Welcome to DustSafe

The urbanisation of global populations has resulted in people spending up to 90% of their time indoors. Consequently, health exposure risks to environmental contaminants are dominated by indoor air particulates, like dust.

What's in your dust? Information on the composition and risks associated with house dust is largely absent. Further, there is limited information available to households on how to manage and reduce any identified risks.

DustSafe invites citizen scientists to submit their vacuum dust for analysis of contaminants of concern.

In return, you will recieve a report outlining the concentration of eight trace metals in your home: arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), manganese (Mn), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb) and zinc (Zn).

We have testing facilties in:

• Australia (Macquarie University)

• England (Northumbria University)

• United States of America (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis)

You can explore our findings on our global map: Map My Environment.

In order to keep the DustSafe program running and accessible to all, we ask for a small donation, starting from $20. This donation covers the cost of staff time and laboratory consumables to analyse one vacuum dust sample from your home.