The Janitors' Closet

Gave up on this particular indoor air quality situation

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.

 

Air quality and dementia.

Caught an interesting article, in Medical News Today, about increased dementia risks associated with polluted air, specifically the inhalation of small particles, under 2.5 microns in size.

The article focuses on traffic related air pollution, but doesn't distinguish particles from vehicle emissions from any other particles.  Everything I've seen, over several decades of following the research, indicates that it's foreign particles per se, rather than any particular kind of particle, that causes damage. And, that's damage to many parts of one's body.  Per the article:

"....there are many ways by which air pollution could drive dementia risk, including causing inflammation of the brain and nervous system, oxidative stress, and harmful impacts on the lungs and heart.  And under it all, we know that air pollution increases the risk of heart disease and stroke, and vascular damage in the brain. And we know that underlying vascular pathology along with neurodegeneration drives the risk for dementia, too”.

If it doesn't much matter what the particle is, it likely doesn't matter where you encountered it.  And we all spend much more time at the office than in traffic.

That's why, for better than 30 years, CBN has stressed office cleaning with a focus on improving indoor air quality: wiping rather than feather dusting, vacuuming rather then sweeping or dust mopping hard floors, and - most critically - using HEPA filtered vacuums.  The particles that are dangerous (penetrating deep into the lungs, entering the bloodstream) are those under 2.5 microns.  A HEPA filter will intercept particles down to 0.3 microns - 99.97% of them.  It stops pretty everything in the harmful range.

Quite a difference, in air quality and in our clients' health.

A quick look at indoor air quality, and sanitation

Given the primary transmission means of Covid-19 - airborne - a bit of thought on indoor air quality generally seems a topical idea.

A bit ago, I was asked for a quote on nightly janitorial service, for a largish distribution center pretty close to my office in downtown Phoenix.  They currently have the folks who do cleaning and miscellaneous chores in the warehouse catch the office cleaning when (and if) they finish in the warehouse, with predictable results: flu and colds traveling through the office, various breathing issues, and so on.  And lots of dust.

The vacuum (when used, which seems not very often) is an ancient, unfiltered model.  No thought has been give to chemicals or methods used to clean and disinfect the restrooms, let alone office touch points.  We talked a bit about the usual areas - drinking fountain and sink handles, the fridge and microwave doors, door handles generally.  The administrator I met with allowed that she had a box of sanitizing wipes in her desk, that she uses to wipe down her own desk, but had not thought of having someone use it repeatedly during the day, on common area touch points, at least during flu season.  All in all, it seems a bit surprising that the office staff retains any level at all of good health.

Couple other areas I've chanced across over the years that I should have mentioned: the kitchen sponge or dish rag, a superb repository for pathogens, can be sanitized by a couple minutes in the microwave; do so often.  Second, the water reservoir on the coffee maker can grow lots of neat stuff; run vinegar through it (and then rinse, at least before making your own coffee) regularly.

We clean for health, disinfecting restrooms and lunchrooms, and sanitizing all the touch points mentioned above, and then some; also, we vacuum using HEPA filtered vacuums.  But we're only there once per day.  A bit of care periodically during the work day can perform wonders.

Given the primary transmission means of Covid-19 - airborne - a bit of thought on indoor air quality generally seems a topical idea.

A bit ago, I was asked for a quote on nightly janitorial service, for a largish distribution center pretty close to my office in downtown Phoenix.  They currently have the folks who do cleaning and miscellaneous chores in the warehouse catch the office cleaning when (and if) they finish in the warehouse, with predictable results: flu and colds traveling through the office, various breathing issues, and so on.  And lots of dust.

The vacuum (when used, which seems not very often) is an ancient, unfiltered model.  No thought has been give to chemicals or methods used to clean and disinfect the restrooms, let alone office touch points.  We talked a bit about the usual areas - drinking fountain and sink handles, the fridge and microwave doors, door handles generally.  The administrator I met with allowed that she had a box of sanitizing wipes in her desk, that she uses to wipe down her own desk, but had not thought of having someone use it repeatedly during the day, on common area touch points, at least during flu season.  All in all, it seems a bit surprising that the office staff retains any level at all of good health.

Couple other areas I've chanced across over the years that I should have mentioned: the kitchen sponge or dish rag, a superb repository for pathogens, can be sanitized by a couple minutes in the microwave; do so often.  Second, the water reservoir on the coffee maker can grow lots of neat stuff; run vinegar through it (and then rinse, at least before making your own coffee) regularly.

We clean for health, disinfecting restrooms and lunchrooms, and sanitizing all the touch points mentioned above, and then some; also, we vacuum using HEPA filtered vacuums.  But we're only there once per day.  A bit of care periodically during the work day can perform wonders.

