Jinsol Lee
Ms. Wilson
AP English Language
12 April 2010
Flooring: Why Carpets Are the Worst Choice
One of the transitions I went through when I moved into the dormitory was from hardwood floor at home to a carpeted building. It may sound like a minor transition compared to most other transitions that students go through when they leave home and take the first step to independence, but wall-to-wall carpets hit me as somewhat of a culture shock. The entire dorm building except a small kitchen area and the bathrooms was carpeted. All my life I had been adjusted to simply mopping up dust and my dog’s misplaced waste on the floor and being completely fine with it. In my new residence, vacuuming was a daily necessity, which took me quite some time to realize. Before I realized the importance of vacuuming to maintaining a clean and healthy environment for myself, I had contemplated numerous times why my foot got dirtier when I walked barefoot in the dorm than at home and where all the dust floating in the air came from. I found out later that I was not the only person unsatisfied with carpeted floors when my freshman English class expressed a collective antipathy toward carpets. In fact, stationary, wall-to-wall carpets are a worse choice for home flooring than hardwood or stone floors or even area rugs for economic and health-related reasons.The static nature of carpets installed wall-to-wall creates a variety of problems related to maintenance. Even in the best home maintenance available, some of these problems occur soon after the initial placement of the carpet. These inevitable issues often result in a highly visible way, such as the edge of the carpet falling off the floor or pressure damage from furniture weight. Carpet edges’ falling off or being torn is a common issue with carpets, especially in cases of unprofessional installation or low-quality glue. In this case, the homeowner is not usually able to fix the carpet fully by himself and must seek professional assistance, which costs both money and time. Most importantly, until it is repaired, the carpet gives the house an unfinished and messy look. A torn spot on a carpeted floor exposing bare floor may change the entire atmosphere of the house, giving an impression that the house is still under construction or the homeowner is not careful. Furthermore, the residents of the house, especially children, become prone to tripping over the uneven surface of torn spots. Pressure damage, another common problem, happens in almost any room with stationary carpet and furniture. The spot of compressed fiber is invisible most of the time, but when the resident decides to rearrange the room, it becomes visible and annoying. The only solution other than getting a completely new carpet is to wait, and it takes weeks, sometimes months, for the fiber to spring back up to make a level surface.
Even a perfectly maintained carpet is often not a good addition due to its effect on the mood of the house. Today, hardwood and stone floors are associated with wealth and a carefully devised housing plan. While carpets may suggest the same, the trend toward non-carpeted floors in houses puts carpets into the “tacky” category. The artificial colors and patterns on carpets are just a mockery compared to natural wood and stone patterns. If an aesthetically pleasing visual interior element is what the customer is looking for, he does not need to look any further. Wood and stone, two of other popular flooring materials, are suitable for many types of interior atmosphere ranging from a modern penthouse to a cozy rural home. On the other hand, scarcely any modern building uses anything more than area rugs for its carpeting option. The ideal homes in television are enough to prove the trend toward carpetless flooring; an increasing number of TV homes lack carpeted floors. The colors of carpets set a limit on their use in home design as well. Although there is a wide array of pastel-colored carpets, most new homeowners choose dark-colored carpets in fear of permanent stain. The result is a high rate of dark carpets whose colors can affect the residents’ emotion negatively. Over the history, dark colors have been usually associated with grim emotions. “Gray is associated with old age,” says Faber Birren, a leading authority on the psychology of color (Birren 141). “Black is associated with gloom, and brown with melancholy” (Birren 141). According to him, lighter colors such as white and yellow are associated with more positive emotions such as awareness and warmth (Birren 142). The dark color not only affects mindset but also alters the lighting environment. Dark colors such as gray and navy appear dark because their surfaces absorb most of the incident light. A significant amount of indoor light is “recycled” through internal reflection in a room with hardwood or stone floors, but the dark colors prevent the incident ray from reflecting and lightening in a room with dark carpet, resulting in a darker room and consequently, energy inefficiency.
Carpets are even less aesthetically pleasing when they stain. The problem with carpet stains is that they happen easily and permanently. It is difficult to wash a carpet, and washing is often not done thoroughly, resulting in a permanent stain that gives a messy and disorderly impression. Furthermore, when liquid spills, especially drinks, the spill becomes sticky and dust attracting as it dries. The remaining sugar and other food additives have to be spot-cleaned, or they will attract unwanted dust and provide fungi and insects with food, harboring an ideal environment for their inhabitation. A spill left neglected too long may also emit an odor as it decomposes or as the fabric traps the odorous particles. Pet waste or vomit, for example, cause strong odor, often times even after cleaning up. Odor, as the primary method of communication of animals, encourages the pet to continue laying waste at the same place. In cases of permanent odor, the solution is either to remove the carpet or spot clean the spill, which does little to reduce the odor most times (Jacobsen Oriental Rugs).
