Many people do not understand the dangers of the enemy that lurks within their beds - the dust mite.
These microscopic creepy-crawlies, that are invisible to the naked eye, feed on skin flakes we shed in bed as we sleep. It is not so much the mite but what the mite excretes that is the problem.
A typical dust mite lives for up to 150 days and excretes 200 times its body weight in that time... the excrement includes a compound called guanine, that is associated with asthma, bronchitis, red itchy eyes, sneezing, coughing, headaches, depression and a lot more allergic reactions.
A bed can have between 100,000 and 10 million microscopic mites living in the fabrics. Mattresses also contain:
• Sweat and body fats - in one night a person can lose up to a pint of sweat and body fats
• Bacteria and viruses
• Skin - the average family will shed up to 1.5 kilos of skin in a year. Up to 10% of the weight of an old pillow is probably dead skin.
Keep your dust mite population down by airing your bedroom frequently. Low temperatures discourage breeding. Vacuum clean often to remove mite excrement and debris.
Stick the kids’soft toys in the freezer for 24 hours every now and then, as the cold will kill dust mites.
If you have asthma or breathing difficulties, only vacuum with a ‘Hepa’filtered vacuum cleaner and keep the keep the carpet in stead of laying hardwood floors. Carpets trap and hold allergens that you can vacuum up, but they do not settle on a hard floor and tend to stay in the air causing more stress to allergy sufferers.
You can call in a specialist mattress cleaner - Bone-Dry Carpet Cleaning offer this service for a reasonable charge - www.bone-dry.co.uk
