Asthma & popcorn ceilings: Your ceilings are harbouring the invisible enemy that aggravates Asthma
Like many textured surfaces such as carpets and rugs, your popcorn textured ceilings can hold on to a variety of allergens, dust mites, insect bile, and spider webs. This is over and above the risk of your textured ceiling’s risk of containing deadly asbestos. Even if you make a regular habit of trying to keep your popcorn ceilings clean (few of us do), you can still count on dust, dirt, and other airborne pollutants to be embedded in between the rough surfaces that make up the popcorn ceiling.
To make things worse, many popcorn ceilings weren’t installed properly which means you may notice areas of your popcorn ceilings that are cracking and peeling off. The peeling of ceiling texture is a visible symptom of loose particles that are slowly but constantly falling from the textured ceiling and being inhaled by you, your kids and the rest of your family. Another visible symptom of popcorn ceiling particles coming loose and floating in the air of your home, is that no matter how often you dust your furniture and appliances, after a day or two, you will still get a thin film of dust on the surfaces you cleaned.
The thin film of dust that you see on your furniture, counter tops, TV set, appliances and other surfaces in your house, is made up of dust, allergens, dust mites and other respiratory system irritants that for the most part fall off from the textured ceilings in your home. This is why asthma & popcorn ceilings are never a good mix.
A look at the Asthma epidemic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EDo9pUYvPE
Over the last 40 years, the prevalence of asthma has increased from 0.53% of the population, to 4.8% of the population[1]. That’s an astounding 10 fold increase in a short period of 40 years. It is not a coincidence that textured ceilings were introduced in the mid 1960’s.
In the meantime, we are only masking the symptoms of asthma by using inhalers and other steroid based chemicals, while ignoring the real causes of asthma. According to the Asthma Society of Canada, 10% of the population in this country are needlessly suffering from Asthma [2].
Associated costs with the Asthma epidemic
In the Province of British Columbia alone, the annual cost of dealing with Asthma was $56 million (2006 figures [3]). If we extrapolate that number, Canada-wide, the cost of dealing with Asthma would have been over half a Billion dollars. As Canadian taxpayers, we have to understand that ultimately we are paying those costs out of our pockets.
According to the US National Institute of Health, the total cost burden of Asthma in the year 2007 in the United States was $56 Billion. You read that correct, that’s $56 million times 1000.
As the burden of Asthma increases, there are certain steps that we can take as citizens, including choosing responsible modes of transportation, reducing the use of airborne chemicals in our households, and yes, removing popcorn textured ceilings from our homes. If you are a homeowner whose family suffers from Asthma and other allergies, do yourself and your family a favour in the new year and get in touch with us here at RemoveCeilingTexture.com. You would be surprised how minimal the cost is to have smooth ceilings in your home and get rid of that unsightly and disease-ridden popcorn textured ceiling.