Did you know that your carpets function as sponges sucking up whopping amounts of pollutants and poisons which are brought to your home primarily through shoes? A world-famous environmental engineer, more popularly known as Dr. Dust for his excessive concern about domestic hygiene has pointed that a typical carpet contains such high levels of pollutants that it might need a thorough environmental clean up if the carpet is brought out. He also suggested that having dirty carpets at home could trigger a host of diseases including breathing complications, allergy, asthma, and even cancer.
A number of interior space in India is covered with carpets.
And a laboratory test of a carpet dust sample from an average home and office in India would reveal a very high level of chemicals, pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, metals like mercury, lead and cadmium among a lot many harmful pollutants. What’s worse, carpets are also found to accumulate PCBs or polychlorinated biphenyls which were strictly banned in the late 1970s. But unfortunately, they are still found in wall covers, plastics, paints, and electrical gadgets. These PCBs are known to cause cancer, reproductive issues like stillbirths and birth defects in humans and animals as well as liver damage, skin rashes, breathing issues and also illness pertaining to thyroid glands. And all these toxins find their place into the home through paws and shoe soles only.
We Indians are always obsessed with cleaning and we often take resort to vacuum. But you will be shocked to know that it makes the matter worse. Vacuuming deposits more dust than it actually picks up which means that with the passage of time, it makes the carpet a reservoir of various toxic substances.
On average, it can be concluded that a house with carpet has ten times more dust and toxic pollutants than a house with bare floors and some rugs. The situation becomes even grave as some banned pesticides like DDT when finds its way to the home persists for many years since they are protected from sun, rain and other environmental factors that would have quickly damaged it. A mere square meter of carpet contains a bit more than a gram of permethrin, a dose that’s much greater than what could have been given in one spray of household insecticide.
Children are obviously more at risk than grown-ups as they frequently put their hands in the mouth after touching furniture or carpets or other household objects. Moreover, infants and children breathe 23 times more the air as much their parents breathe which makes them susceptible to be affected by the suspended matters in the air as well.
Dust in the air, no matter how minimal the quantity is, can cause irritation in the lungs, damage the nervous system that’s still developing, stop the growth and damage the hearing functions. All of these could be effortlessly avoided if you ensure the professional cleaning of your carpets at least once or twice a year. It will not just keep your carpets look new but keep up the health and vitality of your loved ones to a great extent.