Is Your Carpet Damaging Your Family's Health?

By Dick Aronson

A few months ago my wife asked me if I had noticed that all three of our grand kids seemed to be sick a lot more than they used to be. Thinking back I had to agree she was right so then we wondered what had changed in their environment to cause the increase in sick days.

The kids attended the same school, played with the same friends, had the same pets but the family had moved house. The houses were fairly similar and only a few streets apart but the new house had a lot more carpeted areas and a much bigger yard.

So could it be that the carpets were the problem?

Our daughter keeps a pretty clean house and vacuums regularly but with 3 kids, a cat, a big dog and a husband running around the house, not to mention the various kid's friends who are always popping in and out it's impossible to keep the place spotless.

Since I write health related articles for part of my living, obviously I got the job of researching further for a possible correlation between carpets and kid's health problems. In particular I was keen to find out if there was a relationship between carpet cleanness and asthma as another of our daughters is prone to some fairly severe asthma attacks.

My reading of various research papers, articles and material available from carpet manufacturers and cleaners clearly indicates that carpets are known to act as sinks for soils, bacteria, mould and fungus so there is a definite possibility of at least some of the kid's illnesses being due to carpet born causes.

I found that in numerous studies, house or room dust has been found to contain pesticides, solvents and other carcinogenic substances.

Health problems such as asthma, headaches, coughing, poor sleep and breathing difficulties have all been reported as being associated with dirty carpets in fact, the typical dust found in households and hotel rooms, has been proven to be one of the most toxic substances the human body is exposed to on a regular basis.

When we discussed my findings with our daughter she protested that her carpets were clean, she vacuumed at least once a week and professional carpet cleaning was just too expensive as well as being disruptive to her household.

After my wife pointed out that Carpets might Look and feel good in your home but in Australia where we mostly live an indoor/outdoor lifestyle, a lot of dirt is invariably carried inside, food crumbs are dropped, dust blows in from outside and pet hair is deposited on the nice clean carpets.

Anyway, after a while she decided that maybe the old man had a point and started looking at carpet cleaning options. As she feared calling in the professionals might be alright once a year but more often was just not possible on her budget so she decided to try renting a carpet cleaning machine from her local supermarket.

She tells me that these machines are surprisingly simple to use, it doesn't take long and the carpets dry quickly so that by the time the kids come home from school, there is no discernible moisture or smell left to worry about. Best of all the cost is reasonable particularly since she and her girlfriend now rent a machine together and clean the carpets in both their houses in the same day so that they have been able to do it every 6 weeks or so.

End result; the kids absences from school due to sickness have been reduced dramatically to the point where the level of illness is back to what it was in the previous house they lived in.

A word of caution, some carpet cleaning materials can also cause health problems so take a good look at the chemicals used by your choice of carpet cleaner.

Dick Aronson has been involved in the healthcare industry for 35 years. He has written numerous articles on the subject and runs a number of informative websites,viz: http://www.life-wave-patches.com and http://www.healthinnovationsonline.com

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