Does carpet make your allergies worse?

I can't tell you the number of people that say "carpet is bad for your allergies". Friends and customers say that the doctor told them to get rid of their carpet to help with their allergies. Another one is "carpet is disgusting and it just doesn't clean up". There are other statements I am sure that you have heard. The real question is "Is carpet bad for your allergies?" The simple answer is NO. 

Let's start with a few good reasons for carpet before we get to the health benefits. It is warmer on the feet and softer to walk on than wood, tile, & vinyl flooring. This may differ if you pay the extra money to put a heating system under the tile, wood, or vinyl flooring. Most people don't go that extra step and have the extra cash. Carpet is also a lot easier to not slip on and fall. Socks on a wood floor are great sometimes if you want to see what it is like to slide on a sheet of ice. This is even worse if you get pledge on a wood floor accidentally. It will really feel like ice. When you have a room with large sound systems, carpet helps reduce the echo by absorbing some of the sounds.

Now as we look into the health benefits of carpet, we will compare it to wood. You would get the same outcome if we use Luxury Vinyl, Laminate, or Tile. Shaw Floors did a study with Airmid Healthgroup to find out if having wood flooring was better than having carpet. The study was to find out if having carpet caused more problems with allergies than wood. At the end, what they found out was that carpet helped more than a hard surface. To check this, they aerosolized allergens in a test chamber with carpet and one with wood flooring. They then studied how the allergens reacted to normal family activities such as walking and bouncing a ball around. In the test they checked for the presence of airborne particles in both rooms to see if there was a rise in either one. There was never a raise in the air particle count in the carpeted room even after multiple times adding particles. The carpet contained the particles and kept them from floating back into the air.

Cleaning such as vacuuming was done to the carpet to remove the particles and they could see a reduction on the carpeted surface. It just didn't reflect anything in the air particle count. In the end, the conclusion was drawn that carpet does not act as a product that will cause more allergy problems. In testing, if you are vacuuming and professionally cleaning the carpets on a regular basis, carpet can actually be a very healthy choice for you. The test showed that the carpet acted similar to what wood floors did and that there shouldn't be any reason to recommend one type of flooring over another for health reasons. That doesn't say that spills and accidents aren't easier to clean on wood floors. It just says that for the sake of health reasons, carpet is still a very good option. Everyone should clean and maintain their flooring if they want it to stay healthy.

BPS Southeast offers flooring cleaning and installation services in the Western North Carolina area. Give us a call to see how we can help you.