CRI Participates in Asthma, Allergy Event

CRI Participates in Asthma, Allergy Event

One often-quoted item here at CRI is that Americans are currently spending about 90% of their time indoors. That fact was painfully apparent to me several weeks ago when I attended the annual meeting of the American College of Asthma, Allergy and Immunology, held November 5-10 in Miami, Florida. I could see the beach from my hotel window, but I spent the vast majority of my time in the Carpet and Rug Institute booth at the Miami Convention Center and never got as much as a big toe in the water. Ah well…

The ACAAI event was attended by more than three thousand allergy and asthma physicians from the U.S. and all over the world. CRI was there to promote the benefits of proper care and maintenance for carpet and to assert carpet’s role as an appropriate floor covering choice for allergy and asthma patients. This was the third medical group meeting CRI attended this year, beginning with the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology in March and the American Academy of Pediatrics in October.

Through a national survey of allergy physicians and general medicine practitioners conducted earlier this year on behalf of CRI, we knew that, while many doctors are still recommending carpet removal to their allergy and asthma patients, they were very open to information about proper carpet care and maintenance as a viable alternative to taking carpet out. For an earlier blog post about the survey, go to CRI Survey of Asthma & Allergy Doctors.

My own impressions from three days of talking to asthma doctors was that they were genuinely interested in CRI’s carpet care information. I gave out so many copies of CRI’s booklet, Carpet Cleaning Tips for Dummies that I ran out on the first day. I had so many requests for the books that I shipped out almost 500 of them to 49 different doctors the day I got back to my office. Doctors are aware they practice in the real world, where, for multiple reasons, patients either can’t or don’t want to remove their carpets. One practitioner from Manhattan told me her patients’ condo agreements required carpet for sound reduction between floors, so removal was not an option. Another doctor from Miami told me he recommended changes in patients’ bedding materials, but not their floor coverings. “Very few of my patients sleep on their floors,” he said.

Toxicologist Dr. Mitch Sauerhoff attended the meeting on behalf of CRI, to speak on the details of his international literature review article, Carpet, Asthma and Allergy – Myth or Reality?

CRI also introduced plans for a pilot carpet cleaning program for physicians’ offices designed to promote the CRI Seal of Approval testing and certification program for carpet cleaning products, equipment, and Service Providers. More on that later…

~Bethany


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