According to Canada's Allergy and Asthma Information Association (AAIA), up to one-quarter of all Canadians can expect major suffering when the spring allergy season rolls in during the next few weeks.

Even worse, 2.5 million Canadians (12 percent of children and 8 percent of adults) will experience asthma attacks severe enough to require missing school and work.

There is nothing like staring down the barrel of allergy season to make you want to say, "Enough!" Like so many allergy and asthma sufferers, you want to be able to get out and actually enjoy the fresh air and sunshine this spring!

It's just that you don't know what to do to avoid getting sick again this year. In this post, we share how scheduling a professional dry foam carpet cleaning service now can help you and your family stay healthy this year to enjoy the arrival of spring.

Fighting Back Against Your Triggers

Among allergy and asthma specialists, the term “trigger” is used to describe whatever brings on your symptoms.

The Asthma Society of Canada offers a booklet on how to detect and reduce or eliminate common asthma and allergy triggers present inside your home. These include:

• Dust and dust mites

• Mould and mildew

• Pet hair and dander

• Pollen

• Bacteria, fungi, and virus germs

• Tobacco smoke (first and secondhand)

• Fumes from cleaning products, air fresheners, or candles

• Outdoor air pollution that gets inside (such as smog)

The Concern Over Carpet

Regardless of the type of indoor carpeting your home has, you can bet it isn't alone.

Hiding deep inside the fibers are many of the irritants that conspire to make each spring such a miserable time for you health-wise.

In fact, your carpeting is likely harboring pretty much every potential trigger on the list here (see previous section). Dust mites are busy meeting, snacking, mating, and reproducing.

The household pet contributes hair every time she pads across or lies on the carpet or rug. Residual vapours from craft adhesives, cleaning products, candles, and smoking settle in along with all the rest.

Moisture from humidity, drink spills, and the great outdoors provides the perfect climate for tiny mould spores to take root and spread.

Pollen floats down from where it was clinging to your clothes and shoes. For that matter, you yourself are flaking off dead skin cells on a near-continuous basis… which just happens to be the dust mites' favourite food.

With all this activity going on literally right beneath your feet, it is no wonder you can expect to log significant waking hours sneezing, sniffling, snorting, and generally staying indoors in a mistaken attempt to stay allergy free!

Carpeting: Should You Keep It?

In some allergy management circles, the guidance veers towards carpet replacement.

And sure, that can work great for families with loads of excess disposable income (not to mention time and patience).

But in most cases, families have some really good reasons even aside from budget for wanting to keep their carpeting. Carpeting is soft. It is attractive. It feels good under your feet. It is paid for.

Crystal Clean Carpet Services has been cleaning clients' carpeting in the Greater Hamilton and surrounding areas for more than three decades now.

In all that time, we have rarely ever seen a carpet in such disrepair that it absolutely needed to be replaced, either with new carpeting or with another alternative, such as tile or hardwoods.

In fact, you have a lot to gain by keeping your existing carpet, since brand-new carpeting can emit its own brand of potentially toxic fumes ("new carpet smell") that can take a long time to dissipate.

What nearly every carpet we have ever encountered typically needed was just a thorough, deep dry foam carpet cleaning.

Even in the case in which a homeowner has purchased a home and inherited with it older carpeting that has clearly been neglected, we have typically been able to wow and amaze the clients with the difference a professional dry foam carpet cleaning service can make.

On occasion, we have even heard the words, "I can't believe that is the same carpet!"

Why Dry Foam Carpet Cleaning? Why Not Use Steam?

This is the question to end all questions within the carpet cleaning industry.

To cut through all the debate, if your goal is to minimize or eradicate indoor allergens, the allergy experts get the last word, and they say to avoid wet carpet cleaning services.

In fact, as Patient Info points out, domestic steam cleaning typically has no effect whatsoever on dust mites, and may even make your allergies worse by increasing dust mite populations and mould growth.

What can work, however, is dry foam carpet cleaning. Dust mites hate it. Mold and mildew can't withstand it.

Small particulate matter such as pollen, pet dander, dirt, and bacteria don't last long in the face of the dry foam cleaning solution, which acts like thousands of tiny sticky sponges to collect anything that is not carpet to be sucked up into the turbo vacuum extractor along with all excess moisture.

The final result is a dry, allergen-free, squeaky clean, new-appearing carpet that you can enjoy free and clear of allergy or asthma symptoms.