Junior Chefs

Achoo! Runny noses, red-rimmed eyes, pounding heads and strained breathing patterns are becoming so common these days, we may all don surgical masks before too long. And a certain household invader, despite its invisibility to the naked eye, is fast on its way to becoming public enemy number one. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the dust mite.

Say what you will, this nasty creature has some explaining to do. Thanks to its pesky prevalence, the dust mite has contributed mightily to an industry that's hitting the mainstream in a big way with
allergy-busting merchandise such as air purifiers, antibacterial and antimicrobial bedding materials and so forth.

Such sophisticated measures are being taken by an ever-vexed populace whose numbers are nothing to sneeze at: An estimated one in five Americans suffer from allergies. What's more, statistics provided by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases reveal self-reported cases of asthma grew from 10.4 million to more than 14 million between 1990 and 1994.

Not all this misery can be laid at the spindly feet of the dust mite, of course--but that isn't curtailing the rise in anti-mite mania. After all, aside from "ER" heartthrob George Clooney, who looks good in a surgical mask?

This article was originally published in the April 1997 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Junior Chefs.