With the arrival of cold and rain, the bed becomes the best shelter for many and especially when the duvet is brought out of the closet. But in this case, a very important question arises: How often should the duvet be washed? There are people who do not wash it until it is removed in March, but the recommendations in the case of allergies indicate that we need to be a little more constant, especially if we are people who are sensitive to mites.
There are myths They say a duvet cover that hasn’t been washed for six months harbors 20,000 live mites, which can set off all alarms. But the reality is that it’s not something that’s fully proven and there’s a lot of bias behind the studies that it’s based on.
And right now we don’t have any scientific research that tells us a standard washing frequency, but there are recommendations that suggest that the duvet cover should be washed every two weeks at 60ºC, since body fat and mites transfer the fabric to the filling.
filled It does not require constant washing, as noted in an article on children with asthma, which suggests that duvets and pillows should be washed every three months. However, down manufacturers relax this frequency and recommend doing it once a year.
strategy More important than the frequency of washing, since, as when we are going to wash our sheets, the important thing is to wash at a temperature close to 60ºC to be able to kill the mites. Here we have classic work from the nineties indicating that water at 55ºC kills all mites, while washing at 40ºC removes barely 6.5%.
Here cold washing to save energy, a practice that is becoming very fashionable, can be quite harmful, as it can attract mites to other clean clothes in the laundry. Therefore, the duvet should always be washed by itself.
The Nordic problem Its insulating capacity, since various investigations have indicated that selecting a program at 60ºC in the washing machine does not guarantee that the duvet core will reach that temperature, especially if the Eco cycle is used. Thus, to be truly effective, the program of choice involves keeping the water above 55ºC for at least twelve minutes or above 60ºC for eight minutes.
And the drying process is no less, since storing or using a damp duvet creates the perfect ecosystem for the proliferation of microorganisms. The analyzes performed here on used pillows revealed significant loads such as fungi Aspergillus fumigatus.
Picture | Ana Tarajevic
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