Is there such a thing as a non-toxic new carpet?

[ilex]

I realllllllly need to get the old disgusting carpets out of my house, and I was considering putting in new berber, but am afraid of the toxic effect of laying new carpet. I would consider laminate but would really rather have carpet on the stairs and in the upstairs as it is much more sound absorbant and warm. What can I do to make the new carpet experience less toxic??

[melissa17s]

You can get wool carpet that has not been treated with fermaldahyde... I have seen the advertised in Natural Home. You could also get a wool area rug and put it over another flooring surface.

[Catherine12]

You can get recycled polyester carpet - since it is recycled, the polyester is pretty much done outgassing and is, if not non-toxic, a lot less toxic. Plus it is one of the less expensive options anyway! We did this prior to selling our last home - we had about 700 sf of carpet installed. And there was almost no "new carpet smell".

[beanma]

i think the new "Natural Home" magazine had a piece on carpets. hey recommended area rugs instead, but went through what parts of carpet were bad. we have hardwood floors with area rugs for most of our living space, but do have some old industrial grade stuff in the basement that i would like to replace one day. huge job, though.

[RiverSky]

I've heard that there is a sealer you can use on new carpets that drastically reduces (blocks) off-gassing but I don't know what it is.

[Penelope]

Flor tiles claim to offer recycled rug tiles:
http://www.florcatalog.com/service/flor/top5.html

(They're really cool, btw!)

[jother]

We moved into an "older" home(18 yrs) in Aug and the carpets had never been replaced and were the most dirtiest I've ever seen! In my ideal world I would have hardwood/cork/tile everywheren my reality we had a budget!
The bedrooms were replaced w/ hardwoods(2 rooms we did/1 we contracted out), that left carpet in the room above the garage "playroom", hall, stairs and family room. After a lot of research and compromise I agreed to carpet replacement in those areas. Look at greenseal dot com and you can find list of carpets that are green seal approved and greenseal plus approved, the lowest voc. We went w/ finding a greenseal plus commercial grade carpet.

It was a lot of work on my part and most flooring stores will think you are speaking latin, after shopping around I found a shop that would look up w/ the suppliers to verify its greenseal status it was a blessing. I'm pleased w/ our carpet, there was faint odor the day it was installed and that's it! Like I said in an ideal world I would not have carpet and even w/ the greenseal plus is no garentee, but it is simply a compromise.....

good luck! btw, our allergies improved after the old carpet was gone....

[littlest birds]

I had to go for rugs over wood when we pulled carpet. Wall-to-wall always gets disgusting. It simply cannot be cleaned well enough to be clean. So over the years it gets worse and worse. I have pulled out carpet several times. Too gross under there! No wonder it increases allergies.

Sorry to poopoo your wall-to-wall, most of our new rugs are wool. We already had some hardwood, and we were able to get three rooms worth of salvage flooring in addition. I think you can get wool wall-to-wall though it must be pricey.

[laketahoemama]

Try Green Sage.