Apartment Air Quality

Have you thought about contacting the local heath department? They might be able to come out and test your unit for you. If there is a health hazzard they will get your landlord to resolve the problem. If the health department isn’t willing to come out and test the air for you, I would ask them who they would suggest. The health department should be your best bet for this type of situation.
Good Luck!

Thanks for the advice. I will contact them and update this with my experience.

Here is an update:

I left a detailed message on the LA Dept. of Health web site.
http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/report/phreports.htm

I received a :cc of an email saying that it wasn’t covered under “SLA inspection area”. I figured it was over. Instead, I got a phone call today from someone at the LA County Health Dept. asking what the cross streets were for my building. I told him and then he thanked me and hung up.

That is all.

I’m not too surprised about the health department thing. They get a ton of complaints from immediate issues that they consider more dangerous. I think I know what you are seeing in your rental. The white dust is most likely coming from sheet rock dust. Anytime new construction takes place there is a lot of dust created from sanding and mudding the new walls. The stuff is a mess and can take forever to clean-up, but its not toxic or hazardous. I suggest changing out your furnace filter, you may even need to change it every couple of days until the dust is completely gone.
Furnance filters are extremely reasonable, probably not more than a few dollars.

By the way, I was going to mention that the vacuuming can actually make the problem worse. If the white dust is sheet rock dust, the particals are so small that the vacuum’s filter will not catch them, so it actually blows them around even more. A good trick is to shampoo your carpets, or if nothing else take a spray bottle full of water and spray the floors and walls, then try to vacuum. By getting the dust damp it will clump together and stay inside the vacuum.
Hope that helps!

Richard,
Thanks for the suggestions.