Carpet hurting your pets?
Our hearts go out to John Travolta and to his family on the loss of their son Jett earlier this week. At the age of two, Jett contracted Kawasaki Disease after the family had their home carpets cleaned. Kawasaki Disease was a possible cause of lifelong seizures for Jett and his far too early demise. We wish the family well and hope the the media will let them heal in peace.
We’d heard the story of Jett contracting Kawasaki’s after carpet cleaning before and was just one of the many factors which came up during our research of whether to rid our house of carpet (or at least as much as we could). With Frenchies traipsing across our carpet (and all the other Frenchie-type things Frenchies are notorious for doing) we did a lot of carpet cleaning. Even to the point of buying our own cleaning machine. The up side of owning a carpet cleaner, is that we could/can pick and choose what chemicals (or not) to use when cleaning. The downside is, carpet is a host to mold, fungus, and other allergens, no matter how often you clean, or what with. And the fact that if there is a link to carpet cleaning and illness in humans, how far of a leap do you have to make to realize there could be a similar link to animals and carpet cleaning chemicals?
So with this, and with the hope for an easier to keep clean, better environment for us and our Crew, out went the bulk of the carpet and some old wooden parquet flooring, and in came slabs of porcelain. It’s been over a year now. We have seen an improvement in our allergy issues and in our Frenchies’. Not a complete cure, as living in Central Texas comes with a plethora of local allergies no amount of floor cleaning can remove, but a noticeable improvement. And with the addition of a chemical-free steam cleaner, we feel our cleaning chemical exposure has drop significantly.
For more on this topic, here is a link to an article with many good resources and suggestions for alternatives to carpeting:
Carpet Politics and Alternatives
And for more pet-related info to carpet cleaning, check the Itchmo Forums. Use the search term “Carpet Cleaning.”
If you have carpet, and can’t remove it, keep pets and children off freshly shampooed carpet for at least four hours. According to many sources, this is the critical time to avoid exposure to cleaning chemicals and when they can cause the most damage.
So while we and our crew can give a thumbs up to a tile floor, there is one part of our household that can’t: our dinnerware. It misses the softer carpeting and parquet floor. Maybe it’s time to move to stainless steel plates and bowls for humans?!
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