# Dust Mites and Dead Skin and Pillows, Oh My!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dust-mites-and-dead-skin-and-pillows-oh-my/54640>\
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\
**Created:** [February 15, 2001, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dust-mites-and-dead-skin-and-pillows-oh-my/54640 "2001-02-15T21:15:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![zut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zut/32/2875_2.png) [@zut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zut)\
**Post date:** [February 15, 2001, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dust-mites-and-dead-skin-and-pillows-oh-my/54640/1 "2001-02-15T21:15:19Z")

</div>

Cecil did a column last year entitled, [“Does a mattress double its weight due to dust mites and their debris? (07-Apr-2000).”](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/000407.html) If you distill the column down to one word, that word would be, “no.”

However, just today I ran across [this interview](http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opinion.jsp?id=ns22785) with John Maunder, head of Britain’s Medical Entomology Centre (which sounds official to me). Amongst other things, he says,

> [@](#):
>
> At the end of the six years, a tenth of the weight of the pillow consisted of old human skin, mould growing on the skin, mites growing on the mould, dead mites and mite dung.

Now, pillow \<\> mattress and 1/2 \<\> 1/10, but this little factoid seems to be mighty close to the one Cecil discusses.

Problem is, I see no cites in the linked article, and I also wonder about the “Medical Entomology Centre.” Is it legit? Any discussion?