Vacuuming May be Hazardous to Your Health! or; Good, I can finally stop vacuuming - June 2006

-- Westfield: Most vacuum cleaners historically inject so many pollutants into the indoor air environment that, in a practical way, there is an argument for not vacuuming at all, says Keith Petersen of The Eardly T. Petersen Company. A brief consideration as to the history of vacuum cleaners will help make such a statement understandable.

Until vacuum cleaners were invented, people relied upon relatively primative methods of removing known soils from the indoor environment. Simple sweeping was a prevalent practice, and any coverings or rugs were periodically removed outdoors and subjected to various poundings, shakings, beatings or washings to drive the dirt from the offending item. Scrubbing of floors and walls was common and all these different methods together were used in an attempt to provide as clean and livable an indoor environment as possible.

But, such methods were, at best, highly labor intensive and, ultimately, an enterprising young fellow with the arduous task and the associated dust of cleaning a retail store/stockroom invented a mechanical sweeping device with an attached pillowcase to receive the dirt. Through his efforts and the efforts of others a fledgling vacuum cleaner industry was gradually born with vacuums as varied as their inventors tastes and ideas. Large pump-type machines might be operated by one person while another cleaned with an attached hose and floor tool. At one point it was not an uncommon sight to see a horsedrawn cart with ye olde, local, vacuum cleaner man offering house-to-house vacuum cleaning. Understandably, vacuums owned privately for in-home use at the time were quite the exception rather than the rule.

It can also be quickly understood that, while these early, primitive vacuums provided a considerable advantage in containing the airborne dust so readily produced by earlier, vigorous sweeping methods of whisk broom, this was still hardly an ideal solution. Certainly, while the cloth collection bag acted to contain larger particles of dust and debris, the smaller particles whisked right through and into the air where they could then be breathed in by the laboring homemaker and her family. In fact, it is a present reality that in the commercial cleaning market today, many an office, theater, restaurant and other corporate facility is still cleaned with an old-fashioned style of upright vacuum utilizing a (gasp) primitive, cloth, shake-out bag system. It is unbelievably filthy and the EPA is starting to make noises - rightly so - to halt such practices. It is done, simply, because, in the short term, it saves buying a paper bag for $1.00. Of course, since the person doing the vacuuming is being bathed in a noxious cloud of bacteria, dust mite feces, cockroach body parts, spores, molds, pollens and what have you, the ultimate costs associated with tired, unproductive or downright sick workers are neither short term nor cheap. It's all a result of what we delicately refer to as pig-headed thinking.

Most vacuum cleaners, then, were evolved from using relatively loosely-woven cloth collection systems to adding paper disposable bags inside the primary bag. This was a considerable advance as now progressively smaller particles could be collected, and using such bags became the standard practice for most vacuum manufacturers well into the 1980's. At that time several events took place that considerably impacted the way most vacuum dirt collection systems were designed.

The first was that manufacturers had at their disposal new products from which to make a paper bag. Historically, paper bags were made primarily from cellulose fibers which is, well ..... paper. But, with the advent of synthetic materials, a techology arose that allowed for the ordinary paper bag to be improved by blending or replacing the cellulose fibers with a plastic fiber.

The plastic fiber had the advantage of maintaining a static charge which could then effectively capture significantly smaller particles by electrostatic attraction. Since a paper bag was designed as layers of, or, as a maze of, fibers, when this maze was created using melt-blown plastic fibers, the result was that particles down to about 3 to 5 microns (a micron, or micrometer, is about 1/100 the width of the average human hair) could be quite efficiently trapped. At the same time, the airflow through the bag was better maintained than the traditional paper bag in which the pores of the bag would rather quickly become clogged with particles - thus, reducing the airflow and so the cleaning power of the vacuum. It is interesting to note that most vacuum cleaner users today still opt to use traditional - versus micron - paper disposable bags. Duh. Oh, excuse me.

Once the paper bag quality had been improved using melt-blown technology, the filter manufacturers had an additional avenue by which they could present their products to the vacuum manufacturers - improved filters for these same vacuums. Instead of using a standard, almost useless paper filter, why not replace it with a micron filter? Instead of using a micron filter, why not improve filtration even further and replace it with a Hepa, or S-class filter?

