The Janitors' Closet

Zapping viruses

Scientists as are testing an innovative method of sterilizing air.  Up to now, one can use filters - hard to filter out critters as small as viruses - or use UV light, which works, but takes a long exposure time.  The new method pumps air through borosilicate glass beads; the voids between the beads, through which the air (and viruses) passes, generate tiny sparks, which create radicals - unstable atoms - which inactivate the viruses.  Some 99.9% of them.

Read the full article - fascinating stuff.  Be interesting to see about applications, and cost.  Can't think of exactly how the technology might be applied to commercial janitorial - HEPA vacuum filters are about as sophisticated as the industry gets at the moment - but who knows?

Unsustainable recycling

Tucson, our neighbor down the freeway, is having issues with its residential recycling program.  It can no longer sell newspaper and glass it collects from its residents (more fallout from China's discontinuance of accepting most recycled trash), so the prospect is to dump it in the landfill.  Tucson already charges residents for recycling (not an optional program, by the way); they're looking at roughly doubling the fees.  Or cutting the pick-up schedule. The City is losing three-plus million annually on the program.  (I served a few years on the City of Phoenix Environmental Quality Commission, and we involve ourselves in commercial recycling in providing commercial janitorial service, so I am a bit attuned to recycling issues.)

Seems to me the rational for recycling is to save money, by re-using stuff, or to avoid depletion of  scarce resources.  Glass is made from silica, hardly a scarce resource, and paper is mostly made from farmed trees - not majestic centuries-old oaks.  So if it costs more in resources (think energy and manpower for both, bleach and water for recycling paper) than the recycled stuff is worth, it is more sustainable to just dump it.

About the only "benefit" I see, in many cases, to residential trash recycling is that it makes folks feel virtuous - they think they are doing good for the planet, or for posterity.  Perhaps better that efforts be directed toward something meaningful: say, limiting topsoil erosion, or global overfishing, or junk going into the ocean. Or Brazilian rainforest currently being razed to provide farmland for soybeans, to export to China, because our current trade war with same has caused them to stop buying American.  Should we want to recycle something that has great economic value, and benefits the planet, maybe we ought to join the rest of the developed world and recycle nuclear fuel.  More nukes might mean less coal.  And we would not just keep the stuff sitting there.

Wasting TP, are you?

"...more than one-third of Americans are wasting toilet paper in public restrooms", according to a survey reported by our friends at Cleaning & Maintenance Management. Problem is, that's just a report of what folks believed and were willing to admit to.  Doubtless, the real number is higher.

At the same time, "A high majority (87 percent) of the survey respondents believe it is important that businesses use sustainable products in their public restrooms to help prevent product waste".  Go figure.

China has a larger problem.  Folks don't just over-use, they grab it in bunches and take it home.  So China is deploying strategically placed cameras, linked to facial recognition software, to limit people to just several sheets per visit.  Might be interesting to see which came first - cameras and facial recognition to protect toilet paper, or cameras and facial recognition to incarcerate and "re-educate" Uighur Muslims in China's far northwest.

Both programs involve, after all, educating recalcitrant people into a healthier, and more socially compliant, mindset and lifestyle.

A good thing, perhaps, that in providing commercial janitorial service, we don't get into many public restrooms.  I'd be even more irate on the wasting, and the surveillance.

Protect thy ears

A subject we tend to not think about in commercial janitorial, and I suspect in a number of other maintenance fields, is hearing protection when using or working around noisy equipment.  Fortunately, about the only equipment we use with much sound at all is the backpack vacuum, and it's not bad.

A good rule of thumb, according to an article by our friends at Cleaning and Maintenance Management, is that if you have to shout to be heard over the equipment, you need hearing protection.  A nice point of the article is a good explanation of how to use, and insert, earplugs correctly - something I assumed I knew before reading the article.

Me, in my spare time, I play in a British-format brass band.  Because I play baritone horn, and the seating in a brass band is somewhat inflexible, I have in some 30 plus years sitting in front of the bass trombone.  So, my hearing is shot anyway.

To give one an idea of the volume that a proper brass band bass trombonist is expected to produce, I'll illustrate with an observation by our one-time conductor, a Brit, who'd grown up in the tradition.  Ralph cut us off mid tune, turned to our bass trombonist - a big, John Wayne sort of fellow, capable of producing an impressive volume.  Told him that his sound reminded him of that of an asthmatic reject from a third rate, girls' band.

Not polite, but it made the point.

Self reporting

A friend (my sales manager from 30-some years ago, now retired) sent me the following:

"This article linked below from a friend of mine in England.  It seems no matter how you 'slice' it, statistics, or what counts for empirical knowledge on gangs is contentious. London looks at the intersection of knives, or sharp objects, and juvenile behavior. While we look at guns, or as in Chicago, at 'shots fired'. 

I wonder if The Bobbies are counting stitches, cause as you might have heard, snitches get stitches." 

