Nobody likes cleaning carpets. But if you knew just how disgusting our rugs get, you’d immediately be rushing out to get your hands on some good carpet cleaner.
Carpets need much more than just the occasional vacuuming to ensure that you are protected from all the things growing inside them!
For those doubters out there, who will use any excuse they can find to avoid carpet cleaning, here are 10 facts that will make you want to hire a professional carpet cleaner right away.
1. Skin Flakes
Approximately 1.5 million skin flakes are shed from our body every hour. Some are swept away or blown around by the fan, but most stay trapped between the carpet fibres.
2. Dust Mites
Dust mites can live off the skin flakes found within your carpet, and they will find an excellent living environment there, as well.
It’s estimated that more than 2,000 dust mites can thrive on just one ounce of carpet dust, so you might want to think twice about sitting on that carpet!
3. Allergy Alert
Dust mites’ droppings can trap allergy-inducing proteins capable of triggering asthma attacks, eczema and rhinitis. When the carpet fibres trap lots of these droppings, your risks for allergic reactions are also increased!
4. Stomach Flu Virus
Remember the last time you had the stomach flu? Norovirus, also known as the Norwalk virus, is the virus responsible for this nasty condition, and it can survive without a host for almost an entire month inside your carpet.
5. Dirtier than a Toilet Seat
Carpets have a much higher traffic encounter than toilet seats, gaining 4,000 times more bacteria, dirt and other germs than a toilet seat!
Carpets can also be almost seven times dirtier than a city street, which is actually a gross yet amazing feat for a carpet.
6. Heavy Dirt
Your carpets are stronger and more durable than you think – they can hold dirt amounting to four times their weight, and some carpets can hold even more than that! This leaves a lot of space for all sorts of hair, droppings, mould and other forms of dirt within the carpets.
7. Mould Central
While cleaning your carpets with DIY home carpet cleaning systems could make you feel very independent, these systems usually leave a moist layer over carpets. This, in turn, causes mould to grow quickly, leading to stuffy noses, skin irritations and other health issues.
8. Antibiotic-resistant Bacteria
If anyone staying at your house is an athlete, then you have a much higher risk of culturing antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and penicillin-resistant bacteria in your carpets. Just imagine the health risks they pose!
9. Escherichia coli
Seventy-five percent of individuals wear shoes in their homes, dragging in bacteria like E. coli, which is usually found in faeces. One step over your carpet is all it takes for the bacteria to safely lodge themselves between your carpet fibres and flourish there, and it takes far more than vacuuming to get rid of them.
10. Toxins
Carcinogens, otherwise known as cancer-causing agents, can embed themselves into your carpet if you are a smoker. Combine this knowledge with the fact that children like to play on carpeted areas, and you are putting children at increased risks of cancer later on in their lives!
Image via Pixabay CC0 License
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