Diesel works quite well.
For those who don't want to return their fossil fuels to the ground from whence they came, I hear a 2-liter bottle of club soda poured into the mound will displace the O2 with CO2 and suffocate the critters. Never actually tried it.
The really crazy, fine dust problem is mostly generated when I do power carving projects. There is just no way to effectively collect at the source, so it gets EVERYWHERE in my little workspace.
No central AC in our house. We run window fans at night to cool the house and then close everything up in the morning. When I get home on a hot (for us) day, the house will typically be around 22-23*C. On days that just don't cool off at night, we use a portable air conditioner in the bedroom.