Overall, maintenance of carpets proves to be a time-consuming and expensive job. Permanent or semi-permanent damage to the carpet requires a professional cleaning service or a reinstallation. For example, if a stain persists for a long time, and the owner wishes to maintain a neat look, his or her only choice may be installing an entirely new carpet. From initial purchase to daily maintenance, it is economically disadvantageous to keep carpets instead of another type of bare floor. Michael Hilton, the technical manager of Carpet and Rug Institute, recommends about $2,000 of budget for purchase and installation of a 530ft^2 area, which covers the living room in most houses (Hilton). Regular cleaning and renewal are required with professional cleaning every year and a renewal every ten to fifteen years (Hilton). Professional cleaning costs $200 for a 530ft^2 area on average, and a re-installment costs another $2,000 (Hilton). No step in the maintenance process is redundant because carpet renewal is a crucial part of keeping the home clean. Using the same carpet for an extended period saw a tenfold increase in the concentration of dust and house dust mites according to scientific studies (Hirsch 6). Hardwood and stone flooring have advantage over carpets with respect for maintenance costs because wood and stone are two of the most durable building materials. With proper care, wood and stone can last decades or even centuries. Neither of them requires professional cleaning or renewal.
Carpets are inefficient in terms of energy as well. Contrary to the popular belief that carpets will save money because they capture warmth in the winter and save the energy used for air conditioning, cleaning and air conditioning in the summer prove to be just as energy-consuming, if not more, as any other type of bare floor. While mopping would do the cleaning needed for wood and stone floor, vacuuming is a necessity for removing the dust in carpets. The energy consumption of vacuum cleaners is large enough to raise concern for heat pollution. A typical house vacuum cleaner requires 1000W to 1400W of power supply (Sears). 1200W of power usage means that the vacuum cleaner uses 1200J of energy every second, enough to raise the temperature of an ounce of water from 32 degrees to 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Air conditioning used to cool down the heat captured by carpets in the summer produces even more heat pollution due to the mechanism on which it works. The second law of thermodynamics states that heat cannot spontaneously flow from a system with lower energy to one with higher energy and that additional work is required to make it flow that way. Air conditioners and refrigerators are the prime example of appliances that remove heat from one place with additional work. Whereas a heating appliance directly adds energy in the room and converts all energy input to the room to heat, a cooling appliance uses more energy to pump out the energy from the room. In a cooling device, both the input work and the removed energy become waste, contributing to heat pollution and energy inefficiency.
One wastes not only heat energy but also mechanical energy with carpets. Carpets have a greater friction coefficient than wood, which means that stronger force is required to move the same object on a carpeted surface than a wooden one. The average coefficient of static friction of common carpeting fibers is 0.70, which means that 70% of the weight of the object is needed to move the object (Hirai 56). The coefficient of static friction of wood on wood is 0.2, which means that moving an object would require only 20% of the weight of it (Giancoli 90).
Just the simple fact that almost all commercial carpet is made with synthetic fibers discourages the use of carpets. Synthetic fibers have many drawbacks compared to other natural fibers or bare flooring. Polypropylene and polyester, which account for 80% of all commercial carpets, are not recyclable (RUGCycle). Since carpets need renewals regularly, these carpets make huge amounts of plastic waste that takes tens of thousands of years to decompose. Synthetic fibers also pose a fire hazard with their low flash point and tendency to create static electricity (RUGCycle). While the ignition temperature of wool is approximately 230℃, the ignition temperature of polyurethane, a common substance used for hardwood floor finishing, is 416℃, proving that wool can catch fire at a lower temperature than hardwood floor in an emergency (Cafe). The tendency of a substance to create static electricity is largely dependent on its capacitance used to calculate the charge that can be stored on a capacitor for a given voltage. The magnitude of the charge on a capacitor by definition is its capacitance multiplied by the potential difference (voltage) across the capacitor (Equation 1). Consequently, the magnitude of the charge is proportional to the capacitance of the substance. The capacitance of a capacitor is given by dividing the product of ϵ, the dielectric constant, and A, the area of each plate of the capacitor by d, the distance between the two plates (Equation 2).
[Equation 1] Q=CV
[Equation 2] C=ϵA/d
In a homogeneous structure such as fabric, A and d stay relatively the same for any given sample within the structure, leaving the capacitance to be dependent on the dielectric constant, which is a constant that describes how much charge a capacitor made of a certain substance can store. The dielectric constant is a relative constant at 1.0 for air, 1.3 for cotton, 1.5 for polypropylene, and 3 to 4 for acrylic and polyester resin, resulting in a higher capacitance for those substances than air and a tendency to store more charge under the same condition (K-TEK). On the other hand, wood and especially varnish do not have appropriate structure to function as capacitors due to their lack of uniform space between each fiber.
