dust or vacuum when the person with allergies or asthma is not at home.
Replacing wall-to-wall carpets with wood floors will make it easier to remove dander.
Close registers
If you have forced-air heating and air conditioning, closing air registers may reduce the amount of animal dander that circulates through your home. If closing all of the registers isn’t practical, try closing those in the rooms where asthmatic or allergic individuals spend the most time (especially bedrooms).
Replacing the filter in your furnace or air conditioner with a HEPA filter and/or purchasing a room air cleaner may also help. Studies on the effectiveness of these methods have been inconclusive, however.
RELATED: How To Allergy-Proof Your Home
Bathe your pet
Research shows that frequently bathing your pet reduces the allergens found in their dander.
A 1999 study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology compared the levels of allergens in dog dander before and after a five-minute bath with an unnamed “proprietary shampoo” (which could describe an allergen-reducing shampoo such as Groomax). The researchers found that the bath reduced the dogs’ allergen levels by about 85 percent. However, the allergen levels returned to normal in about three days, which suggests that dogs need to be washed at least twice a week.
Similar studies using cats have had mixed but generally less encouraging results.