CM/Spotlight: Carpet Care Point/Counterpoint: Carpet And Indoor Air QUALITY By: Joe Versluis A new study explores carpet’s affect on airborne particles and allergens. Image courtesy of Comstock Images/Stockbyte/Thinkstock I Joe Versluis is national sales manager for U.S. Products, manufacturers of portable hot-water carpet extractors. He can be reached through his company website at www.USProducts.com. for more info Visit www.cmmonline.com and type in search keyword: Carpet Care . For more information on related products, visit www.cmmonline.com , select DIRECTORY from the main navigation bar, and enter keyword: Indoor Air Quality . In November of 2009, Eileen Wosnack, a Canadian interior designer and author who specializes in “green interiors,” made this suggestion: “Tear up that old unhealthy carpet and paint your floor.” In fact, she so strongly believed this to be good advice, she even used this recommendation as the title of an article.* Among the reasons for her position, Wosnack stated that carpet harbors “dust mites, mold, mil-dew and fleas.” Further, she wrote that debris gets trapped in the carpet fibers and underlay, which is usually not re-moved by normal vacuuming. Additionally, she said, “deep cleaning,” which typically refers to hot-water extraction, “will only remove [surface-level] dirt, [all of which contrib-utes] to the problem of poor air quality.” This view is not uncommon. In fact, going back nearly 40 years, entire school districts and many administrators in-volved in facility management believed carpet-ing negatively affected indoor air quality (IAQ). We know that carpet absorbs contaminants like a sponge, but once saturated, they can become airborne with use and foot traffic. However, according to Werner Braun, former president of the Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI), these beliefs are based on old data. He agrees with Wosnack that carpet by its intrin-sic nature does hold and trap settled materials such as dust particles and other allergens. However, he says, “This has long [been] consid-ered a good thing. If these particles and allergens are in the carpet, they’re certainly not being in-haled to aggravate allergies and asthma.” June 2014 As far as use and foot traffic releasing these trapped contaminants, Braun says that stud-ies indicate that once they are in the carpet it actually takes a “tremendous amount of subse-quent activity to re-suspend materials in to the air … [and that] several more current studies link the use of carpet to reduce asthma and allergy symptoms.” This would imply that carpet actually protects human health and indoor air quality instead of con-tributing to the problem. Where The Truth Lies Both Wosnack and Braun have their share of sup-porters. Many of the people who, like Wosnack, oppose carpeting, do so mainly because of the way some carpet is made and because the majority of carpet, once removed, ends up in already-crowded landfills. And even those who cite studies that prove the health benefits of carpeting might still take Braun’s view with a grain of salt. After all, he formerly was the head of an organi-zation that represents the carpet and rug industry, which advocates the benefits of carpeting. So who is right, and is there even a right or wrong? Fortunately, a January 2014 study conducted at Airmid Healthgroup appears to offer answers in this debate. The 200-page report concluded that “effec-tively cleaned carpets have the capacity to trap allergens and microbial particles, making these particles less available to become airborne and thus maintaining [enhanced] indoor air quality.” 26 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ®
CMM – Archives June 2014: 26
