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The Importance of Using Fragrance in Public Restrooms

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 By Erica Baker

First impressions are extremely important, especially for any company that wants to grow its business. When you walk into a public restroom that has an unpleasant smell, it’s likely that you’ll immediately turn around and walk out. When a restroom has an odor, 47% of people say an unclean restroom shows that a company doesn’t care about its customers (Bradley Corp. Survey).

 

So how does a company prevent this poor first impression from happening? The first (and obvious) thing to do is to regularly clean your restroom and the second is to make sure that it consistently smells good. There are a variety of odor-control solutions available to use such as urinal screens, active air fresheners, passive air fresheners, urinal/commode mats, and more. Read below to learn more about the different types of odor control solutions that can help keep your restrooms smelling fresh.

 

It’s a good idea to use a fragrant urinal screen, such as the Wave 3D, for the dual purpose of cleaner restrooms through splash prevention and better smelling restrooms. Urine splash is inevitable so it’s important to minimize it as much as possible when it tracks, it is unsanitary and the uric acid damages floors seep into grout and cracks causing reoccurring odors.

 

Having an air freshener on the wall in the restroom is great, but it doesn’t always address odors in the stalls where the unpleasant smells are coming from. Using an air freshener that clips directly onto the toilet, such as the Eco Bowl Clip, can more effectively eliminate odors.

 

Right after the restroom is cleaned, it smells great, but sometimes the odors around toilets and urinals, return and linger. That smell is usually urine that has seeped into the floor where typical cleaners can’t reach. Using a multi-purpose cleaner and deodorizer concentrate that contains bio-actives that break down complex compounds (the cause of odors), such as Bio-Conqueror 105, to penetrate deep into spaces to remove stubborn odors is a great solution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Erica Baker
Marketing Coordinator  • Fresh Products, LLC
Erica Baker is an experienced Marketing Coordinator with a demonstrated history of working in the medical device industry. Skilled in B2B Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, Print, and Microsoft Office Suite. Strong marketing professional with a Bachelor of Science, focused in Marketing from Bowling Green State University.

Summer School for Hard Floors

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Learn how to use the summer break to your floors’ advantage

Before the real work gets started, you’ll need to plan and prepare. Dariusz Malachowski, unit director at SSC Services for Education, says proper planning and communication are the most important ingredients in a successful summer floor cleanup. “The preparation starts months before. It is a two-and-a-half-month-long project and needs to be treated as such,” he says.

Here are the steps Malachowski and other floor care experts take and recommend in the months leading to summer:

Evaluate the condition of all floor surfaces—A thorough evaluation will help you decide which type of restoration is necessary. Prioritize areas that need a full strip and recoat versus top scrub and recoat. “This allows me to determine how much product I will need to order and gives me a rough idea of the time allotment for each building or area,” Malachowski says.

Select your cleaning chemicals—Selecting cleaning products can be overwhelming, but just remember that one size does not fit all, and more is not always better, says Andrew Wolfe, a formulating chemist for coatings at Spartan Chemical Company Inc. “Choose the cleaner and finish that works best for your facility,” he says. “Do you need a rapid repair? Something that requires low maintenance? Or something that is environmentally preferred? Also take into account the correct concentration of each chemical, as over-diluting or under-diluting your floor finish remover can cause problems such as tacky, gummy residue, or simply not getting the finish off the floor.”

Order supplies—Most facility managers will need to order more or different products and tools for summer floor refinishing compared to what they use during the school year. Malachowski uses large quantities of floor finish, finishing pads, and stripping pads. Ordering supplies early ensures his distribution center has them in stock and will ship products to him on time. “The worst thing that can happen is having your crew show up for work and not having tools or supplies for them to work with,” he says.

When ordering supplies, don’t forget safety equipment. “Be sure to have chemical-resistant footwear, personal protective equipment (PPE) such as gloves and goggles, as well as ‘wet floor’ signage,” Wolfe says. “Most importantly, this is a messy process, so make sure to protect yourself with a coverall.”

Inspect and repair equipment used for summer cleanup—Some floor machines have likely been sitting in storage for months and you’ll need to ensure they are in good working condition. Having spare parts for most critical pieces of equipment so that you can make repairs when a breakdown happens in the middle of the summer is a lifesaver, Malachowski says. “You need to have a stock of squeegee blades, gaskets, and filters for your wet vacs and auto scrubbers. A spare vacuum motor can save two weeks of idle time.”

Inquire about planned summer school activities—Find out when summer schools, camps, athletic practices, construction, or IT and maintenance projects will occur, and plan your projects accordingly. It is critical to go into summer work planning with as much information as possible, Malachowski advises. “You do not want to have summer camp kids run into your school on Monday morning while you have your crew stripping floors because nobody thought of notifying you. This is a true story from my past summer cleanup,” he warns.