Nevertheless, when one removes carpets from his or her house, it is often not for economic or aesthetic reasons. The more serious problem with carpets is that carpets constitute a major health hazard in the home. Carpets contribute to the development of several chronic health issues such as respiratory and skin allergies, eye irritation, and headache.
Theses issues owe their association with carpets to organisms that find an ideal habitat in carpets. Carpets provide house dust mites, the main cause of respiratory and skin irritation, with an (Hirsch 2). The structure of fiber in fabric traps a variety of small particles that are not easy to capture with traditional cleaning methods such as vacuuming and steam cleaning. The typical floor dust consists of human cells from skin and hair and fabric dust (Hirsch 2). With humidity from the atmosphere and in the dust captured in the fabric itself, the dust provides food for the dust mites, which flourish in fabric household objects such as mattresses, carpets, and couches (Hirsch 2). The fact that there is no way to perfectly remove liquid spills on carpets contributes to forming of a humid enough environment for unwanted organisms to settle (Kowalski). When a liquid spills on a carpet, it virtually cannot be removed and the owner has to spot clean the spill or leave it to dry in case of water spills, whereas on a hardwood or stone floor, the spill would disappear in a few seconds with a swipe of a mop. The resulting environment proved ideal for the growth of several types of human pathogenic fungi: alternaria, cladosporium, and rhodoturula in a Pennsylvania State University research (Kowalski). Exposure, especially long-term, to these molds may cause respiratory infections, asthma rhinitis, skin infection, and toxic reactions (Kowalski). The growth of molds and their production of volatile organic compounds are thought to cause 15% to 30% of all cases of Sick Building Syndrome, a series of discomforts associated with being in certain buildings (Kowalski; United States Environmental Protection Agency). The fungi are hard to remove as they reproduce asexually and can survive in extreme situations such as the outer space, rendering the inhabitants of the house more vulnerable to long-term exposure (Kowalski). In the springtime, when there is more pollen in the air, the structure of fiber captures pollen easily and worsens allergic reaction by raising the concentration of the allergen. While pollen on hard floor can be cleaned up completely by using a wet mop, vacuuming and steam cleaning, the only options for home carpet cleaning, do not remove pollen completely. The remaining pollen causes a long-term exposure, which results in persistence of allergic symptoms. For these reasons, the British Allergy Foundation recommends to allergy patients that they remove carpets from their homes for prevention (British Allergy Foundation).
In addition to the biological hazards, chemicals in carpets pose another threat to the residents’ health. New and old alike, carpets may contain toxic chemicals such as lead, volatile organic compounds, and formaldehyde (Baek; Park; Yiin). Long-term use of carpets maximizes the emission of volatile organic compounds, which cause headache, muscle aches, and fever (Baek; Park; United States Environmental Protect Agency). Virtually no cleaning method can eliminate the threat from these chemicals. According to a New Jersey study, vacuum bag samples of carpets showed that more than 96% of all samples contained a detectable level of lead (Yiin 2). Even after cleaning through vacuuming and wiping, the level of lead did not significantly decrease with post-cleaning level at 78% of pre-cleaning level (Yiin 2). Volatile organic compounds, as discussed above, are produced mostly by fungi that are hard to remove due to ability to reproduce rapidly and survive in extreme environment (Kowalski). Formaldehyde is equally as hard to remove as fungi, if not more, since it is not on the surface of the carpet like volatile organic compounds but inside the carpet (Park). Other toxic chemicals are intentionally added in the process of carpet production for pigment enhancement, fireproofing, and waterproofing (ABGoodman HouseplanZ). Moreover, some kinds of synthetic and natural fiber in carpets may cause allergy reactions such as itching and rashes (Grizzard). Even a portion of wool used in a mainly synthetic fiber carpet sometimes can result in skin irritation to patients who are allergic to wool (Grizzard).
Most of the resulting health issues are chronic and persistent—atopy, skin and eye irritation, and headache. A study in South Korea found that office productivity is significantly lower in a carpeted office than one without carpets (Baek). After fifty minutes of being in a room with carpets, most workers reported an inclination in the level of eye irritation (Baek; Park). In another study, a “significant relationship” between atopy breakout and contact with cotton dust was identified (Salvaggio 4-7). The chronic irritation poses a major distraction from work.
