The Janitors' Closet

COVID detection

This is Fred.  He's my choice to train to become a COVID sniffing dog (see my 2/23 post) should we choose to supplement our commercial janitorial and COVID electrostatic remediation services with COVID detection services.

Fred came from the county shelter with the name of Leo.  It happens that my current black Lab, also from the county shelter, also came with the name Leo. (Apparently, policy at the county shelter is to name all male black Labs "Leo"). I thought having two black Labs named Leo would prove confusing, so I called the new one Fred.

Bad decision.

When one is stumbling towards fridge or bathroom in the dark of the night, and falls over an amorphous black mass sleeping at the single most inconvenient spot, it would be efficacious to be able to holler, simply, "dammit, Leo!".

Names are important.  Brings to mind a story told years back by Karl, my long time graphics and advertising guy (most of the photos on our website, and attached to this blog, are by Karl.)

Karl's father, the sort of fellow who had several small businesses and occupations going at any one time, had for years a seasonal business called "B Y Citrus".  "B Y" stood for "backyard".  In early spring, he'd drive around those affluent neighborhoods in North Phoenix and environs that had been carved from grapefruit groves, and still retained a few trees in side and back yards.  He'd contract to pick and truck away the harvest.  Come summer, he'd come back with a semi and a crew of "pickers", and crates and ladders.  He'd sell the grapefruit to the old Sprite bottling plant in Glendale.

So about sun-up one summer morning, Karl found himself in the Arcadia neighborhood - very "old money" Scottsdale - setting up the crew.  A regular client, a quite proper matron of a certain age, possessed a great Dane named (I've not learned why) "Dammit".  As Karl pulled into her street, along comes a joyful great Dane, free at last - hotly pursued by the matron, in robe and curlers, hollering at the top of her lungs, to the delight of her neighbors, "Get back here, Dammit!"

Names are important.

Another problem with facemasks

As if we don't have enough worries,

"Recent studies estimated an astounding 129 billion face masks being used globally every month (3 million / minute) and most are disposable face masks made from plastic microfibers (Prata et al., 2020). With increasing reports on inappropriate disposal of masks, it is urgent to recognize this potential environmental threat...."

Most municipal recycling programs restrict unwashed food containers, used restroom paper, and such from being put in the recycle container; I'm guessing the same would apply to face masks.  While they likely don't take up a lot of landfill space, the trick is to get them in the landfill.  I see masks along sidewalks and in alleys in my close-to-downtown neighborhood - perhaps to wind up in the storm drain with the next rain, and then into river and ocean.

Here's the paper on the study.

The Free State of Jones

The movie of recent years that I most admire is "The Free State of Jones", a reasonably accurate Hollywood rendering of a couple of counties that succeeded (or tried to) from Mississippi during the Civil War.  It highlights the dark underside of the Confederacy as seen from the perspective of "poor whites": the draft, confiscation of crops in lieu of cash tax payments; also the violent dismantling of Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era.  A friend finally viewed it and sent me the following: 

"So, Robert, I finally saw The Free State of Jones... it's now free on Netflix. 

Great dialogue (relating to the Confederate law exempting from the draft anyone who owned 20 or more slaves, and his son if they owned 40): 

"It's a rich man's war and a poor man's fight."

"Do yah think if we all chipped in and bought one negro, that we might get a couple of weeks off?" 

"They came and took all my corn, I had just ground that corn." 

"Don't worry, we'll get you some corn". 

"But that's not the point, I grew that corn."   

And it had several economic lessons that anyone can understand. "If you take our corn, we got nothing to feed our hogs, if we don't feed our hogs, we got nothing to put in our smoke house, if we got nothing to put in our smoke house, then we'll starve to death come winter. Isn't that murder?"

The movie is a very moving perspective from a common soldier's experience.  It reminded me of The Red Badge of Courage, and a much later novella, A Marine at War. 

"I ain't fighting for cotton, I'm fighting for honor."  Shame is a powerful motivator, though one that seldom gets the results intendeds.  

I can imagine the SPCA didn't like one or two scenes that much... "You know what this tastes like?... Dog"  

It's a damn good story, with examples and lessons of peer group organizing, local bottom up governance, asymmetric conflict, folk leadership; the movie belongs alongside The Seven Samurai, In Dubious Battle, Robin Hood, and Lawrence of Arabia.  

"You can not own a child of G-d", replied the former slave, Moses. 

The shootout at the graveyard and scene in the church was powerful. That's the proper way you kill a tyrant, with a belt around the neck.   

I liked the use of a broken timeline, flashing from the civil war, and reconstruction, to a trial in what looks like it took place sometime in the 1950's. It shows how history is not really distant, rather it's always with us. 

The heart felt plea of Rachel, the Creole mother, who pleaded with Newton to raise their child as white, so he would be free man, is a lesson of distinction between what is legal standing, and how attitudes are shackles. 

Again, damn good movie. 

(The graphic is of a proposal for the design of the new $20.00 bill, featuring Harriet Tubman, a one-time slave and a conductor on the Underground Railroad, just prior to the War.  Indeed, a lady you wouldn't want to mess with.)

Advantages of a well thought out floor maintenance system

Here's a good article from the folks at Contracting Profits. Caught a couple of things I didn't know, such as:

“With the overuse of quat-based disinfectants on floors, a biofilm can be produced, which allows microorganisms to thrive under the self-sacrificing top layer...”  Makes sense - a lot of folks will figure that if they are damp mopping the floor with a disinfectant, the floor is being cleaned.  So you don't clean it first.  Problem is, quats are not generally cleaners.  You succeed in disinfecting the floor (until the biofilm builds up) but do nothing to remove dirt or oil.