The second event which took place that impacted the way bags, filters and vacuums were being marketed was a result of the energy crunch of the 80's. Homes and offices were insulated and sealed much more tightly to better control heating and cooling costs by better conserving energy. But, this had a drastic side effect - sealing up the interior environment effectively trapped its occupants inside with a host of indoor pollutants - allergens such as dust mite feces, pollens, molds, smoke, chemical gases and much else. An epidemic of allergies and asthma commenced and grew to such proportions that, today, the US Government has labeled indoor air quality (IAQ) problems as numbering amongst the top environmental problems in the country - a problem serious enough to result in over 60 billion dollars a year in lost worker productivity and medical expenses for men, women and children.

This problem caused a growing perception amongst many people that the here-to-fore lowly vacuum cleaner played a vital role in attempts to clean and maintain the health of the indoor environment. If a vacuum didn't clean well, the pollutants were left indoors to plague the occupants. If it didn't filter well, the pollutants would be removed from the carpet, floor, upholstered sofa, etc. and simply injected back into the air to be inhaled. Scientific studies established that the tinier particles - those below 1 micron in size - were the major culprits in effecting allergic responses amongst the allergy-prone or asthmatic individual. The reason for this was that, while the larger particles could be filtered out by the human body's primary, upper respiratory defense mechanisms of mucous membranes and cilia, the tinier particles slipped right by and were breathed deep into the lung sacs themselves. Many of these particles - being so small - would transfer through the cell walls directly into the blood stream. Thus, the need for a better vacuum which both cleaned and filtered in a superior way became apparent.

This spawned a response from most vacuum manufacturers. By adding high-grade micron or even Hepa filters to their products, they were able to better market their vacuums to a public wanting and needing to get their indoor environment as clean as possible. Allergic parents and asthmatic children were mandating the need for better vacuums and cleaner air. At the same time, it became quickly apparent that the same consumer would also invest in another something to clean the air - an air purifier of some sort (but, that is a subject for another time).

However, subequent, additional testing of various, popular vacuum cleaners soon revealed an ugly truth. These same machines - which were being marketed to a needy public as filtering the air while they cleaned - were shown to be emitting tens and hundreds of millions of microscopic pollutants per minute while they were being used. How could this be?

The testing revealed a simple fact: If the housings of the vacuum cleaner were not manufactured to such critical standards that they were airtight, the pressure inside the vacuum cleaner while it was operating forced out these tiny pollutants in appalling quantities through the gaps and apertures in the vacuum itself. Since the bagging system was only capable of containing particles down to average sizes of 3 to 5 microns, and since the micron or Hepa filter was invariably on the back end of the vacuum, in the intervening distance the bulk of these tiny, sub-micron, lung-damaging-particles (LDP) were being spewed out of the vacuum with a vengeance. Such vacuums simply were not capable of containing the hundreds of millions of microscopic particles being removed every minute of the vacuum process. These vacuums were, in fact, removing allergens from carpet and floor, etc. that were, for the moment, out of the breathing zone, and were injecting them back into the breathing zone. In a practical sense, it would be almost better not to vacuum at all! (thus, the title of this article). The public was being fooled into buying inadequate machines.

However, there are a handful of vacuum manufacturers that do make vacuums that not only utilize S-class filtration (99.97% to .3 microns) - effective to capture the tiny LDP's - but, also, provide totally air-tight housings. Most of these machines - a sad attestation to USA manufacturing (or, the lack thereof) - are being produced overseas in countries like Germany where quality products are the norm and not the aberration. One particular manufacturer, a 100-year old appliance manufacturer called Miele, provides the only residential canister vacuum cleaner in the world that is rated, with an S-class Hepa filter in place, to actually exceed government standards for Hepa filtration. What this means, simply, is that the vacuum itself, in partnership with the on-board Hepa filter, contains all particles to .3 microns (bacteria size). No other residential vacuum anywhere enjoys such a rating.

Now, that's a vacuum cleaner!

For questions, on vacuum cleaners - or, for any questions pertaining to IAQ issues, visit The Eardly T. Petersen Company at 224 Elmer Street in Westfield; or, contact them at 908-232-5723 or by e-mail at: sales@etpetersen.com.