Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As dull as dust, you might think, until you read a fascinating and wide-ranging science account, _The Secret Life of Dust: From the Cosmos to the Kitchen Counter, the Big Consequences of Little Things_ ((John Wiley & Sons) by Hannah Holmes, and realize that dust is certainly universal, and is often a nuisance, but it is also a basic cosmic building block. It is hard to imagine any facet of dust that Holmes has not covered in remarkable detail. House dust is here, of course. Everyone carries around a personal cloud of dust, made of skin cells and clothes fibers, but mostly composed of unknowns. Some of this turns into house dust, which has a surprising complex ecology of fungi and dust mites which feed upon it, and tiny, fierce pseudoscorpions that feed upon the mites. But thinking of dust as some domestic phenomenon is a bit parochial. Try thinking cosmic. Holmes goes back to the Big Bang, which scattered matter all over, in unimaginably thin concentrations. The dust grains gathered, and formed places for atoms to meet and make molecules. That made the sun, the earth, and of course, us. Space dust is therefore of increasing interest to cosmologists, the target now of various probes that are supposed to gather the dust out there and bring it home uncontaminated.

It has become alarmingly clear that dust pays little attention to national boundaries. Oriental countries have had booming technologies run mostly on coal for electricity and diesel for transport. In China, one out of fourteen deaths is due to noxious dusts, and its crops are flagging because they dont get as much sun as they used to. It is only recently that we have discovered that the problem dusts of Asia are our problem, too. The Asian Express makes regular deliveries of Gobi Desert and industrial dusts to the American northeast. The Sahara desert sends its dusts to the eastern US about three times a summer, maybe with bacteria. And the US dusts go to other countries, and it is all one big swaparound. There are rivers of dust in the air, rivers that have flowed since long before we knew of any such things. They are now bigger because of drought and land abuse, and now they carry a freight of DDT, PCBs, and other pollutants that we magnanimously thought we were only dumping onto our own national soils. We at least know now that if we are going to protect countries from poisonous dusts, we are going to have to have a global program to do so, but whether that knowledge will actually inspire such a program is not at all clear.

In an amusing last chapter, Holmes emphasizes that to dust we shall return. She summarizes the efforts of the arts of the embalmer and casketmaker only to show that dust is our destiny no matter what. Some of us will rush the job, being burned into ash quickly after death. It is all well and good for family members to scatter that dust in a garden or at sea, but not too terribly imaginative. For a fee, various companies will turn that dust into keepsake brooches, duck decoys, bowling balls, fireworks, or fishing rods. It doesnt make any ultimate difference. The sun is getting hotter every day, and will eventually turn to hot dust all living things on our planet, and then Earth itself will get sucked into the maw of the red-giant sun, finally to become dust again. Well, take heart. That people can pull together this many interesting facts and stories about mere dust is one of the things that means that the ride between beginning dust and final dust is intrinsically worth taking.

"Everything counts in large amounts." -Depeche Mode

Science writer Hannah Holmes uses the Biblical "dust to dust" adage as a thread weaving through her eleven easy to read chapters, beginning with a sort of overview in Chapter 1. We begin as stardust, and it is to stardust we shall return. Eventually. In Chapter 2, "Life and Death among the Stars," she introduces cosmic dust and in Chapter 3 shows it falling on the earth from outer space: forty thousand tons of it every year, almost all of it in a fine rain. (p. 33) Then there are three chapters on how dust moves around on our planet and how it affects the weather, the life cycles of plants and animals, our economies and our health. There is an excursion into the past in Chapter 7 to answer the question, "Did Dust Do in the Ice Age?" Chapter 8 is about the continuous fall of atmospheric dust onto land, ocean and ice. It is finally in Chapter 9 that Holmes considers the dust in our neighborhoods, and then in Chapter 10, "Microscopic Monsters and Other Indoor Devils," she gets to the topic of primary interest to most readers, the dust under the bed, in the rug, and on the floor. The final chapter is about the dust of our bodies after we are dead, and then after the sun explodes and we are once again stardust.

This is a fascinating read that unlike most books becomes more interesting the further into it one gets. It may change the way you view the world. Seeing our planet and its history from the point of view of dust sheds an entirely different light on things. The very small things in enormous numbers affect our lives in ways that surprise and astound. Consider the sheer volume and weight of dust that swirls around in the atmosphere, with massive tons of it held aloft to cross oceans and continents. That story alone is mind boggling. Here I learned that the coral islands of the Caribbean developed their soil not from the breakdown of the islands themselves, but from the sand that fell on them over millions of years from the Sahara Desert thousands of miles away!

This, the relatively unknown story of dust is a story of dust hunters who collect and analyze the minute particles from all over the planet to determine their origin and how they affect the various environments. Dust hunters even drill into the arctic and the antarctic to reconstruct the story of dust laid down in the past. They can tell by the composition of dust where it came from. Saharan dust, for example, is particularly heavy in iron and phosphorous. In fact, the microbes in dust, the viruses, the fungi and the bacteria, can betray its origin.