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47388890

My reply, as regards (somewhat) the commercial janitorial industry:

Lots of threads we could pursue, including the ones in the stiches.  Depends on what you call “children”, and the accuracy of self reporting.  We have, on the fringes of the sanitation industry, a great increase in the percentage of people who self-report that they wash their hands after.  But not necessarily in people who do wash.  But the percentage of people who wish to seem good and wholesome (as opposed to being so) is viewed as a good thing.

Does a stitch in time save nine?

I get to quote Nietzsche

More good news.  A study just out indicates the widely used antibacterial Triclosan, used in toothpaste, kids toys and, of all things, socks, seems to strengthen the bacteria it comes in contact with:

" Based on these data, we hypothesized that triclosan exposure may inadvertently drive bacteria into a state in which they are able to tolerate normally lethal concentrations of antibiotics. Here we report that clinically relevant concentrations of triclosan increased E. coli and MRSA tolerance to bactericidal antibiotics as much as 10,000 fold in vitro and reduced antibiotic efficacy up to 100-fold in a mouse urinary tract infection model."

(Triclosan was removed from some cleaning products, and from "anti-bacterial" hand soap, a couple of years ago; we'd noted that in the commercial janitorial industry.)

As Nietzsche notes (as popularized by G Gordon Liddy), "That which does not kill me makes me stronger".

Hotel rooms that disinfect themselves

A product that get sprayed on hotel room surfaces to disinfect them, ongoing, is coming into use in Denmark.  According to an article in Cleaning & Maintenance, "The hotels have partnered with Danish company ACT. Global, which developed a spray technology known as Clean Coat. A two-year test has shown that the spray’s active ingredient, titanium dioxide, breaks down pathogen microbes, including influenza, salmonella, mold spores, and allergens."

The goal seems to be to cut cleaning time.  Somewhat offsetting the savings will be the $2500.00 per room application cost, renewable annually, and the cost to clear the room of all items before the spraying.  I assume one would also still have to disinfect those items - furniture, etc. - that do not get coated.

A further note is that the product is activated by sunlight.  I wonder what effect Denmark's dark winters will have.

With luck, it's not quite ready to replace commercial janitors.

More handwashing going on - they say

A hopeful, but perhaps naïve, report out of our friends at Cleaning & Maintenance Management.    In the 10th Annual Hand washing Survey (bet you didn't know that was a thing), folks report that they wash their hands 87% of the time when using public restrooms. (The reasons given for NOT doing so involve dirty sinks, lack of soap, and so on - issues we do our best to address in doing commercial janitorial).

We notidced last Presidential election that people sometimes fib to survey takers (often not wanting to admit to opinions or actions that are socially unacceptable).  Might just be a difference between people who want to be known as meticulous hand-washers, and people who wash their hands.

There is also a bit of a concern at the distinction between thorough washing, and our traditional "quick pass".

Just saying.  The report might not wash.

Some one million California residents lack safe drinking water

California, one of the most progressive, richest, and highest taxed states in the nation, is looking at adding a tax to remove pollutants from many residents' drinking water.

From an article in the Sacramento Bee,

Governor "Newsom last month released a state budget that called for a new fee on drinking water to fund drinking water projects. He did not release many details, but the proposal was characterized as similar to a 2017 bill by Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel, that would have generated $140 million a year for water projects."

Used to be that government was supposed to address safety issues - police, water, safe streets - first.  Even before bullet trains.

Our prime aim, in providing commercial janitorial service, is to provide a safe and healthy environment for our clients.  Much of the industry cleans for appearance; we do not: we clean for health.

Glad I'm not in California.  Must be hard to make a facility healthy if the tap water is not.

Air pollutant detection

Polluted indoor air is said to be responsible for a good many premature deaths.  Here's an interesting article, out of Perdue University,  on developments in sensors that can detect volatile organic compounds (VOCs), that cause many of those deaths.  From the article:

 “Our work’s goal is developing low-cost volatile organic compound sensors capable of identifying indoor air quality problems and capable of controlling ventilation in response to high indoor emissions,” Braun said. “Sensing indoor volatile organic compound concentrations and then adjusting ventilation accordingly can maintain acceptable levels, but current sensor technologies are much too expensive for this purpose.”

Also of concern is size of the detector, and power usage.

Can't solve a problem that you cannot detect, and measure.

In our commercial janitorial operation, we have a slightly different focus - particulates, generally in the 1 to 10 micron size.  Such particles, of various kinds, can cause cancer; the AMA lists 50 some occupational disease syndromes, such as asbestosis and black lung disease (common among coal miners), all of which seem to be caused by such size particles.

Several studies on how you can tweak janitorial service, such as by using HEPA filtrated vacuums and microfiber mops and wipes, show a better than 50% reduction in daytime airborne particle count, in that size range.  We monitor IAQ as part of our service package, and (in a fairly tightly sealed, 5-night per week client facility), that's about what we achieve, as compared to usual janitorial equipment and procedures.

Breath easy!