Why You Should Use a Crib Mattress Dust Mite Cover

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Why You Should Use a Crib Mattress Dust Mite Cover

How Dust Mites Can Affect Your Baby

If you ask any expecting parent if they are hoping for a boy or girl, usually they will tell you all they want is a healthy baby. Yet most new parents expect to deal with runny noses, skin irritations, and many other types of sickness in the first year. Some moms and dads are becoming aware of the importance of using an organic crib mattress to keep their babies healthier. This is vitally important and greatly recommended. But what some parents don?t know is that purchasing the right crib mattress is only the first step. Dust mites can still infest any mattress. People can be allergic to dust mites themselves, their fecal matter, or the mold that grows on their bodies and fecal matter. As your baby is exposed to these he is at a greater risk for the occurrence of runny nose, pink eye, asthma, and eczema.

How a Dust Mite Lives and Thrives

A dust mite is defined as a microscopic bug found in the dust. Microscopic bugs don?t sound so scary, yet they are responsible for the most cases of allergic rhinitis every year. To understand how these nasty little critters can wreak such havoc to humans, we should understand what they feed on and what attracts them.

Human skin cells are the choice delicacy of some types of dust mites. The skin cells and flakes that one human sheds every day can feed up to a million dust mites. Other dust mites feed on household dust, which of course is where they get their name. These tiny little bugs do not have stomachs, so digestion has to occur outside of their bodies. The way they accomplish this is by secreting enzymes and depositing the fungus on dust particles and skin cells, enabling the fungus to pre-digest the dust mite?s food. But it is still only partially digested. The bug then eats the particle again and again and when it has been eaten so many times that it is fully digested, it becomes fecal matter.

A mated female dust mite will live ten weeks and create up to 2000 particles of fecal matter. In the last five of those weeks, she lays up to 100 eggs. This fast rate of reproduction shows that dust mites, though tiny they may be, can pose a significant hazard to human health.

Dust mites are found in every household, mostly in places the sun cannot reach. This is because natural sunlight kills them. To get away from their natural killer, they burrow deep down into pillows, mattresses, and carpeting. Considering that adult humans spend 7-10 hours per night sleeping in on a mattress with their heads on a pillow, in a carpeted room, one can clearly see that people are continuously exposed to the hazardous waste dust mites leave behind. For a baby, who sleeps over 70% of the time, the exposure is even greater.

As mentioned before, this exposure leads to allergic rhinitis (runny nose), conjunctivitis (pink eye), asthma (constricted airway), and dermatitis (eczema). No one wants these conditions for themselves, much less for their infants.

Effective Measures For Dust Mite Control

Though dust mites cannot be completely removed from a home, the effects they have on humans can be controlled. There are, however some common misconceptions about how to do this. Often people mistakenly think that they need to clean the air ducts in their homes to reduce dust mites. Actually, humidity and food are needed for dust mites to survive. There is not enough dust or human skin flakes in air ducts to make it worth the expense to clean them. Using bleach or other harsh chemicals is another way that some people try to control the problem. These actually pose more of a danger to your baby and are not helpful at all.

Hot water, regular cleaning, replacing carpet, and sometimes the use of a dehumidifier are all very useful. All blankets, crib sheets, and stuffed toys should be washed at 140 degrees Fahrenheit every other week. If you can replace carpeting with wooden or tiled floors, you should. Common sense tells us that if the bugs are attracted to dust, regular dusting and vacuuming can be effective in keeping the problem under control . Because dust mites have a hard time surviving in dry conditions, a dehumidifier can be great. Though these measures are all helpful and important, there is only one way to keep dust mites out of your baby?s crib mattresses, a dust mite cover.

Purchasing a Crib Mattress Dust Mite Cover A crib dust mite cover is made of cotton and is heat pressed to form a barrier that dust mites cannot get through. It covers the entire surface of the mattress and closes with a zipper. Naturally the smaller the opening in the fabric, the more likely that dust mites cannot get through to breed and lay their eggs. Pressing the fabric with heat makes the opening in the fabric a tiny 6 microns.

Though there are many choices for a crib dust mite cover, the best choice is an organic cotton crib dust mite cover. This way your baby is protected not only from the dust mites and their dander, but from skin reactions that chemically treated cotton can cause. To purchase an organic crib dust mite cover, visit www.absolutelyorganicbaby.com.

Laura is a stay at home mom with a special needs child. In learning about her daughter's illnesses, Laura has begun to learn about new ways to treat them naturally without synthetic drugs or chemically treated products. She has developed a passion for natural and holistic practices and products that benefit people and their environment. Laura currently owns a web based business with two on-line stores that offer organic baby products.

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