teases many tantalizing facts from this particulate microscopic substance. "[P]olar researchers are drinking water that fell as snow during the crusades," for instance. "Hundreds of years' worth of dust has piled up on the well floor," most of it "space dust," as "only a small amount of windblown Earth dusts" reach Antarctica. Some readers may be turned off or sent on a wild cleaning frenzy by much of the information: "you breathe about 700,000 of your own skin flakes each day," for instance, or "a cup of flour... isn't legally filthy until it contains about 150 insect fragments and a couple of rodent hairs." And some of her more harrowing facts might inspire minor lifestyle changes: household dust is comprised of all manner of toxic materials, like "widely produced" chromium and mercury metals, pesticides, and herbicides, and "the average child eats 15 or 20 milligrams of dust a day, and superslurpers eat 30 to 50 milligrams." While factoid set-pieces run the show here, Holmes's tours through the science behind them are lucid. Allergy sufferers and other interested parties will relish this book; others may prefer to remain blissfully ignorant of their particulate surroundings. (Aug.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Can the ordinary subject of dust lead to discussions on planetary evolution, allergies, lung disease, dinosaurs, and pollution? Holmes, a writer for the Discovery Channel Online and contributor to Outside, Sierra, and other magazines, enthusiastically shows that it can, covering these areas and others in her enjoyable new book. Inspired by a trip to the Gobi Desert, during which she was inundated with dust, Holmes explores how dust has been crucial in the birth of planets, how it affects the earth's environment and weather, and how humans create it as well. Out to communicate straight facts and science, she considers technical points in language that is clear and comprehensible even for those lacking a science background. In addition to the bibliography, Holmes provides a listing of web sites for each chapter so that readers may easily obtain current information and graphics. Who would have known so much can come from so little? Strongly recommended for all popular science collections. Michael D. Cramer, Raleigh, NC Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Dust. It's a blessing and a curse—and it gets the undivided, brightly humorous yet astute attention of Discovery Channel Online science writer Holmes. It might be measured in microns—and microns are the kind of thing you count on the head of a pin—but dust has swept away whole civilizations, burying dinosaurs so fast that they never got off their nests and suffocating all those folks you see in Pompeii, caught forever with a cry on their lips. Dust is everywhere and unstoppable, Holmes notes: Every breath you take brings 150,000 to 1 million specks—depending on the grubbiness of your environment—into circulation in your lungs. Many will wash out on the tide of exhalation, but not a lot of those industrial dusts, or asbestos dust, or quartz dust—all of which stay to kill you. Then again, Holmes is quick to admit, don't discount those dust bunnies skulking under the sofa that "contain everything from space diamonds to Saharan dust to the bones of dinosaurs and bits of modern tire rubber." Then again still, dust fires the hydraulic cycle and gives birth to the stars and the heavenly bodies; every patch of the Earth is made of melted dust. The author looks at dust in a host of its limitless manifestations, and she profiles the scientists taking its measure and examining its consequences. She touches upon intriguing questions yet unanswered: Did dust start the Ice Age? Did it end it? Does dust help suppress asthma? Does space dust form noctilucent clouds? Chances are good that readers will never use an "air freshener" again, nor choose to live downwind of a pig farm, nor be real impressed with government control of carcinogenic quartz dust: "Europeancountries severely restricted the use of quartz sand for sandblasting about fifty years ago. The U.S. government attempted to follow suit in 1974 but was overridden by the painting and sandblasting industries." Holmes is a science writer to watch. Who ever thought dust could so shine?

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