White dust in computer rooms

[Engine ear Dave]

As a hardware engineer I get to work in a lot of different Datacentre computer rooms. A couple of times I have seen places where everything gets covered with a thin layer of white dust, this dust seems particularly attracted to anything with an electrical charge, particularly CRT monitor screens; mains power cables often have a "candy stripe" of white dust up them, i guess the dust is attracted to the live conductor as it spirals through the cable. Does anyone know what causes this and what the composition of the dust would be? Is it harmful to machines or people?

[rick jones]

The dust could be almost anything. To know what it is you would probably have to have a sample or two sent somewhere for analysis. Armed with knowledge of its composition from said analysis you could then have a better chance of finding its source and also knowing whether it is harmful to either machines or people.

Anything else is just going to be uninformed speculation.