We generally use quats for final disinfection on restroom fixtures, not floors - our go-to chemical is hydrogen peroxide based, providing both cleaning and sanitation.  A microfiber mop helps - it scrubs better than a standard cotton mop, and hangs onto the gunk ("gunk" is the technical term in the industry).

Touchpoint disinfecting

I just ran across a good article on combating "enveloped viruses", such as the flu, a good many common colds, and Covid-19 - provided by our friends at CleanLink.

To summarize, an enveloped virus is one that comes with a coating (the "envelope") of fat or protein. If you puncture the envelope, you puncture the virus inside, which prevents it from transmitting (infecting).  Disinfectants are quite good at doing so (viruses are generally easier to kill than bacteria or fungi).  Quaternary ammonia products have been around for 85 years or so, and do quite well, though they irritate eyes and lungs, so protective gear ought be utilized.  Hydrogen peroxide products, like many used in electrostatic applications, work at least as well, without the potential irritation.

An advantage of electrostatic applicators is that they coat all surfaces of the thing aimed at; wiping or pump spraying will often miss prime pathogen areas, such as sides of desks. phone handsets and the undersides of chair arms; pump sprayers also tend to apply disinfectant unevenly - some areas don't get enough dwell time, and other areas are over-wet.  And, as always, dwell time is important. 

A bit ago, I happened to watch a music teacher (quite a conscientious fellow, with a doctorate) sanitizing in a music classroom.  He was spraying the music stands with a trigger bottle, and wiping immediately with a dry cloth.  I asked him what the dell time was on the chemical (from the unlabeled bottle he'd been given) was; he didn't know from "dwell time", but knew that the chemical was referred to by administration as the "purple stuff".  I mentioned that few disinfectants are effective at less than a minute's dwell time (that is, with a wet surface); he thanked me for the insight, and went back to spraying and wiping.

Good thing it's relatively hard to pick up a case of coronavirus from touching an infected surface.

Deja-vu all over again

Several years ago, I noted that dogs were being trained to sniff out the then scourge of the hospitality industry, bedbugs.  I thought I could train my several  (large, always hungry) canine companions to do so, and write off a bit of their cost; perhaps even turn a profit.

Folks are now experimenting with dogs sniffing out Covid (the current scourge of, among other areas, the hospitality industry) in stadiums, airliners, and so on.  This would be a nice compliment to our current program of Coronavirus remediation - ongoing disinfection of our commercial cleaning client facilities, and electrostatic disinfection in event of an exposure.

We could be a one stop shop.

Almost an accident

We've gone several years without a significant on the job accident.  Now, commercial janitorial service is not a particularly dangerous industry, and we've long tried to instill a safety culture in our folks.  Still, we've enjoyed a remarkedly good record .

Looked like our string was coming to an end late last week.  One of my floor techs missed his footing coming down the stairs in my own office, and tumbled from the next to the last step to the floor.  He landed right on his bad hip (he's had a bit of a limp, and some ongoing pain, for a while, but kept putting off having a surgeon look at it.) He says he sat there on the floor for several minutes, just waiting for the pain to come.

It never did.  He slowly stood up, started to walk - without even the usual pain. And with no limp.  He's been fine ever since. Something seems to have popped back into place.

I'm not sure if there is an appropriate accident report I need to fill out.  But it sure looks like we dodged a big one.

 

COVID and indoor air quality

We do quite a bit of Coronavirus remediation, using the Clorox360 electrostatic disinfectant applicator on furniture, fixtures, touchpoints, etc., so my focus tends to be on how you can catch the disease by touching contaminated surfaces.  But, to be honest, one is much more likely to catch the virus by breathing air that a sufferer has exhaled than by touching something he has touched.

A key is air circulation.  Good air circulation dilutes the virus; one needs to inhale from several hundred to several thousand (depending on who is estimating) viruses to get sick; the more diluted the air has become since it was exhaled, the fewer viruses it hosts.  That's why being outdoors is a very good idea, as are not standing too close to the sufferer, or for too long.

Good AC duct design helps with that circulation; a remodeled building or suite without adequate re-ducting can create a host of problems.  Physically, the issue is the same indoor air quality issue that it has always been; here's a bit from the EPA on that subject.  Our emphasis in providing commercial janitorial service has long been health: HEPA filtered vacuums, lots of microfiber technology, careful chemical selection, all to improve client's air quality.  So we tend to keep on top of the science, and of industry advances.

But, should you have a co-worker become infected, we can certainly take care of disinfecting surfaces throughout the impacted area.  Best to move fast.

And probably best to not inhale much of the air he was using.

Most of my thoughts lately have concerned our long-time focus, providing commercial janitorial service with a view to making our client facilities just a bit safer and healthier to work in.  Also, of late, since we're performing a good many COVID remediation jobs, I look at the evolving science of disinfection and other aspects of the current Coronavirus pandemic.

It can all get just a bit depressing.

So, when a colleague sent me a note on a subject about as far from my usual concerns as possible, I just had to pass it along.

In England, it is not uncommon to see "wavy" brick walls. Interestingly, the design uses fewer bricks than a straight wall.

A straight wall that is just one brick thick is not sturdy enough to stand alone & can be easily toppled, so they generally have a thickness of at least two or more layers of bricks, & are also reinforced at regular intervals with vertical posts serving as buttresses. But a wavy "one-brick" wall stands just fine on its own due to the arch support provided by its shape, which combines both wall & buttress. Such a structure is called a "crinkle crankle wall" "the Old English version of "zig zag."

As my friend put it, I had no idea.