The curse of the black dust

Ever wonder why buildings in Tokyo or Osaka that are painted white turn gray so quickly! Simple. Japan's cities are cursed with a plague that is almost Biblical in proportion -- one that will forever keep the oshihori people in business: Japanese Black Dust.

This Black Dust, which I assume has been around in Japan since the advent of the industrial revolution, is one of the biggest enemies of the computer processing power that runs so much of our lives. In most cases, the inside of a PC that has been in long term use in a typical Tokyo office resembles the interior of a decrepit 19th-century coal furnace. Anyone who has been living in a Japanese city for any length of time knows that letting your laundry dry outside for an entire day will cause it to tak e on the aroma of a diesel truck -- yet most of the people I checked with tend to ignore the airborne dirt factor on their computer maintenance list. (Have you looked inside your computer lately?)

Black Dust is not only untidy -- it can be costly. For example, most of the reasons for failure of a PC's power supply can be traced to dirt clogging up the system. Grime on a motherboard can cause shorting but, more commonly, will prevent the all im portant chips in your PC from venting heat. Considering a 486 or Pentium usually runs at over 100"F, a moderate layer of dust can easily lead to an expensive microprocessor meltdown with costs not only in money, but in (much more precious) time.

If you have been wondering how to keep your beige box beige, here are some ideas you may want to take to the cleaners:

1. Wipe down the keyboard and screen every two or three days without exception. In offices with tobacco fiends, once every day is an even better idea. Make sure, though, that you use a liquid cleaner specifically designed for OA equipment. There are a lot of so-called "office cleaners" available in Japan, but many of them are too harsh for PCs. Something designed to cut through months' worth of Japanese cigarette smoke should not be applied to a monitor screen.

2. Although a cool breeze coming in through an open window on a nice day can be refreshing, keeping the windows closed and using a filtered ventilator will help keep out the infamous Black Dust. An air conditioner with a "fan" setting that just repla ces the air serves this purpose nicely.

3. Another solution is to "blow out" your computer with static-free air from time to time. One BBS sysop I spoke to does this almost every day to prevent any equipment problems. Be sure to only use "static-free" air, for obvious reasons.

4. Dust covers for computers are a nice idea. The problem is that, in a busy office, nobody ever really uses them. And these days, most people leave their computers on all the time; a plastic dust cover on a hot computer spells "fire hazard." Instead , you many want to try dedicated OA furniture -- especially a PC desk with a slide-out drawer for the keyboard to keep dust off it. Well-designed computer furniture is comfortable to work with anyway, and it is generally a better long-term investment than any computer. (I've had the same PC desk since 1986.)

5. Keeping the system unit (tower or not) off the floor also helps, since carpeting generates hordes of dust. Who needs carpets anyway? Several people I talked to swear by bare floors for keeping the place clean and keeping the Black Dust out of thei r equipment. And a bare floor is also easier to clean after groggy staff spill coffee while stumbling to their desks on a Monday morning.

Air cleaners

The most important factor in keeping your PC clean is to keep the atmosphere around it clean. The best device I've been able to find to do this is called the Purezon Air Purifier, a negative-charged electron generator. Unlike the more common ion genera tors you see for sale around town (the ones that tend to take dirt out of the air and stick to the walls, furniture, and your computer), an electron generator causes the dirt and dust in the air to drop to the floor, where you can easily vacuum it up. The US-made Purezon Air Purifier is sold by a Tokyo-based company called RCS (phone 03-3407-5696, fax 03-34980858). They sell two different-sized units, depending on what type of office you have. The head of the company, Dr. Alien Robinson, told me that his gizmo tends to relieve stress and make employees more productive. The Purezon also generates ozone which, according to Dr. Robinson, office plants thrive on.

In addition to his monthly column in Computing Japan, Thomas Caldwell writes for the Japan Times Weekly and Asahi Evening News. He is also a correspondent for the UPI Radio Network.