Is Black dust on oats contagious?

This is the first year for me growing black oats (Avena strigosa). I have grown a little common oats in the past, although I think it was the birds that harvested it. The oats came from a couple of sources, since I want to try and develop a landrace here. They were sown at the start of May and only recently started to flower. I have noticed a problem on some of the heads though. Instead of flowers they just have black dust. It's not all the heads just a few. I'm assuming that this is some sort of fungal disease that has come in with the grain. Apart from a rather warm June we have had a fairly normal summer since the oats were planted, slightly drier than usual I would guess.
So I'm wondering how much I need to worry about this. I am only growing a very small area of oats, so can harvest individual stems without too much effort. Can I assume that the rest of the crop is OK? Should I cull the affected stems ASAP? Is the whole crop dubious? Will it affect my (very small!) barley crop adjacent to the oats? What advice/experience have you had on this sort of problem that you can share?
Thanks

I'll just guess that I think it's loose smut or one of the other cereal smuts.  Without digging further into the speciation of the smuts, I'm going to also guess that it won't hurt your barley since often these are somewhat specific to the plant species....thus, oat smut won't infect barley and vice-versa.  This is not always the case, but may well be here since loose smut was given the latin name Ustilago avenae, the 'avenae' referring to oats.  In the University of Illinois reference below, they note that naturally resistant varieties exist, but it may also be that in your 'population' of oats that you planted, natural resistance exists as well.  I would save some of the 'outstandingly clean' heads of your current oat crop as seed for next cropping season and see if that helps your landrace improve its resistance to the disease.  You will have to check with other growers in your area to see if smut is a common, annual disease in that region or something more sporadic.  Finally, yes....it will spread quite readily to other *susceptible* oats that you or neighboring growers have planted.  I don't know of biological control measures for the disease, but several chemical control options are available if you are determined to rid it from this year's crop.....although as something that infects the flowers, it may be too late for that approach.  In the end, if you are starting a landrace project, you can consider yourself lucky!-- You've just be granted an excellent year to screen your seed bank of oats for resistance to oat smut! ;-)  Good luck, Nancy!

https://plantvillage.psu.edu/topics/oats/infos

http://ipm.illinois.edu/diseases/series100/rpd114/

Thank you John. That's given me some pointers to help me.
Yes I'm pretty sure it is smut. I'll have to have a look again to see if it loose smut or covered smut. I also found AHDB on loose smut. Apparently loose smut infects the developing seed on the crop, whereas covered smut can infect them at any stage before and during germination being soil borne as well as seed borne. It is possible to screen for loose smut by sampling and looking for growing fungal systems in the embryo, but that wouldn't be of use for covered smut if that can be in the soil.
Although loose smut can affect up to 25% of the seed, according to the link you gave it can be killed by heat treatment with hot water, which may be worth considering. Covered smut apparently is very rare in the UK so is less likely, although some of my seed did come from Southern Ireland....AHDB say that the soil bourne spores are "short lived" so it's pretty certain that the infection came with the seed then, since the land had been grass for at least 40 years prior to my making a growing are there last year. Saying that though, some grasses can catch the disease too, although I've not noticed it at all. They would have rarely seeded when the sheep were in there.
Luckily oats aren't grown round here anymore, certainly not within 10 miles anyhow. I've never seen anyone else growing it since I've been here, although it may be grown elsewhere on Skye or on the Outer Hebrides.
I think I will look into heat treatment of my saved seed, and maybe any more bought in seed I obtain to mix in next year, and pick out any infected heads in the meantime.