Make a detailed plan for daily and weekly accomplishments—This plan needs to consider all the information you have gathered about summer school activities. Share this plan with all the stakeholders. Give them a timeline to review and approve it. “You’d be surprised how often they will add things they forgot about initially,” Malachowski says.

Amy W. Richardson
Managing Editor, Cleaning & Maintenance
Amy W. Richardson is the managing editor of Cleaning & Maintenance Management. She has more than 15 years of experience editing and writing for trade and consumer publications, community newspapers, nonprofit associations, and websites. Richardson holds a Bachelor of Arts in communication studies with an emphasis in journalism from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

Improper Disinfection Can Lead to HAIs

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Everyone agrees proper cleaning and disinfection help stop the spread of healthcare-acquired infections (HAIs). But what about when disinfection inadvertently causes HAIs to spread?

Infection Control Today looks at what it calls an “overlooked” problem of health care workers using the wrong disinfection process/product on the wrong surface. With all the new advances in disinfectants and disinfecting technology, it can be challenging to keep up with which products/technologies are safe for specific surfaces. When surfaces are damaged due to improper disinfection, they become difficult to keep clean. The cracks, fissures, and pits provide microscopic reservoirs for pathogens to hide in and colonize.

Surface and product damage caused by surface disinfection incompatibility costs health care facilities millions of dollars each year in material and equipment replacement. The Healthcare Surfaces Institute and the Association of Healthcare Value Analysis Professionals recently conducted an analysis to determine the root causes of medical device damage. They found one large midwestern hospital, with 700 beds and over 1.2 million patient encounters yearly, suffered damage to several hundred medical device monitoring systems due to chemical exposure during the disinfection process.

The analysis determined not all health care facility personnel underwent training on proper cleaning and disinfection. Many facilities did not test or evaluate surfaces and equipment for cleanability before deciding to purchase them. In addition, it is not common for raw material manufacturers to test their materials for surface disinfection compatibility before selling them to manufacturers.

Analysis authors called for collaboration between health care personnel, raw material suppliers, device manufacturers and designers, and disinfectant manufacturers to develop a minimum standard for surface disinfectant compatibility that tests categories of disinfectants instead of proprietary products. They also called for medical device suppliers to provide maintenance training, including a review of cleaning and disinfection, to all users of their equipment or devices.

  This publication was sourced from Cleaning & Maintenance Management | Premier Cleaning Industry Resource (cmmonline.com).

Guiding Your Facility’s Approach to Infection Prevention

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Written by: Rich Prinz

Infection control has always been integral to the environmental cleaning process, however, over the last two years it has become a critical necessity. While the COVID-19 pandemic drew attention to the importance of infection prevention, it also triggered a dramatic uptick in unsafe cleaning and disinfection practices with potential health risks.

Disinfecting is now ubiquitous across all industries, yet few sectors have employed dedicated infection control specialists with expertise in best practices for safer processes. This article will provide an inside look at some of the hazards posed by legacy practices and offer a route toward safer approaches to infection prevention.

As hidden hazards come to light, cleaning professionals are discarding the assumption that traditional sanitization methods are tried and true. For instance, the age-old belief that the most potent disinfectants are sodium hypochlorite (bleach) or quaternary ammonium compounds (quats) is now viewed with caution due to serious health concerns and the probability of lower efficacy. Using too many different chemicals for each cleaning task is another example of how conventional procedures have inadvertently caused safety concerns. Not only is this practice wasteful and inefficient, but it also creates a confusing labyrinth for cleaning staff that can significantly increase the risks of error.

The laser focus on maintaining more hygienic environments to prevent infectious outbreaks will remain long after the current pandemic subsides. The public will continue to expect higher levels of cleanliness from every type of facility. Therefore, facility managers must take proactive steps sooner rather than later to establish responsible strategies for safer and more sustainable environmental cleaning.

Four key components contribute to safer infection prevention practices: chemistry, protocols, education, and sustainability. The first stop on the route is chemistry:

1. Evaluate cleaning chemicals and initiate best practices 

Since chemicals are fundamental to virtually every environmental cleaning process, all products should be evaluated against an ideal chemical profile based on the following seven criteria: range of use, safety data, registration with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), efficacy, contact time, application, and cost.

Improving safety starts with assessing all the cleaning products a facility uses to identify those that don’t measure up to the ideal profile, then replacing them with safer alternatives that serve multiple purposes. The concept of chemical standardization is still relatively new to the cleaning industry but is rapidly gaining popularity.

