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Scary Facts About Dirty Carpets

Mick Pacholli
Mick Pachollihttps://www.tagg.com.au
Mick created TAGG - The Alternative Gig Guide in 1979 with Helmut Katterl, the world's first real Street Magazine. He had been involved with his fathers publishing business, Toorak Times and associated publications since 1972.  Mick was also involved in Melbourne's music scene for a number of years opening venues, discovering and managing bands and providing information and support for the industry. Mick has also created a number of local festivals and is involved in not for profit and supporting local charities.        

If you’ve never before thought that your carpets needed professional steam carpet cleaning, then it might just be because you’re unaware of just how dirty carpets can become even without you knowing it. You might be able to remove visible stains, and you might regularly hoover the carpet to keep it looking its best…but it’s just not enough. Sometimes you have to go far deeper.

Below are some slightly disquieting facts about carpets and just how dirty they can get:

Fact 1: Carpets Naturally Attract Grease and Dirt

You might think that you do everything you can to prevent excess dirt and grease from getting anywhere near your carpets, and your efforts likely do extend the life of the carpet. However, it’s a fact of life that the general grease and dirt of the world finds its way to your carpet fibres through you, your family, and your pets if you have them.

These contaminants are absorbed into your carpet fibres, and over time start to change its colour. This is where regular steam cleaning will help because it actively removes that grease where a regular vacuum cleaner just can’t.

Fact 2: Your Carpet Might Be Making You Sick

Your vacuum might do a good job of removing surface dust, but what it can’t capture is the myriad pollen, bacteria, fungi, mites, and chemical contaminants from things like cigarettes and other things that find their way into your carpet over time, all of which can make you sick. These pollutants become trapped in the carpet, and you’re finally left with something that actually starts to pollute your home air.

Pollen, mites, and other nasty things embedded in your carpets can take a particularly heavy toll on any one in the family who is suffering from conditions like asthma. It takes more powerful professional cleaning to remove these contaminants.

Fact 3: Even When Cleaning, Nothing Is Safe to Eat Off the Carpet

Are you someone who practices the 5-second rule? Maybe it’s even the 7-second rule in your home because you’re quite sure that your home carpets are very clean indeed. In fact, no amount of apparent cleanliness in your carpet can make them truly safe enough to eat anything that you’ve dropped, even for a single second. The above-mentioned embedded bacteria and other nasty stuff that’s in there renders anything unsafe and unhygienic to consume after having fallen there.

Fact 4: Beware the Norovirus, For it Lurks Long in the Carpet

The norovirus, aka the Norwalk Virus, is a condition similar to food poisoning and/or stomach flu, and in its worst cases can cause severe dehydration and even death. If norovirus is present in your home and gets into the carpets, it can last there for 4-6 weeks before dying. What’s more, people walking across the carpet will make it airborne. It could come from something you dropped on the carpet, or carried on your pets, or even by someone else who has been infected.

Fact 5: Home Carpeting – Warm, Soft, Cosy…And Dirtier Than Your Toilet Seat

One more very sad and worrying fact of life is that your carpet, despite bringing numerous aesthetic and other benefits to your home, is a serious hotspot for contamination, dirt, and germs. Under normal conditions, and when not properly tended to, it can become 4,000 times dirtier than your toilet seat.

That number might be hard to accept, but given the foot traffic and constant barrage of dirt and grime that the floor undergoes in reality, it’s a simple fact. If you vacuum regularly, then you’re fighting the good fight, and doing what you can to keep the worst at bay. However, don’t forget to include at least one deep and professional clean in there once a year or so.

Image: https://pixabay.com/photos/vacuum-cleaner-carpet-cleaner-657719/

Mick Pacholli

Mick created TAGG - The Alternative Gig Guide in 1979 with Helmut Katterl, the world's first real Street Magazine. He had been involved with his fathers publishing business, Toorak Times and associated publications since 1972.  Mick was also involved in Melbourne's music scene for a number of years opening venues, discovering and managing bands and providing information and support for the industry. Mick has also created a number of local festivals and is involved in not for profit and supporting local charities.        

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