Holmes considers some hot topics in science along the way, including global warming and the explosion in asthma in the United States and Europe in recent decades and how dust may or may not be the cause. Deadly dusts containing asbestos, quartz, coal, etc. are considered as well as the danger of working with materials containing them. Why talcum powder is no longer dusted on babies and how working with pigs and wheat and other farm products can be hazardous to your health is revealed. The deadly effect of dust getting into the lungs is explained--how macrophages can and cannot engulf and get rid of various substances and how people die from a host of diseases caused by inhaling the wrong kind of dust. And Holmes doesn't disappoint when it comes to the story of household dust. The chapter on indoor dust is absolutely fascinating and a bit scary.

Some other things I learned is how dust heats or cools the planet as it floats in the air or lands on ocean, land or ice; how epidemics can be triggered by migrating dust containing disease spores; how a bloom of algae can follow a download of iron-bearing dust from a desert half a world away; even how we carry around with us our own personal and distinctive cloud of dust.

Some readers I suspect will grow impatient with all the science and want to know about their own dust. I know I felt that way when I opened the book. But I am glad I read the whole thing, because what I learned about dust makes me shake my head in wonder. This is an information-packed book. There's no padding, and everything is vividly expressed.

Dust. There's a lot of it. We don't know much about it. If you want to hear that repeated for a couple hundred pages, buy this book. There's a lot of airy speculation and to be fair, there are a few interesting pieces of trivia thrown in... but for the most part, this book drags.

There are some writers who can make any topic interesting, like Bill Bryson. I don't think Hannah Holmes is one of them. I gave up on the book about 3/4 of the way through. After the intro, it just felt like she was saying the same thing, over and over. Space dust? We don't know much about it! Desert dust? It's a mystery! Smoke? That's dust, too, and we also know very little about it! And on, and on...

'Dust' is an interesting choice for the title. I might call what Holmes is writting about 'matter', not 'dust'. She's not talking about the stuff you clean up with Pledge; she's talking about anything that ever gets broken down into little pieces, which is pretty much everything. That's not a plus or minus for the book; it's just meant to set your expectations better than I think her title does.

If her writing were more interesting, I would have added a couple more stars. If she could have provided more information, I might have gone up to 5 stars. But as it stands, the book gets 2 stars from me because it's not horrible and it has some interesting trivia, but I wouldn't go any higher. It's not at all compelling. I can't think of anyone I would recommend this to.

Who ever thought dust could be so fascinating? This book is gripping. It made me think twice about basic activities, like eating and even breathing. Filled with interesting historical and scientific facts, this book presents both the positive and negative effects of dust. One thing is for sure - you'll never underestimate the power of small things again!

Hannah Holmes has produced a gem of a science book which reads like a good novel. Her mastery of descriptive prose and imaginative narrations of the exploration and discovery of the microscopic universe we inhabit will draw the reader into the excitement of the scientists who study the very tiny stuff of which everything is made. This story is clearly very thoughtfully researched and woven together from a great range of scientific sources. As Holmes attempts to confront some still uncertain and controversial ideas about the role of dust in our individual health and the global health of our planet, she takes a reasonably balanced approach, leaving the reader with the sense of wonder and curiosity and thirst for greater understanding which must drive the scientists she writes about. I look forward to more such enlightening and entertaining books from this author.

I agree with some other reviewers who comment that some illustrations, especially those referenced in the website bibliography at the end of the book, would make the book even more enjoyable. But that does not detract from its five-star standing, in my view. Having the referenced web pages gathered on a central website to make them easier to explore might also be nice, although that, of course, goes beyond the scope of a "hard copy" paper publication.

This is the sort of story which could be well adapted to an online, hyperlinked multimedia presentation, using some of these remarkable resources to expand the story and spark further individual exploration, perhaps published on CD-ROM along with the book. Perhaps the publishers would consider such. I think such a product could expand the audience that would enjoy this story, to make it more accessible to the nintendo generation and others who have been brainwashed by the educational system into thinking natural science is boring and impossible to understand.

We need more creative and imaginative science writers like Hanna Holmes!

Dust. It's all around us in our daily lives. We brush it off the tabletop and sweep it with the broom. Holmes shows us that it's a lot more than that. It's the building blocks of the universe. It's a natural part of our lives - we each have our own individual dust clouds. Unlike Peanut's Pigpen, ours is usually not visible. Hannah Holmes has written a broad and surprisingly accessible book looking at the roles and dangers that dust plays in our lives. She is able to easily slide from the macro view of the universe to the micro view of dust mites without losing her audience. Dust rises from the most unexpected places - who would have though of the sea as a dust creator, yet spray allows the launching of salt particles into the air at a surprising rate. And penguins produce ammonia gas that condenses into small balls. Holmes writes, "By accidentally flying through penguin-poo dust in the making, Hubert and friends had caught the magical transition of gas to particle."

