Cellulose

Cellulose in plants

Cell induced trypophobia

cellulose induced trypophobia

What is that comes to your mind when you hear the word cellulose? I am sure the image of fat deposited around waist and love handles is what most people start to think about. But that is cellulite and we are talking about cellulose, the main ingredient found inside all plant cell wall. This cellulose is found embedded in a matrix along with other polymers like pectin and lignin. Cellulose is nothing but sugar and a living material that is increasingly being used for thermal insulation of buildings and homes. Though the use of cellulose for thermal insulation is in practice since 1950’s, it gained momentum during the oil crisis of 70’s that made heating homes a costly affair. Keeping homes well insulated by using cellulose in walls and roofs reduces dependence upon fossil fuels.

There are some who cannot stand the sight of cellulose because of a strange kind of phobia known as trypophobia. This is an irrational fear of holes such as those in a lotus sea pod. Even in cellulose, the structure, when seen under a microscope shows many holes in the matrix which is what a Trypophobe dreads about. If you have heard about human bot flies, you know what I mean. These are flies that are parasitic in nature and leave their eggs inside human skin using mosquitoes as carrier of their eggs. Female mosquitoes, when they try to suck on our blood, allow the warmth and moisture of our skin to be felt by eggs that get deposited inside the skin and develop into larvae later on. This is an ingenious way of planting eggs inside our skin as otherwise bot flies would get killed if they tried to place eggs inside skin. A small opening in the skin is all larvae need to live inside and breathe, and when they are ready to turn into bot fly, they escape out of this hole.

Now having an insect live inside your skin is a terrifying thought and this is what makes people wary of holes in all objects around them. If a person is trypophobic, he cannot stand the sight of cellulose and will feel repulsive even if he hasn’t seen but knows that the walls of a house have been thermally insulated using cellulose. Fear of holes in skin is an irrational fear as there have been rare instances where human bot flies have been found to develop inside human skin.

There are four kinds of insulations done in homes using cellulose and these are dry, spray, low dust, and stabilized types. Earlier there were complaints of this insulation catching fire easily but today the use of fire retardant materials while insulating a wall makes cellulose insulation a very cost effective and ideal choice for thermal insulation reducing the cost of heating of a room or a building. Though cellulose padding is an easy way out, if the owner of a building has this irrational fear of the holes, he can go in for foam padding instead of cellulose padding.

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