Talking recently to one of my folks about our successes, and failures, in helping janitorial clients improve their indoor air quality, a particular situation from years back came to mind. We'd spent some years measuring airborne particle count in client facilities using a neat piece of technology, a hand-held particle counter. Couldn't help re-posting the following:
A guru of American industry remarked that "you cannot improve what you cannot track, and cannot track what you cannot measure", or something very similar.
We clean for health, not (like many in the commercial janitorial field) for appearance. Likely the most significant impact we can have on the healthfulness of our client's facility (and thus on our client's health) is in improving indoor air quality: HEPA vacuum filters, microfiber dust wipes and damp mops, vacuuming rather than dust mopping hard floors, careful chemical selection, and so on. The studies that have been done over the years, by the Research Triangle Institute, Daniels Associates, Michael Berry, and so on, have documented a 50% or better reduction in daytime airborne particles, in the size range of most allergens, as compared to standard cleaning, using roughly the methodology we employ.
A good many years ago, I came up with the (rather obvious) idea that being able to measure our results, a bit more formally than trying to eyeball dust on sills and baseboards, might be fun. So, for the price of a mid-level used car, I bough the kind of hand-held particle counter (HHPC) used in clean rooms and similar applications. Generally, I see about that 50% percent airborne particle reduction that the fellows in the white lab coats recorded. It lets us better monitor what our crews are doing, through their results.
And it sure impresses the clients.
A few years back, I had a semi-industrial facility with particle counts many times higher than what I was getting in seemingly similar places. Checked the vacuum filters, the microfiber mops and wipes, and what the crew was doing; also snooped around the facility a bit. No ideas. Doing a visit, I sat down with our client contact to explore possibilities, and wound up none the wiser. Until we heard a rumbling above the fellow's head, and saw a fine cloud of dust coming down from the ceiling.
Explains the client, "that's just the pallet-jacks moving inventory around". The second floor, built out above the office portion of the warehouse, was wood, and not too stiff, or sealed. A pallet-jack, heavily loaded, run over a wood floor can set up a lot of vibration. And a lot of dust displacement.
We gave up trying to improve indoor air quality for this particular client.
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