We all love the look and feel of clean carpets. It’s depressing to live with spots, stains, tracking, and flattened pile, and it certainly brings down the aesthetic atmosphere of a room. But did you know that your carpets and rugs provide more than a feeling of warmth and comfort, and softer acoustics? They also filter the air in your home.
We all love the look and feel of clean carpets. It’s depressing to live with spots, stains, tracking, and flattened pile, and it certainly brings down the aesthetic atmosphere of a room. But did you know that your carpets and rugs provide more than a feeling of warmth and comfort, and softer acoustics? They also filter the air in your home.
Indoor-generated air pollution (a result of using toxic household or personal care products, cooking pesticide- and additive/preservative-laden foods, or even accidentally burning the organic toast or the organic dinner), as well as air pollution that enters your home through open windows and doors, and seeps in through cracks around closed windows and doors (fumes from lawn mowers and leaf blowers, toxic gardening products, vehicle exhaust, second-hand smoke, barbeque lighter fluid, fireplace smoke–especially from toxic manufactured logs, your neighbor’s toxic laundry product fragrances, etc.) is absorbed by your carpets and rugs, becoming trapped there. This process helps to clean your indoor air, that is until your carpets and rugs become saturated, at which point they stop absorbing and begin to emit those very same toxins back into the atmosphere of your home. Destination: your lungs!
If you are a client of ours living in our local Greater Los Angeles area, green referrals are part of the service we provide. If not, do the research, ask questions, and try to find a carpet cleaning service in your area that meets an authentic green standard. But keep this in mind: It costs more to use non-toxic, bio-degradable products and top quality equipment, and that cost must necessarily be passed on to the customer. So if you get a low quote, or see an unbelievable special offer from a company that claims to be green, be very, VERY wary.
As long as cheap, toxic options are available in everything from foods, personal care, and household products, to household services of all kinds, they will make the healthy options appear overpriced. But, as is usually the case with any product or service, you get the quality, integrity, and results you pay for. If, like so many of us, you’re on a tight budget and have never put green-cleaning your carpets on your ‘necessities’ list, you might want to rethink your budget, if at all possible, to make it a priority.
Because most new carpeting has been treated with toxic chemicals in the manufacturing process, we also recommend having your brand new carpets cleaned as soon as possible after installation to significantly reduce the chemical residues. If affordable for you, there are also ways to prevent any further off-gassing of the chemical residues remaining in your carpets, which will otherwise continue to off-gas for years.
Of course, it’s best to have carpets and rugs that are made with eco-friendly materials, using eco-friendly methods…..but now I am drifting into an area that is a subject for a future post…….