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.

High Vacuuming for Indoor Air Quality

Quite a number of janitorial firms still use feather dusters for routine (up to 6 or 8 feet high)
dusting; most everybody uses a feather duster or a lambs wool duster on a pole to catch anything higher.  The (more or less) responsible ones will then wait a while for the dust to settle, and then vacuum it up.

Problem is, the very fine particles in that dust can take well over 8 hours to settle; nobody waits that long.  Makes much more sense to use something that will capture the dust, instead of just moving it around: either a microfiber cloth, or an extension wand attached to a HEPA filtered vacuum.  At CBN, we've done that for over 20 years.

Here's a bit more detail, from our friends at Cleanlink.

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!

Polluted air and Alzheimer's

Provocative study by researchers just down the road at Arizona State University, proposing a link between Polluted air and Alzheimer's disease.

Some 7 million American adults' health records were perused; the connection drawn is between fine particulate matter in residential air and an accumulation of such particles in the brain, causing inflammation, which is in turn associated with dementia. The article, in All About Arizona News, gives little information on how pollution levels were measured and then correlated with an individual's health records; it mentions studies showing some health impact to folks living near busy highways, so one assumes the link is to something in auto exhaust.  Or maybe not.

The study authors haven't come up with a biological explanation of how the particles get into the brain.

All in all, questions raised, but something to look at. 

Nobody seems to look at polluted air in the workplace, and we sometimes spend almost as much time there as at home (it certainly seems that way over here).  That's why we try to do our part improving indoor air quality for our janitorial clients, via HEPA vacuum filtration, microfiber technology, and so on.  And, we measure what we do (see the nearby picture). More is available on the Health page of our website.

As they say, take a deep breath......

Dust

Caught an article on a local site regarding dust storms, and the notification there-of.  The State Department of Transportation emails dust storm alerts on a county-by-county basis, mostly to alert drivers of an approaching storm and the attendant lack of visibility.  Problem is, Arizona has counties larger than some states, so a county-wide alert covers, often. quite a wider area than will the dust storm.  So people receive a warning,  see no dust storm and suspect they're "crying wolf".

The new system will be much more localized and, it is hoped, get more notice and respect.  They'll upgrade flash flood warning systems as well.

You wouldn't think dust could be such a danger.  There is much in the indoor air quality literature about inside air being much worse (at least from a dust perspective) than outside air.  Not so here.  We happen to be in a desert, without a lot of vegetation to hold the dust in place.  And we have wind.  In measuring air quality, which I do ongoing for my commercial janitorial clients, I often find outside air three or four times as polluted as inside.  (I Measure indoor air quality because our cleaning program is based around improving it, and thereby our client's health, via HEPA filtered vacs and so on.  And, what you can't measure, you can't improve.)

So, here we got dust.  At least, no earthquakes, mudslides, hurricanes, tsunamis or volcanos.

I'll take the dust.

Indoor air quality and worker productivity

Interesting study out of Harvard: worker productivity, and cognition levels, are influenced by indoor air quality.

The double blind study had office workers do their normal jobs, but in a facility that could be controlled.  The focus was on increasing ventilation, to remove VOCs and other pollutants (and likely increase oxygen content).  Seems that productivity can be significantly enhanced at an annual cost of $40.00 per employee (much less with energy efficient systems), in increased heating and cooling costs associated with more airflow from the exterior.  Makes sense, and looks like a good investment.

A few things one can do, ongoing, in addition to better ventilation: thorough vacuuming with HEPA filtered machines; dust wiping to remove, not just move around, small particles; microfiber wipes and mops; and careful chemical selection - all part of our standard commercial janitorial package.  Touch point sanitation, not just "cleaning", helps as well.  Again, very little cost provides significant results, in worker productivity, reduction in absenteeism, and so on.

Houseplants and indoor air quality

Caught an article, on an evocative topic, from the Portland Press Herald: indoor houseplants will not only brighten your mood, but benefit your air quality.

It's based on research done decades ago for NASA; they were trying to find ways to filter air during long-distances space voyages and in space stations.  The article references B. C. Wolverton's 1997 book, "How to Grow Fresh Air".

The article is correct, as far as it goes.  Certain common house plants will absorb particular chemicals, such as formaldehyde, which tend to off-gas from facility furnishings and materials.  Problem is, the low amounts absorbed by any reasonable assemblage of houseplants are much lower than what would go away by the occasional opening of a door to let someone in.  So it's a neat idea, of little practical utility.

Better to do what we do in commercial janitorial service "Cleaning for Health" program: vacuum all floors, with HEPA filtered vacuums; dust and mop with microfiber, and so on.

Use the houseplants to brighten your mood, and improve your decor.