Flush and run
Veteran professional cleaning industry writer, Robert Kravitz, explores the benefits of no touch cleaning for washrooms.
10”) above a toilet seat for up to 90 minutes after all the splashing and stirring of the environment that occurs when a toilet is flushed with [no lid or] its lid up’.
That these pathogens could remain in the atmosphere so long came as a bit of a shock. The study suggests that this problem could be eliminated, or at least diminished, if lids were installed once again in the hospital toilets, and users were encouraged to place the lids down before flushing. However, installing toilet lids in hospitals and many other public facilities is now viewed either as a costly ‘luxury’ or is simply not a priority.
Dr Michael Gardam, Medical Director of Infection Prevention and Control at the University Health Network in Toronto, Ontario, said: “It’s on a list of 100 things that need to be fixed. I know people have talked about it. [But I] have yet to see a single organisation that has implemented it.”
He adds the whole idea seems to have ‘fallen off people’s radar’. Further, the report notes that most hospital administrators ‘pooh-pooh the notion of retrofitting toilets to ensure an automatic seal when flushed’.
In downtown Chicago, Illinois, several buildings built in the late 1880s look almost the same today – inside and out – as they did when they were built. While some tenants have updated their individual offices, the hallways and common areas are all as originally designed. Even the light bulbs are specially made to resemble the originals.
Visitors to these buildings particularly like to see the public washrooms, because they have also been kept perfectly intact. One thing they get a kick out of seeing is that the toilets all have wooden seats and lids. Not only is it unusual to see wooden fixtures these days, but when was the last time you saw a public toilet with a lid in America?
Many manufacturers have been phasing out toilet lids since the 1970s. Doing so helps lower the cost of the toilet and means cleaning one less thing. However, we may be paying a higher price for that convenience than many administrators realise.
According to a report by the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ): “It seems that the flushing of lidless toilets, which are all too common in healthcare and other public facilities, or the flushing of a toilet with the lid up, in cases where the loo actually has a lid, results in the ‘aerosolisation’ of nasty little bugs like Clostridium difficile (C. diff).”
Many of us have heard this before. However, this 2012 report was one of the first and most comprehensive studies on the ‘aerosolisation of nasty little bugs’. According to the CMAJ report, ‘C diff was detected at heights of 25cm (about
52 | WASHROOM HYGIENE
Gardam encourages what he calls the ‘diligent cleaning’ of washrooms to promote health. Sounding very labour- intensive, diligent cleaning can be accomplished with no-touch cleaning systems. This highly effective process eliminates the need for powerful cleaning solutions, gloves, goggles, elbow grease, and the touching of surfaces.
Because many in the UK and Europe are just now getting introduced to no-touch cleaning, a little background into the technology may be useful. It was developed 20 years ago by a jansan distributor looking for a new way to clean restrooms.
Robert Robinson, Sr., President of Kaivac, said: “I wanted to make restroom cleaning faster, more hygienic, and find a way that cleaning workers did not have to touch contaminated surfaces. Using a machine to apply cleaning solution to washroom fixtures, pressure rinse the same areas, and then vacuum dry the restroom was not only faster, but tests proved it was more effective than traditional cleaning methods.”
Further, he says that because cleaning workers no longer had to get down on their hands and knees to scrub toilets, he believes this was the first time cleaning workers were called ‘cleaning professionals’.
The good news is we are no longer in the age of hands-and- knees, elbow-grease cleaning method. Today’s cleaning crews can help protect building users’ health with no-touch cleaning that is easier, more effective, and promotes our industry’s professionalism as well.
www.kaivac.com
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