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April 23, 2010

Werner Braun: Asthma study of carpet could yield big results for industry

By Werner Braun President, Carpet and Rug Institute Dalton Daily Citizen

DALTON —





Editor’s note: Beginning today, The Daily Citizen will run a column from The Carpet and Rug Institute every Friday on some aspect of the carpet and rug industry. This column is part of our effort to provide the community with more coverage of the carpet industry.



It is not too far of a stretch, even in today’s economic times, to look at Dalton and the carpet industry and view them in degrees of separation. After all, we are the “Carpet Capital of the World.” While our city continues to bloom and find alternative ways to drive the economic engine, carpet is and always will be its epicenter.

I often times get asked about the role of the Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI) of which I serve as president and it is a question I never tire of answering. CRI is the national trade association representing manufacturers and suppliers to the carpet industry and has been entrenched atop the hill next to Dalton State College since the early 1970s. And even as our industry struggles to regain its footing in this financial environment that has brought much pain and suffering, the building on the hilltop reverberates with enthusiasm on a near daily basis.

So what exactly is the role of a national trade association for carpet industry? It’s actually rather simple: CRI works on issues that would hamper the industry’s ability to sell the soft floor covering.

Huh?

Maybe it’s not quite that simple, but let me give you a prime example of how CRI combines its expertise from member mills and our hard-working staff to make a difference for the guy or gal out there trying to get carpet on as many floors as possible.

One of the big issues we hear about far too often is the notion that asthma and allergies are aggravated by carpets because of the propensity to serve as a holding place for all the allergens brought into a house. We hear it from the retailers who hear it from consumers who hear it from doctors and asthma and allergy groups. Over time, it has become a certified fact.

Through the years, CRI has tried to find an origin to this myth; a piece of evidence or clinical study that might support the notion. We surveyed doctors to ask them for evidence and came up empty. We even had a noted toxicologist do a worldwide literature survey to find anything that might lend credence to this misstatement. What we have found, though, is that there are white papers that exist all across the globe that point to just the opposite. Papers that say the incorporation of carpet coincides with less allergy and asthma symptoms, medication usage, fewer hospital visits and better breathing function.

So why do doctors and organizations continue to harp on carpet as a culprit in light of such anecdotal evidence? Unfortunately, doctors are not scientists, they are clinicians. Why does one side of a room look at global warming evidence one way and the other side a completely different way?

So it fell to CRI to try to find a way to get someone interested in a doing a clinical study that might once and for all clear up this notion. Clinical studies are expensive propositions and given a tight budget cycle it was beyond CRI’s realm to fund one which actually turned out well since selling industry-funded results has its own set of headaches.

One of CRI’s jobs is to lobby government to ensure no legislation is passed to hamper carpet sales. It also gave us a leg up on reaching out to Congressional leaders to push the idea of the need for such a clinical study. After much hard work, an appropriation of $1.2 million was set aside for a three-year clinical study at Emory University in Atlanta. And the best part about it was the fact the money was appropriated through the EPA and Center for Disease and Control (CDC).

That study which actually began in 2005 is now complete and the data is being analyzed and summarized and you are sure to hear big news about it once it is published. So you see, our job at CRI is to identify issues such as these and put a plan together to attack them. We have a lot of industry expertise at our disposal and together, when the industry works through CRI, a lot of wonderful success stories are penned. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to continue to introduce CRI to you and keep you abreast of the things happening within the industry that affect all of us locally. You’ll be amazed at how the industry affects all of us in some way!

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