on sanitation and cleanliness in hospitals had a hugely beneficial effect on patient recovery rates.”
This is noteworthy. While we may attribute the term ‘cleaning for health’ to Dr. Michael A. Berry, who wrote the book ‘Protecting the Built Environment: Cleaning for Health’ back in 1994, the concept and the connection between effective cleaning and health was actually identified 144 years earlier by Florence Nightingale.
A journey with no end
The UK has come a long way as far as life expectancy is concerned. Today, it hovers around 80 for most people. And while a great deal of this can be attributed to new medicines and advances in medical care, much can also be attributed to improvements in cleaning and cleaning practices developed over the past 150 years.
However, we are not done. Just as new medicines will be developed in the coming years to help keep people healthy, so too will new cleaning solutions, systems, tools, equipment, and practices be introduced. In other words, we are on a journey, helping to protect human health, which never really ends.
We should take a closer look at some of these advances in the professional cleaning industry. While there are many more than those mentioned below, the following have played a significant role in helping the professional industry protect human health:
Disinfectants
Disinfectants are not new. While they have been around in one form or another for centuries, it was not until the 1920s that scientists found that airborne microorganisms could be killed by spraying a mist of diluted bleach – which can be used as a disinfectant – into the air.
However, one of the types of disinfectants we use today to disinfect surfaces in professional cleaning – quaternary ammonium compounds (aka quats) – was not formally introduced until 1935. The introduction of effective disinfectants for cleaning all types of surfaces was a significant milestone in the professional cleaning industry.
Processes
Many hospitals still depend on wet-mopping to clean hospital floors. This may include using the traditional one- bucket approach or a two-bucket system, where one bucket is filled with a cleaning solution and the other filled with rinse water. However, hospitals have been concerned that both types of floor cleaning procedures may be spreading as much contamination as they are removing, if not more.
In the early 1970s, the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Ottawa, Canada, decided it was time to see if this might be true, and even more, if mopping could be linked to the spread of contamination throughout a hospital.
After conducting tests on 134 different hospital floors in ‘Hospital Sanitation: the Massive Bacterial Contamination of the Wet Mop’, the researchers concluded that the test:
50 | HEALTHCARE HYGIENE
"showed that the [mop] cleaning procedures were spreading gross contamination throughout the hospital.”
Over the years, more studies have come to this same conclusion, and they have also found that the use of cleaning cloths can spread contamination.
Eventually, this led to the development of what is now known as no-touch cleaning systems. These effectively remove contamination from surfaces due to their vacuum extraction/soil removal capabilities, without the need for mops or cleaning cloths. Further, inexpensive floor cleaning alternatives such as ‘auto vac’ cleaning systems have helped eliminate the need for mops.
Accordingly, no-touch cleaning systems and floor cleaning alternatives should be considered industry milestones. Because they clean without spreading contamination, they help keep people healthy.
Identification
20 years ago, if you asked a hospital staffer to rate the cleaning in the facility, they might say: "the hospital always looks clean”. Well, we now know that ‘looks clean’ has nothing to do with ‘is clean’.
About 15 years ago, portable, handheld ATP rapid monitoring systems were introduced that could detect if there were living cells on a surface. While these living cells could prove harmless, they can also serve as warning signs, cautioning that pathogens might be present that could harm human health.
Many cleaning professionals now use these systems to prove cleaning effectiveness. They test for ATP readings before a surface is cleaned and then afterward, to see if the amount of ATP has been reduced to a safer level. This closer examination of cleaning is something we never had before.
However, newer technologies, referred to as imaging technologies, are now supplementing ATP. These capture images of pathogens on surfaces. This technology provides cleaning professionals with a map: they now know more precisely where pathogens are located on a surface, and based on the images on the map, their concentration.
Both technologies are also milestones in the professional cleaning industry because they have introduced science into cleaning. We can identify where pathogens are and are not. They have made the concept of ‘looks clean’ virtually meaningless.
Cleaning professionals in the UK and throughout Europe should be proud of our industry and the service we provide. We have played a role in helping people live longer, healthier, and be more productive.
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