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| putting sheets, pillows and pillow cases in a hot dryer twice a week for 10 minutes, keeping stuffed animals, shaggy rugs, quilts and dolls out of the bedroom, having pets sleep away from the bedroom and rinsing the face in hot salted water. Another treatment for dust mites is tea tree oil. A dilute solution (0.8 percent tea tree oil) can be made by combining 1/2 tablespoon tea tree oil with an equal amount of rubbing alcohol or vodka (to make it water-dispersible) and 1 quart of water. Exposure to an 0.8 percent solution of tea tree oil kills 100 percent of treated dust mites within 30 minutes. Where rinsing or sponging is inconvenient, the solution can be sprayed. It can be applied to carpets through any rug shampoo appliance. |
| Reducing exposure reduces stress on the immune system and in some cases, that alone is all the body needs to recover and reverse the damage. See the appendix for a list of mail order companies specializing in hypoallergenic products. |
| House Plants Can Help |
| One effective air filter you don't have to send away for is the house plant. When the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) discovered in 1973 that Skylab's tightly sealed air contained over a hundred toxic chemicals, the agency began a search for solutions. Learning that Russian scientists were experimenting with live plants as air purifiers, NASA hired research scientists to explore that possibility. The researchers found that all house plants share the ability to remove contaminants from the air by pulling them into their leaves. The toxins migrate to the roots and into the soil, where they decompose. Trichlorethylene, formaldehyde and benzene, three common pollutants, were treated in sealed growth chambers by common plants such as the peace lily, lady palm and corn plant, any of which could clean the air in a small (10'-by-10') room. As the study discovered, the more house plants you have in a home or office, the more pure the air becomes. Other research |
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