Int J Health Life Sci. 2019 July; 5(2):e94602. Published online 2019 July 30. doi: 10.5812/ijhls.94602. Research Article Environmental Hygiene and House Dust Mites in Dormitories for Female Students of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences in 2016 Fatemeh Hosaini 1 , Shohreh Heshmati 1 , Hiwa Hossaini 2, 3, * and Shiva Shokati 1 1 Students Research Committee, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran 2 Research Center for Environmental Determinants of Health (RCEDH), School of Public Health, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran 3 Department of Environmental Health Engineering, Faculty of Health, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran * Corresponding author: Department of Environmental Health Engineering, Faculty of Health, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran. Email: hiwa_hossaini@yahoo.com Received 2019 May 28; Revised 2019 July 24; Accepted 2019 July 27. Abstract Background: Most students perceive a dormitory as their home. Research suggests that inappropriate conditions of dormitories can disrupt the psychophysical health and educational status of students. Objectives: The present research was conducted in 2016 to investigate the status of the environmental hygiene and house dust mites (HDMs) in dormitories for the female students of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran. The status of dust in terms of HDMs was also examined in different areas of the dormitories, including the rooms. Methods: To investigate the environmental parameters, a checklist comprising 14 sections was developed and completed through a field survey. To investigate the prevalence of mites, the samples collected from 1 m 2 of the surface of the mattresses and carpets in the rooms using a vacuum cleaner were extracted and stained, and the mites were counted under a microscope. Results: One sample positive for mites was identified in both Boostan and Taleghani dormitories, while no positive samples were found in Mofatteh dormitory. Moderate levels of environmental hygiene were also observed in Mofatteh dormitory and favorable levels in Boostan and Taleghani. Conclusions: The results obtained from the present research suggest that the health status of the dormitories was moderate to high based on their overall score; nevertheless, the buildings oldness and the lack of a consistent management of waste collection and sewage disposal were among the factors that degraded the health status of all the dormitories. Keywords: HDM, Dormitory, Environmental Hygiene, Student, Dust 1. Background Many students perceive entering a university, includ- ing the experience of living in a dormitory, as the begin- ning of a new stage of their life. Given the large number of students annually admitted to universities outside their place of residence, dormitories are considered a substitute for their family environment (1). In 1996, Johnson et al. showed that living in dormitories and their hygienic status increase students’ tolerance, develop their psychosocial characteristics, self-confidence and critical thinking and help with their adaptation to the community, participa- tion in non-teaching activities and mental maturity (2). Re- search suggests that good health can improve the learning potential, and that a healthy and systematic learning envi- ronment is required for ensuring psychophysical health as an essential component of efficient learning (3). In 2004, Bahreinian et al. found inappropriate conditions of dor- mitories to disrupt the psychophysical health and educa- tional status of students (4). In Iran, the number of student dormitories has increased proportionally to the recently- growing student population. According to the statistics adopted from the ISNA website, in 2015, the total num- ber of Iranian university students was 4400000, including 92457 in Kermanshah, and 45% of the students were living in dormitories (5). Given the importance of the hygiene of dormitories as the place of residence of students, signifi- cant health factors and their standards are categorized in Table 1. 2. Objectives The present study was conducted in 2016 to investi- gate the environmental hygiene status of dormitories for Copyright © 2019, International Journal of Health and Life Sciences. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits copy and redistribute the material just in noncommercial usages, provided the original work is properly cited.