Preventing Carpet Outgassing in Your Home
Fast forward to when you’re driving your brand new car off the lot, and all of a sudden your car’s interior is undergoing a battery of heat and pressure changes. All this fluctuating heat and pressure presses those gases back out of the synthetic materials in your car’s cabin and you smell them as your “new car smell.” This process is known as outgassing (and sometimes offgassing).
Outgassing isn’t unique to new cars. Synthetic materials are prone to the release of VOCs in any setting where the environmental conditions are right - including your home.
That’s right: if you’ve ever smelled a “new carpet smell” in an office or even your own home, you were likely smelling carpet offgassing.
Why is outgassing a problem?
VOCs are known to have a negative effect on air quality in indoor spaces. Studies have found that levels of VOCs average 2 to 5 times higher indoors than outdoors.
While VOCs can be toxic, under most circumstances, the outgassing of VOCs isn’t significant enough to be considered very dangerous. As long as you keep the outgassing product in a well-ventilated and open space, the VOC gas will dissipate relatively quickly.
If you keep outgassing products in poorly ventilated, confined spaces, however, it is possible that prolonged exposure to the outgassed VOCs could have a negative impact on your health. The most common side effects associated with the inhalation of VOCs are headaches, sore throats, nausea, and drowsiness. Several studies show that exposure to VOCs may also exacerbate asthma symptoms.
How do I prevent outgassing in my home?
By far the most effective way you can keep potentially-harmful outgassed VOCs out of your home is by practicing what the department of health calls source control: remove or reduce sources of VOCs in your home.
Sources of VOCs include paints, solvents, adhesives, caulks, and, yes, synthetic carpeting and rugs. Removing these sources of VOCs from your home and ventilating the areas where they are stored can substantially reduce your exposure to the potentially-harmful chemical gases.
One effective way to reduce the number of outgassed VOCs in your home is to replace synthetic carpeting and rugs with a natural equivalent. Rugs and carpets made of natural fibers will not outgas VOCs into your home.
Why don’t natural fiber rugs outgas?
Rugs and carpets made of natural fibers like the ones Sisal Rugs Direct makes can’t outgas VOCs because they do not naturally contain volatile compounds and are not exposed to chemical gases during the manufacturing process.
Synthetic rugs and carpets are typically manufactured at a massive scale. Several chemical agents are used to expedite this process and guarantee a quality product. For example, around 95% of synthetic carpets use a latex backing that contains styrene and 4-phenylcyclohexane (4-PC). The adhesive most commonly used to affix such carpets to floors also contains benzene and toluene.
These VOCs seep into the latex fibers of synthetic material and remain trapped until the rugs or carpet are exposed to an environment that creates heat or pressure changes – such as the conditions inside your home. At that point, the VOCs outgas into the air around the carpet or rug, creating the telltale smell and potentially lowering your indoor air quality.
Natural rugs and carpets aren’t manufactured this way. Instead, we sustainably source and collect the natural fibers used to weave the rugs which are then expertly handwoven into the final product. The result is a 100% natural rug or carpet that contains no VOCs and that won’t outgas into your space.
Check out this step-by-step breakdown of how Sisal Rugs Direct creates our jute rugs.
Natural rug and carpet options
If you’re interested in replacing your synthetic carpeting or rugs with something more natural, Sisal Rugs Direct has several options. We weave carpets and rugs out of each of the following natural, sustainably sourced materials:
If you don’t want to worry about what your carpets or rugs may be releasing into your home, natural is the way to go. When you’re ready to start customizing the perfect natural rug for your space, explore one of the above options, or check out our full selection of customizable rugs.