You will walk away from this book hopefully not fearing, but respecting dust for its role in our, and the planet's life. Holmes shows us that even the little mundane subjects of day to day life, can have profound effects upon us all.

I just finished reading "The Secret Life of Dust: From the Cosmos to the Kitchen Counter, the Big Consequences of Little Things", by Hannah Holmes. It was a thoroughly delightful read. I learned several fun facts like how each raindrop surrounds a mote of dust and how, without dust, we'd have no rain (or at least it would have to be a heck of a lot more humid before it would actually fall.
I'd recommend this as a great holiday read. It's both scientifically fascinating and full of fun trivia.

Even in the "cleanest" house, your own "personal cloud" would have provided millions of invisible particles to inhale. Much of that fog will be your own cast off skin flakes. Your nose might filtre out the big ones. Others will have travelled along your bronchial tubes a way, to be picked up for delivery to your stomach. Yet others will elude the body's natural traps to drift into your lungs. Some will take up residence there, perhaps for good. And if your house is actually among those "cleanest" ones, it may not be good for your children.

In this compelling presentation, Hannah Holmes traces the origins of the dust around us. She explains how a distant star, exploding with immeasurable fury, sent a shock wave through our region of the galaxy. Adding its own burden of particles to a dust cloud already present, it disturbed whatever structure that cloud possessed. In time, the cloud coalesced into a star, with the leftovers becoming our solar system. Among the planets emerging in that system, was the one we call "Earth". The sun's and planets' formation, while removing much of the previous dust, left enough remains for the Earth to sweep up every day. Thus, dust from space adds to the multitude of dusts our living planet produces. More dusts, produced by one of the primate species on this world, provides further contribution to your "personal cloud".

As ubiquitous as dust is, Holmes' title is hardly misleading. Although we're surrounded by billions of tiny, microscopic particles, information about what they are, where they originated and how far they've travelled is usually an enigma. Volcanoes make them. Trees and plants shed them [we'll pass over the household pets]. Birds, cows and fleeting deer add to the envelope of dust around us. Even micro-organisms make a contribution by eating rocks and attacking living things. When they haven't settled somewhere and turned themselves into spores. Yet, discoveries about dust are only now coming to light. Dust crossing the Atlantic from the Sahara, while observed long ago, was only recently verified. Vast clouds rise from Asia to drift across the Pacific Ocean to sprinkle over North America. What do those particles carry as burden?

The author demonstrates vividly why we should know more about dust. Nearly a chapter is dedicated to the problems of asthma alone. For starters, it's not clear what causes asthma and how it works. What is clear is that in the industrialised nations the number of asthma sufferers is on the upswing. After her description of coal-burning housewives in China, why are nations with insulated houses and hydro for heating and cooking suffering bronchial problems? Part of the answer lies in who is suffering. It's the children. Partly because "superclean" houses have deprived children of the means to develop their immune systems to deal with their own "personal cloud". Another [wait for it!] is the sedentary life of school, TV and video games. Keeping the children indoors and relatively still makes that situation worse. More outdoor activity keeps the body active and helps flush the lungs and bronchial passages of invading particles.

Holmes has interviewed many scientists and dust observers in the course of making this book. She explains her research path with a list of printed works and Web sites to see what she has seen and what is becoming visible [Note, however, that Web sites listed in books tend to be quickly outdated. This list is no exception]. She presents the material well, provoking our interest and giving us inspiration to follow where she leads. It isn't enough to say "This book is for everybody". Since we are all surrounded by dust, since we all contribute to the dust density, and since it is, after all, the final state of the body, it behooves us all to see what Holmes has seen. In some cases, you will need to act on what you've found. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Most things we run across in life - books, movies, art - are simply variations of each other. This book is something truly unique unto itself, breaking new ground and propelling the reader into strange new worlds of thought, from the infinite to the infinitesimal, from the omnipresent to the unnoticeable. You haven't read anything like it.

Stretching the mind to conceive things that it has never even occurred to us to consider, it leads us on a strange and wondrous journey through time and space, through events cataclysmic and mundane. Better buy two copies, because friends who stop by will suddenly find themselves "borrowing" it, only to have it "borrowed" away in turn by others. In that way, this book is a bit incendiary in nature as it has a power to ignite the curiosity of anyone who comes into contact with it.

Catch the flame.

A great read begins with a thought, no matter how seemingly insignificant, from a great mind. The hallmark of great writing is when the author is unbound by some repetively obsessed over interest and has the imagination and confidence to write about a new and unfamiliar topic. Hannah Holmes has shown me that she can probably write about any topic she chooses and make it interesting and entertaining. If a subject seems uninteresting, it is because there is not enough information. This book has enough information, salted with Hannahs gift as a storyteller to make this book as hard to put down as a ruptured tube of superglue.