The global climate is changing dramatically compared with the temperatures of the last few centuries. A highly infectious disease spreading along the trade routes from China. Sounds like a sample of today’s headlines about climate change and COVID-19. However, they would have also been the headlines from the late Mediaeval Era. Yes, everybody, in the mid-1300s, the climate was cooling after the Mediaeval Warm Period and a global pandemic was spreading along the trade routes from the Far East in the form of bubonic plague, aka the Black Death. Yep, Black as in very bad. It reached Hornchurch too, although not before ravaging Mediaeval London.
Although there’s no denying that COVID-19 is a serious problem, when you put it into perspective besides the spectre of the Black Death, it kind of gets into perspective a bit. The mortality rate for the first outbreak of bubonic plague back in the 1300s was anywhere from 30% to 100%, COVID-19’s mortality rate is, at most, about 14%, and that’s in the very elderly and frail, who, unfortunately, get hit hard by the flu and other viruses all the time. It makes you rather grateful that modern carpet cleaning techniques, as well as modern medicines, have given us the ability to fight back, even though about 3000 people were infected with bubonic plague between 2010 and 2015.
Plague In A Persian Rug
It’s easy to imagine how the world’s first major pandemic spread back in the 1300s. The bacterium causing the Black Death, Yersinia pestis, is transmitted by rat fleas, which happily feed on humans as well as rats. Once the Silk Road trade route opened Europe and the Far East up to each other, the rats and their fleas that carried the disease were passed along, as well as goods. As the plague got into Europe via Turkey and Persia (modern-day Iran), there’s a good chance that the plague got passed along in the goods themselves. It’s perfectly likely that the trade caravans coming into Europe and Hornchurch respectively, either overland or by sea, would have included luxurious Persian rugs and Turkish carpets. As any pet owner knows, fleas love to live in carpets, and these carpets would have been no exception. Small wonder, then, that the Black Death affected the wealthy who could afford such luxuries as well as those in the lower classes who frequented dodgy dockyard taverns where rats and fleas were rampant…
Those who have looked at old-fashioned techniques used for housekeeping, including carpet, floor and rug care, know that one of the popular methods for ridding the home of fleas was the use of strong-smelling herbs such as pennyroyal. Because the use of such herbs would have deterred fleas to some extent, it’s a small wonder that the experts of the day recommended herbs as a remedy.
How Carpet Cleaning Helps Prevent Fleas
Eventually, the scientific and medical world figured out the connections between bubonic plague, rats and fleas. Hygiene improved, as did knowledge and urban conditions, and the last major bubonic plague outbreak in the UK occurred in the mid-1600s – and by that stage, they’d figured out that self-isolation and quarantines were the best way to halt a pandemic in its tracks. Alexander Fleming developed penicillin, giving us antibiotics that combat bacterial infections (important note: COVID-19 is a virus, not a bacterium, so antibiotics won’t do diddly-squat for it).
However, although it’s relatively easy to keep rats out of your home with good hygiene and maybe a trap or two, it’s a bit harder to keep fleas out, especially if you keep pets. Thankfully, fleas in Hornchurch don’t carry bubonic plague – they’re just a flipping nuisance in the most part, except in extreme instances when they can cause blood poisoning. Nevertheless, nobody wants fleas in the house, and good carpet care practices are your main line of defence when it comes to keeping them out.
Fleas live in carpet fibres, upholstery and bedding, with carpets being the most common places to find them. The good news is that regular vacuuming will go a long, long way towards killing fleas so they don’t become a nuisance. However, although you can wash bedding, upholstery is a bit harder to deal with if fleas get into it. To really stop fleas in their tracks and kill them, professional deep cleaning for upholstery and for carpets is a real winner. The high temperatures involved in steam cleaning are enough to kill the little rotters and their eggs as well – plus a host of other unwanted visitors in your homes, such as dust mites and silverfish. Carpet cleaning will also leave you with nice clean carpets (and upholstery) that don’t have a doggy odour as well.
Can Carpet Cleaning Help Prevent Coronavirus?
It has to be asked whether or not getting your carpets steam cleaned will help prevent the spread of COVID-19. Although research has only been underway for a couple of months, which is a short time in the world of immunology, public health and epidemiology, here’s what we know so far:
- The virus is spread by droplets emitted by coughing or sneezing, and it enters via the mucous membranes (primarily eyes, nose and mouth). It can be spread through contact – if someone touches something contaminated, they’ll contaminate all the other things they touch before they wash their hands.
- Flat, hard surfaces like windowsills and door handles are the spots where viruses of all types are likely to live for longer. Rough surfaces like carpet and fabric are less hospitable to viruses.
- Shared surfaces that are touched by numerous people are the most likely sites of transmission (the carpets in your bedroom probably don’t come into this category, although your workplace carpets might do).
- Official sources suggest that carpets won’t need cleaning in the case of exposure to the COVID-19 virus unless there’s visible contamination (i.e. someone’s spat, blown their nose or coughed all over the carpet).
- Most viruses die if exposed to temperatures of 60°C or more. Water and steam do get to these temperatures during deep carpet cleaning, so we can conclude that steam cleaning carpets will kill the COVID-19 if it’s there.
In practical terms, these known facts suggest that getting your carpets steam cleaned won’t do much as a precautionary measure to stop the COVID-19 virus from entering your Hornchurch home – although having nice clean carpets is never a bad thing, especially if you’re self-isolating and have to spend ages at home! On the other hand, if you or someone else in your home has actually had the virus and you’re worried about the virus living in your carpets (which is unlikely unless you can actually see spit or snot), then getting your carpets steam cleaned will probably kill the virus – although I’m a professional carpet cleaner rather than a microbiologist, and I’m just using logic here.
Cleaning carpets by other methods such as bonnet buffing and dry carpet cleaning aren’t able to kill viruses or bacteria because they don’t involve high temperatures. This is good for the carpets, of course, and these techniques do a great job of freshening up delicate and sensitive fabrics.
Is there anything that you can do as an individual who doesn’t have the steam cleaning equipment available to professional carpet cleaners? Well, it’s not going to come as big news and it’s not exactly rocket science, but WASH YOUR HANDS LOTS, stop picking your nose and wipe down hard, flat surfaces with disinfectant wipes. When you clean those flat surfaces, take plenty of care if you have managed to get hold of chlorine bleach because if this spills on your carpets, even the world’s best stain removal service won’t be able to fix it, as it’s not a stain that adds colour; it’s a “bleach” that strips the colour out. And if you’re in the habit of doing anything that involves having your face planted directly on the carpet (I won’t ask!), give it a miss!