[.ca] The Secret Life of Dust: From the Cosmos to the Kitchen ... (ISBN 0471426350)

From Amazon.co.uk:
Leave it to an accomplished science writer like Hannah Holmes to unearth so much about so little in The Secret Life of Dust. 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 a 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, " ... you 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 "unsavoury 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 much 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

Take a deep breath . . .:
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 \owe'll pass over the household pets\c. 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 \owait for it!\c 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 \oNote, however, that Web sites listed in books tend to be quickly outdated. This list is no exception\c. 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. \ostephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada\c

On the edge of greatness:
I first heard of the author, Hannah Holmes, as she was giving a radio interview on NPR. Unfortunately, reading the book is just like listening to the author on the radio -- she uses beautiful descriptive language, but there are NO pictures, even though she often verbally describes pictures of the wonderful world of dust she's seen. The prose is beautiful, and the coverage of the book is extensive. Her jump to the view that the Earth will be swallowed up by the sun in the distant future is less likely scientifically than she makes it appear. And the book tends a bit too much to simplicity instead of thoroughness. But why would photos, or drawings at least, be left out of a book which could benefit so much from them? The microscopic world of dust, and the cosmic scale of stardust and global dust flows, is not easily and accurately imagined. This lack brings the potential rating of the book (4 or 5 stars) down to 2 stars. Only _after_ the reader goes through over 200 pages of bare text does the reader get to the list of about sixty websites in an appendix at the back of the book -- websites which contain pictures of what she's been talking about. But, these sites are not grouped on the web, and must be accessed individually by typing in the lengthy URL's -- assuming you still have the interest to go back to see the actual images you were only "picturing" in your mind, AND you have internet access at your reading spot and the time to type in each URL individually. The book's listing of the first URL I explored had a typo in it, and it took some exploring to find the typo (.html is listed, but the site uses .htm). How much trouble would it have been to bring all these sites together on an author or book website, so that the reader could click from one to the other? Couldn't this appendix of websites been mentioned in the introduction or first chapter -- where the reader would be warned to refer to it periodically -- since the website list is apparently a substitute for photos or drawings in the book? This is a book on the edge of greatness. Hopefully in future editions of this book, and certainly in Ms. Holmes' future books, relevant photographs and drawings will be included. Just as Ms. Holmes didn't do her research over the telephone, she should not expect us to grasp the full beauty and understanding of what she describes through mere words.

Often fascinating, sometimes dull.:
Writing is excellent, although occasionally a certain "breathlessness" in tone becomes wearying. There are a number of unresolved scientific questions, such as the cause of asthma, and Holmes does a particularly good job with these. The material on dust and weather is fascinating. While Holmes' sympathies are clear, she remains objective. Despite Holmes' best efforts, however, the underlying material is not uniformly interesting. For example, there are some interesting and surprising causes of dust, and causes of ill health, but Holmes' comprehensive treatment also, necessarily, touches on the well known, amplifying with statistics and so on that just aren't that interesting.

Often fascinating, sometimes dull.:
Writing is excellent, although occasionally a certain "breathlessness" in tone becomes wearying. There are a number of unresolved scientific questions, such as the cause of asthma, and Holmes does a particularly good job with these. The material on dust and weather is fascinating. While Holmes' sympathies are clear, she remains objective. Despite Holmes' best efforts, however, the underlying material is not uniformly interesting. For example, there are some interesting and surprising causes of dust, and causes of ill health, but Holmes' comprehensive treatment also, necessarily, touches on the well known, amplifying with statistics and so on that just aren't that interesting.

From dust:
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.