Better no dust rather than fine dust

In contrast to hard flooring, dust is not stirred up with carpets but bound in the carpet until it is next cleaned, as demonstrated in the study published by the German Institute for Allergies and Asthma in 2005. This means pollution caused by fine dust is significantly less in rooms with carpet than in those with smooth floors.

PDF  “Consumers direct”
PDF “Carpets more suitable”
Prodis - air quality in rooms

Inhaled dust is harmful to health. It irritates the respiratory tract as a result of the mechanical reaction. Not infrequently other substances cling to the dust particles that are breathed in – for instance allergens, which then get into the lungs and trigger reactions accordingly. Allergy patients are particularly affected by it and their quality of life suffers. In order to rule out damage to health, more than 50 µg fine dust per cu.m. are permitted at most on 35 days a year in the air outside.

In the view of both the German Allergy and Asthma Association (DAAB) and the Society for Environmental and Indoor Environmental Analysis (GUI), it is not only the air outdoors that is the main problem but indoor pollution in particular. After all we spend on average 90% of our life indoors.

For this reason, surveys were carried out accordingly in over one hundred randomly selected households in North Rhine-Westphalia. The basis for the surveys was the comparison between smooth floors and carpets (DAAB 2005).

These surveys established that pollution caused by dust in interior rooms with smooth floors was on average 62.9 µg per cu.m.  This result is alarming since the guide value for the maximum concentration of airborne dust is  – as mentioned above – 50 µg per cu.m.  over 35 days per year. Thus the average value obtained in this case exceeds the maximum figure by 12.9 µg per cu.m.  The average figure in rooms with carpets was 30.4 µg per cu.m. This figure is not only well below the accepted maximum level of pollution but is also more than half that in rooms fitted with smooth floors. 

The reasons for this are obvious: with every movement on parquet and PVC, linoleum, stones, tiles and marble, dust is stirred up behind a person. Carpets however bind the dust until it is released next time the carpet is vacuumed. The dust-binding properties are so great in this case that an air flow speed up to 15 times higher is required to release the dust particles from carpets into the air we breathe than with smooth floors.

Sources: Consumers direct – Dust alert, Special edition from Verbraucher Initiative e.V., 2005

DAAB Study “Pollution from fine dust in interior rooms”, 2005