EXPERT ADVICE GET A GRIP
The accident statistics for slips and falls are shocking, says James White, Managing Director of Denis Rawlins Ltd. Managers need to eliminate needless risks and drop slipshod mopping for safer and more cost-effective floor cleaning methods.
Whether you manage a building, cleaning services or people, an important part of your remit is health and safety.
In previous articles we’ve made the case, often overlooked, for a health- conscious approach to cleaning floors and other surfaces.
We follow a science-based approach to cleaning, and the evidence is emphatic that manual mopping is unhygienic. By recirculating soils in the bucket, mops spread contamination and put health at risk.
Safety – in particular, the slip hazard posed by mopped floors – is the other major plank of our ‘Chop the Mop’ campaign. So again, let’s look at the evidence.
Statistics from the Health and Safety Executive show that slips, trips and falls make up more than half (56%) of all reported major injuries. Getting on for a third of all injuries resulting in more than three days’ work absence (29%) were in this category.
Most alarming of all, one in three slips and trips occurred on wet surfaces, the same HSE figures (for 2010/11) show.
The TUC also flags up this mundane danger. It quotes the Labour Force Survey finding that 1.2 million working days were lost due to slips and trips in the same year. The annual cost to society is estimated at more than £800million, not including the impact for individuals.
Slips and falls occur across all sectors – from healthcare and manufacturing to offices and retail. Arguably this risk is even more self-evident than the dangers of cross-contamination from mops spreading soils and pathogens. We’re all familiar with Wet Floor warning signs and understand why and when they should be deployed.
106 | Tomorrow’s Cleaning May 2016
But it’s not just moisture on a hard floor that leads to slipperiness. Mopping is not effective at removing the soil and grease that build up on a floor. This and other kinds of contamination reduce slip resistance, making serious falls more likely.
Whether it is this greasy coating or the damp surface left behind after mopping – either of which may be invisible – the statistics imply that managers have become inured to this risk or don’t know how best to manage it.
Some of the cases studied by HSE researchers are educational. Staff at a fast food outlet promptly mopped the floor when a customer spilled some coffee. The spillage was small, but the surrounding area looked dirty, so about 2m2
was mopped, and then ‘mop dried’.
The researchers measured slip resistance using pendulum and surface micro-roughness techniques, and also drying time. It took seven minutes, while the area was almost indistinguishable from the rest of the floor yet still extremely slippery.
It’s the sudden change in floor surface traction that causes many slips, research shows. So during that time, ‘it would be difficult for customers and staff to realise they were walking from a safe to an unsafe surface,’ the HSE noted.
A commercial sales office and showroom provided the venue for another post-mopping accident, this time investigated by local authority environmental health officers.
The HSE guidance points to the need for out-of-hours cleaning where feasible, improved training of cleaning staff, more effective use of barriers, and not least, other types of cleaning.
When clearing up a small spillage, paper towels are a safer option that a
mop and bucket. But where spills may be frequent or extensive, an efficient and rapid cleaning system is required. Unlike mopping, any cleaning regime also needs to remove the hazardous film of grease and oil that tends to accumulate underfoot.
Managers may labour under the illusion that such a solution must be more expensive than mopping. Yet an OmniFlex Autovac floor-cleaning machine is 3-4 times faster and suctions away soils to leave a floor that’s both dry and hygienically clean. So it is both more efficient and cost- effective. Performing like a scrubber- dryer at a fraction of the cost, the AutoVac is also certified by the US National Floor Safety Institute as providing ‘high traction’.
Armed with the evidence, building managers can, and should, get to grips with this major problem of avoidable slips.
www.rawlins.co.uk twitter.com/TomoCleaning
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