Many people would be surprised and shocked to learn that carpets can be harmful to their health, and can even lower the air quality inside your property. How’s this possible, and what role does professional carpet cleaning play to improve the situation?
1. Your carpets – one giant, big filter
The composition of a carpet, with its dense weave and millions of tiny strands, makes it the perfect place to trap all of the dirt, debris and particles floating around a room, or trampled inside. Essentially, a carpet is like one big giant filter, drawing in air pollutants and dirt. Whilst this may seem like a good thing, as it filters baddies out of the air, over time, if the pollutants in a carpet build up, the filtering action will no longer be effective. Instead, the accumulated particles will be released back into the atmosphere as a carpet is walked on, ready and waiting for you to breathe them in.
It’s not just walking on a carpet that can send the trapped particles in carpets flying back into the air. You might think vacuuming a carpet will be an effective strategy for tackling carpet pollutants, but, in many cases, the average vacuum cleaner will also kick the particles into the atmosphere, rather than gobbling them all up. Plus, because dirt and dust in the air can sink deeper into a carpet as it gets trodden on, it can be very difficult for standard vacuum cleaners to fully access all of the deep-seated particles entrenched inside carpet fibres.
2. Health invaders
So what are the substances that can end up trapped inside your carpets, which threaten your indoor air quality, and even your health?
Dust is one of the biggest problems for any carpet. When you get dust, along comes dust mites, too. These carpet-dwelling organisms feed off the dry skin flakes from humans and dander from pets that can end up inside a carpet. Dust mites are known allergens, so can cause health problems such as coughing, wheezing, sneezing or itchy skin.
Pollen is another substance that can become trapped inside a carpet, and released into the air as a carpet is walked over. If you suffer from hay fever, you don’t even need to go outside to experience unwelcome symptoms. Tiny pollen particles can end up being brought inside on your clothes, footwear and hair, as well as blown in through open windows.
Bacteria, germs and viruses can also be brought inside on clothes and unclean footwear, as well as from pets – and you guessed it, the first place they’ll end up is inside your carpets, only to be thrust into the air when carpet fibres are agitated when walked on. Studies have shown that in just one square inch of carpet area, there can be as much as 200,000 bacteria lurking, which is thought to be around 4,000 more bacteria than on the average toilet seat. Who would knowingly want all of that bacteria in their carpets, not to mention in the air they breathe?
Additionally, carpets that have been damp at some point may also be harbouring mould and mildew spores, which can end up infiltrating the air, potentially causing you ill-health.
The problem with a lot of these health invaders in your carpets is that you can’t see them, so you don’t actually know they’re there. You may endure a wide range of uncomfortable health symptoms inside your property, without actually realising your unclean carpets could be to blame.
It’s not just homes where the air can be impacted from unclean carpets. In workplace environments, a widely-recognised term ‘sick building syndrome’, where high numbers of workers experience problems like headaches, itchy skin and respiratory disorders, are thought to be as a result of unclean carpets which cause poor indoor air quality.
3. Professional carpet cleaners to the rescue
Before you strip all carpets out of your property, it’s reassuring to know that you don’t need to take such drastic action. You can still enjoy owning carpets without them affecting your health, or lowering your indoor air quality. The solution? Professional carpet cleaning twice per year.
As previously mentioned, vacuuming a carpet isn’t enough to remove all of the deep-seated, ingrained microscopic organisms festering inside your carpets, which can have a negative impact on the air inside your home or business. The average vacuum cleaner simply isn’t powerful enough to pull all of the debris out of a carpet, or kill off other organisms.
However, at our professional carpet cleaning Essex company, we use industrial strength equipment that can get rid of all of the ingrained organisms and dirt in your carpets, left behind by your vacuum cleaner.
We use highly effective steam cleaning machines that work at high-pressure to fully sanitise a carpet, to remove germs, bacteria, dust mites, viruses, mould and fungal spores, etc. By banishing the build up of unhealthy organisms and irritants deep inside fabrics, your carpets can function effectively to filter the air and keep it fresh, clean and healthy.
Furthermore, professional cleaners such as ours use modern, advanced cleaning technology that not only sanitises and cleans your carpets fully and effectively, removing up to 98% of organisms and dirt, but we remove high levels of moisture which means carpets dry quickly. By not leaving your carpets damp for hours, or even days, on end, this prevents the formation of mould, mildew and fungal spores in carpets, which could otherwise impact indoor air quality.
4. Eliminating carpet odours
By thoroughly deep cleaning and detoxing your carpets using advanced heat and pressure cleaning systems, your indoor air quality can dramatically improve. But, that’s not just through the removal of allergens and irritants like dust mites, bacteria, viruses, pollen or germs.
Professional cleaners, like our reputable carpet cleaning Essex business, also deodorise carpets to remove stale and musty odours that can also have a negative impact on the air quality in your property. Nobody wants to walk into a room that smells horrible, so if a stale carpet is to blame, our powerful deep cleaning and deodorising processes are designed to remove the root source of the bad carpet smell, so your air quality is greatly enhanced.
However, be wary of using any shop-bought deodorisers or inferior carpet cleaners that don’t actually remove the cause of the bad odours in your carpets, but only cover them up with a strongly fragranced product. What you’ll find in this case is that once the fragrance wears off, the unpleasant carpet odours will return with a bang. Fortunately, this won’t happen with us.
At Carpet Bright UK, our carpet cleaning results are impeccable. Whether you need stains, odours, dust mites or other dirt and debris removed from your carpets, we’ll not only get your carpets looking pristine and fresh, but we’ll upgrade the quality of the air inside your living or working environment. For further details, contact us today.
