7 Things you didn't know about dust.

• Dust is universal: It’s dry, powdery soil or any other material made up of tiny particles, whether that’s in a pile under your bed or the plume of a volcano.
• Many mammals and birds take dust baths as part of their grooming routines or social rituals.
• Chickens dust-bathe so devotedly that caged hens sometimes act out “sham” baths on the floors of their cages, without any dust.
• Humans, on the other hand, go to great lengths to keep dust away. One of the first motorized vacuum cleaners, patented by English engineer Hubert Cecil Booth in 1901, was nicknamed “Puffing Billy” after a famous steam locomotive. Huge, horse-drawn and powered by gasoline, it had to be parked outside, and its hoses were deployed through doors and windows to clean establishments such as Westminster Abbey.
• And no wonder we try so hard. When Dutch naturalist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek peered at items from his household through the microscope lens he invented, he found tiny spider-like animals - mites - living everywhere.
• Allergies and asthma are only the start of how dust can harm humans. Miners are at risk of silicosis, pneumoconiosis (black lung) and other diseases from coal dust. Breathing asbestos dust can lead to the cancer mesothelioma.
• Dust pneumonia killed thousands during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. A recent study found that 1934 brought the most severe North American drought in a millennium. An unlucky atmospheric circulation pattern may have been made worse by poor farming practices.