Carpet Cleaning - Why Our Carpets Are Five Times Filthier Than The Streets.

Cleaning carpets tends to be regarded as a household chore that needs to be done eventually but can be put off for a while.

Dr Schubert Pereira, head of technical research at Rug Doctor in the United States may make you think again. He has carried out research in the UK and his laboratory tests have shown that on average our carpets are 5 times dirtier than the streets.

Research also suggests that 90% of people do not clean their carpets at all. But did you know that after 2 years every 2 square feet of carpet contains 2lbs of particulate matter, that is almost a bag of sugar of muck in every 2 square feet of your carpet. In other words a typical lounge carpet will contain the equivalent of roughly 97 bags of sugar, full of muck and dirt.

Have you stopped to think what this muck contains? You will not beleive what is crawling about under your feet, on a microscopic level there are millions of dust mites, particles of pollen grain, dead insect body parts and human skin. A family of four will shed just over 30lbs of dead skin cells into one room every 12 months.

What happens to all this muck? There is a microscopic million strong army below your feet gorging themselves on all this stuff, silverfish, house dust mites, cheese mites and carpet beetles to name just a few and they are having a feast.

Does it matter? Well that depends upon your point of view, This could be one of those occasions where ignorance is bliss and what you don't know won't hurt you. But what about the increasing number of people, in particular children, that are suffering from Asthma and associated breathing difficulties? Could there be a link?

One thing is for sure, vacuuming alone will not get to the bottom of the problem. Regular carpet cleaning using a deep hot water extraction system will help hugely and the addition of anti-allergen solutions will combine to greatly improve the air quality for Asthma sufferers.

Before you go and tear up all your carpets bear in mind that the average human breaths in 50 lbs of air every day, your carpets act as a filter by trapping large amounts of dust, hard floors don't do this so the liklihood is that you will end up breathing more of this in.

On balance you may conclude that it is best to just get your carpets professionally cleaned more regularly.