One of the most common misconceptions about carpets is that vacuuming does most of the cleaning that carpets need. The mere presence of carpet increases the floor dust weight (Elliott 1). According to a World Health Organization report, indoor pollution is a serious threat to the residents’ health because it is a thousand times as likely to reach the lungs as outdoor pollution (qtd. in Park). Wall-to-wall fixed carpets are particularly worse than area rugs as vacuum cannot reach under the carpet and a large amount of dust can deposit as neither hands or vacuum can reach the dust. Carpets are also a major contributor to airborne dust as the fibers are prone to disintegration and may float around in the air, adding extra dust, whereas wood and stone floors are solid and do not produce much dust by themselves. Even if the owner vacuumed the carpet regularly, the level of dust would not decline enough to eliminate health hazards coming from the presence of dust and chemicals (Yiin 2). It also increases the indoor dust rate to empty vacuum bags inside the house, a detail that most people ignore (Yiin 4). When one empties a vacuum bag indoors, the dust can easily escape the bag and flow back into the house (Yiin 4). Another popular method to clean carpets, steam cleaning, is just as hazardous. Steam cleaning utilizes high-temperature steam to kill germs in the carpet but can cause further growth of germs and fungi by providing them with humidity and nutrition from the killed organisms (Kowalski).
Likewise, sprays that kill germs and dust mites pose another hazard that is just as bad for health as the actual dust mites and resulting allergies. For example, a chemical commonly added to enhance the sterilizing ability of the spray products is ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid (Black). Long-term exposure to ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid may cause skin damage, eye damage and irritation, and damage to kidneys (ScienceLab). The damage occurs faster when the chemical is inhaled or directly in contact with a body part (ScienceLab). Most germ killer products in market are in the form of spray, which vastly increases the chance of human inhaling and direct contact with the skin. Another type of killer product, ultraviolet ray, must be used with care as well as exposure to ultraviolet light causes skin cancer and damage in the eye. Any matter of wave nature, such as light, has an energy that is proportional to its frequency, the number of complete oscillations of wave produced in one second. Frequency is given by speed of light divided by the wavelength of the light, which means that the shorter the wavelength, the more energy the light has. In case of ultraviolet light, the wavelength stands at 10 to 380 nanometers, a lower range than visible light (390nm-750nm) or infrared light (0.7µm-300µm). Most household ultraviolet light sterilizers work at wavelengths ranging from 240nm to 260nm with a high energy level. The short wavelength results in a more powerful light ray that can harm human cells. Compared to long-wave radiation, whose wavelength ranges from 315nm to 390nm, short-wave ultraviolet radiation is more often a contributing factor of skin cancer development (Suarez-Varela 6; World Health Organization). Direct consequences of short-term exposure to ultraviolet light include sunburn and eye irritation, and long-term exposure can create more serious problems such as skin cancer and blindness (World Health Organization). What homeowners risk when they use germ killers and sterilizers to prevent dust mites and allergy is, ironically, diseases that would make allergies seem like a laughing matter.
If one would still like to enjoy the benefits of a carpet even though there are hazards, a great alternative would be area rugs. Area rugs increase flexibility in home decoration and eliminate problems posed by poor maintenance, as they are not glued and can be moved back to the original position when they slip off. Since a resident has a greater access to rug bottoms than carpet bottoms, he would find it easier to spot clean rugs, which requires care but does thoroughly eliminate most dirt inside and beneath the rug (Jacobsen Oriental Rugs). Whereas stationary carpets prevent the floor from being cleaned thoroughly by blocking access to the dust shed both from the carpet and floor material, area rugs provide access to the hard floor, which usually can be cleaned in a simple process of mopping. The relatively easy and through cleaning method for rugs, which is to shampoo the rug, rinse it with water, and lay it flat to dry, eventually results in a lower chance of harboring of biological hazards such as fungi or chemical hazards such as lead and volatile organic compounds (Jacobsen Oriental Rugs). When it comes to spills and stains, a homeowner would truly appreciate the availability of running water to rinse the rug front and back. The fact that rugs require little professional maintenance leads to relatively less spending than stationary carpets that require regular hiring of cleaning services. An area rug provides an opportunity to cut off other carpet-related expenditure as well, as it does not need professional service to be installed or removed. Furthermore, rugs are energy efficient in the way they can be taken away in the summer and enable the owner to take advantage of the cool nature of hardwood and stone floor, reducing his or her fuel usage by cutting down the need for the extra air conditioning to balance the heat captured in carpets.
It is surprising how widely carpets are used in the world with modern pollution and consequent prevalence of asthma and skin and respiratory allergies. With intense focus on conservation of energy and prevention of heat pollution, insisting on carpeted floors seems almost unreasonable. Carpet owners are essentially putting their lives in danger by covering their houses in such a combustible and mold-attracting substance. If their logic is that they can overcome these problems by the use of chemicals and other cleaning methods, they are dragging themselves into a cycle of issues. Most of the chemicals are harmful to the human body in one way or another and the cleaning methods either cost extra money, do not work well enough to eliminate the health hazard, or become a threat themselves. Consumers are realizing the disadvantages of carpets: the housing trend is already departing from carpets and leaning toward hardwood flooring. Weary allergy patients can now look hopefully into a future in which carpets are a thing of the past.
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