(Salt Lake City, UT) – Like most parents, Mallory Quarnberg is concerned about maintaining a clean home. But, in her case, it’s a matter of life and death. Her ten-month old son Carter suffers from Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Disease (SCID), a disease that prevents his immune system from functioning. Recently, thanks to Sargent Steam, a Salt Lake City retailer concerned with creating healthy homes, Quarnberg received the gift of a cleaning machine that uses steam to kill germs and prevent infection. Dr. Rebecca Buckley, the chief of Duke University’s division of pediatric allergy and immunology, calls SCID “a pediatric emergency.
Quarnberg said her son was preparing for his chemotherapy treatment in a few days explaining, “This steam machine will help so much.” Another SCID’s mother, Jill Heaps, received a machine from Sargent Steam in 2002 and says when she first discovered her now six-year old daughter Emily had SCID, “ I knew our lives were going to change dramatically. With this machine, I can sanitize everything she touches and everything around her.”
Staph infections can be a deadly for a child with SCID. Chlorine bleach is the most commonly used disinfectant to kill germs but is very harmful to a child’s respiratory system. In 2001, Dr. Richard A. Robison, a microbiologist from Brigham Young University, conducted a study on steam’s ability to kill bacteria and concluded an “extremely rapid kill rate” of 2 seconds on Staphylococcus aureus.
