Reducing house-dust mites by vacuuming.

Two types of nozzles were compared for efficiency in extracting dust and house-dust mites from textile floor-coverings. From 21 homes, 2 m2 from the wall-to-wall floor-covering in the bedrooms were vacuumed. On 1-m2 the non-motorized nozzle was used, on the other 1-m2 a motorized nozzle was used. Before this sampling both test surfaces were vacuumed using the non-motorized nozzle in order to assess the mite numbers at the beginning of the experiment. The motorized nozzle appeared to be significantly more effective in extracting dust; however, for the mites no such difference could be noted.