Imagine having only one set of chemical instructions, rather than the usual seven to 10, to accomplish a wide array of cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting applications for surfaces, floors, windows, furniture, walls, restrooms, and more. Standardizing chemical usage helps reduce complexity and eliminate failure points that can directly impact safety and efficacy.

Low toxicity is at the top of the list of ideal properties for safer cleaning chemical alternatives. Nowadays, there are chemistries available that are both safer as well as highly effective. Product safety data sheets (SDS) are the key to finding products with optimal safety ratings across the board including a triple zero hazardous materials identification system (HMIS) rating, neutral pH, and an EPA category IV rating for lowest inhalation toxicity. Avoiding the use of products known to cause asthma and other health hazards should always be a top priority.

Of course, the other top safety consideration is efficacy—specifically, efficacy against a wide range of bacteria, viruses, and fungi. Superior biocidal performance is crucial but only if the chemical is EPA-registered as effective against the most prevalent pathogens, such as SARS-CoV-2 (List N), Norovirus (List G), and C. Auris (List P), as well as multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) like C. difficile (List K), MRSA, and vancomycin-resistant enterococci or VRE (List H). Moreover, the contact time it takes to inactivate these pathogens should be four minutes or less.

Additionally, consider a product that has earned the EPA’s highest level emerging pathogen claim (EPC) against the hardest-to-kill small non-enveloped viruses. Though rare, chemistries exist that are also EPA-registered to kill the biofilm bacteria responsible for many healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). Chemicals classified as Continuously Active Disinfectants (CAD) are rarer still, as they can sustain residual efficacy for at least 24 hours. 

Several environmental factors also impact disinfectant efficacy. Environmental staff should confirm the chemistry has been tested in the presence of soil and proven to be resistant to organic matter, as well as sunlight.

The good news is there are a handful of chemistries that check every box. A few are even capable of achieving maximum efficacy at lower concentrations, further mitigating exposure risks.

At the end of the day, ease of application and affordability are the final deciding factors. If dilution is easy and accurate, staff are more efficient and effective. A product that is also economical to purchase, ship, and store is a bonus for everyone.

2. Address protocols to mitigate cross-contamination risks 

Many facilities outside of health care don’t even realize cross-contamination is an important topic to address. Yet, even in the most hygienic environments, viral droplets, an ill person, or a contaminated cleaning cloth can infect surfaces. Stopping the contamination cycle requires dedicated process-improvement measures.

Follow three steps to limit the risks of cross-contamination. First, consider utilizing touchless electrostatic sprayer technologies that enable quick and complete surface disinfection with zero incidences of cross-contamination. Second, incorporate a disposable wipe system into existing protocols to prevent transferring contaminants from the surface to surface. If using microfiber cloths, follow the manufacturer’s guide for applications and replace the cloths regularly. Finally, avoid disinfectants like quats that often bind to microfiber cleaning cloths and leave surfaces vulnerable to recontamination.

Best practices for preventing cross-contamination in health care environments suggest pre-treating patient rooms and care areas with an electrostatic sprayer and a sporicidal disinfectant. For most pathogens, the appropriate dwell time is four minutes in compliance with the Joint Commission standards for hospital accreditation.

3. Educate cleaning staff on proper usage and protocols

Even when safer cleaning and disinfection products are added to the mix, infection prevention improvement plans will fail if staff members are not trained on proper usage and protocols. Again, infection control begins with an assessment: Evaluate all current cleaning protocols to identify gaps, inefficiencies, and errors, then use the data to develop training programs tailored to improving processes. 

Targeted education should cover chemical differentiators, SDS, personal protective equipment (PPE), labels, dilutions, and application. It also should include pathogen training with appropriate dwell times, wipes program training, and best practices for achieving enhanced disinfection to mitigate cross-contamination. Supplement education with signage as a reminder of essential safety directions.

When all is said and done, staff should have a clear understanding of how to use all cleaning equipment and chemicals effectively, efficiently, and safely.

4. Follow the roadmap to safety and sustainability

Once facility managers adapt products and protocols to achieve safer infection prevention processes, facilities will realize additional advantages. Ideal cleaning chemical properties naturally point to eco-friendly options that are more stable and sustainable, thereby lowering carbon footprints while supporting health and safety.

The reality is, even though infection prevention is now a critical necessity in all sectors, it should not necessitate putting staff and building occupant health at risk in the process when there are effective alternatives that will not sacrifice safety. Creating a roadmap to safer infection prevention practices isn’t easy, but it will lead to a healthier, more sustainable future. 

 

Rich Prinz is the global vice president of sales and marketing for EvaClean by EarthSafe, a safer, sustainable infection prevention solution. Prinz has over two decades of experience in leadership positions at major health care, hospitality, and industrial supply organizations and has developed process improvement initiatives for health care networks throughout the country.