Via Cleanlink:

The American Society for Healthcare Environmental Services (ASHES) of the American Hospital Association (AHA) at its annual meeting reaffirmed previously published practice guidance for the minimal time for proper cleaning and surface disinfection of patient rooms. The reaffirmation is due to wide variations in cleaning practices. Over the last several years the emergence of new microorganisms and the process for removing them from surfaces has required more time and attention, particularly to high touch surfaces.

The following statements are taken from the American Society for Healthcare Environmental Services Practice Guidance for Healthcare Environmental Cleaning.

Cleaning an Occupied Patient Room
To ensure consistent quality of cleaning and adequate staffing resources for infection prevention, a total facility cleaning standard should be agreed upon in advance by environmental services, infection control and operations or administrative management.

By following all of the recommended practice steps, an occupied patient room clean will take approximately 25-30 minutes per room. Time is determined by the number of tasks and the time to perform each task in an efficacious manner.

Terminal Cleaning of the Patient Room (Discharges or Transfers)
To ensure consistent quality of terminal cleaning and adequate staffing resources for infection prevention, a total facility cleaning standard should be agreed upon in advance by environmental services, infection control and operations or administrative management.

By following all of the recommended practice steps, a terminal clean will take approximately 40-45 minutes per terminal clean. Time is determined by the number of tasks and the time to perform each task in an efficacious manner.

Specific guidance for cleaning and disinfecting can be found in the American Society for Healthcare Environmental Services Practice Guidance for Healthcare Environmental Cleaning. Time adjustments may be needed due to factors such as the size of the room, number of high touch surfaces and the amount of furniture in the patient room. If times require an adjustment, a detailed time and task study should be employed to ensure all areas receive proper cleaning and disinfection. The Infection Control committee should approve any deviations from recommended cleaning times based on the ASHES Practice Guidance manual.

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Via Cleanlink:

As school doors across the nation open for the new school year, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is set to launch year three of its National Green Schools Campaign, a broad-based initiative involving policy makers, teachers, parents and students who want to substantially improve the indoor environmental quality of America’s schools, along with making them more energy efficient, water efficient and resource efficient.

On September 8, USGBC and 11 educational and environmental groups kicked off the Coalition for Green Schools at a meeting featuring remarks by Martha Kanter, Under Secretary for the U.S. Department of Education, about the multiple, but critically important pathways for greening America’s schools. This first ever alliance between the nation’s leading educational and environmental organizations brings together the country’s strongest advocates for healthy, safe and sustainable K-12 learning environments prized for their contribution to higher test scores among students, higher retention among teachers and lower absenteeism rates for both groups because of improved indoor air quality.

On the heels of the Coalition event, Adobe Systems announced its support of the Mayors’ Alliance for Green Schools by funding renovation and repair projects for three schools identified by the Alliance in three U.S. cities including Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. The Alliance, initiated in October 2008 by Mayor Martin Diaz of Miami and Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle in partnership with USGBC, is a coalition of mayors across the country looking to promote the benefits of green schools in their communities.

Later in September, USGBC will host its 2nd Annual Congressional Advocacy Day, bringing more than 100 advocates from USGBC Chapters to Washington, to call on their Congressional Representatives about the importance of green schools, and to thank them for their support of the stimulus funding that is helping make the renovation and repair of many schools possible. USGBC has also begun year two of its 50 for 50 Initiative. 16 have been established so far, with another dozen in formative stages.

Fully twenty percent of the nation’s population spends their days in a K-12 school, and too many of those schools are substandard by any measure. Green schools cost less money to operate and use substantially less energy and water. Those savings add up and put money back into the classroom. On average, green schools save $100,000 per year, which could pay for two new teachers, buy 100 new computers, or purchase 5,000 new textbooks.

“There is no more important work we have before us than making sure that every one of our children attends a school where the learning environment works for them, not against them” said Rick Fedrizzi, President and CEO, USGBC. “Our National Green Schools Campaign has sought to make this a priority agenda item for school districts, local and state government bodies, and for those who set the national agenda in our schools, who like USGBC, would like to get this done within our generation.”

Fedrizzi noted that there had been significant progress in the past 12 months, including federal, state and local initiatives that have has passed, including the 21st Century Green High-Performing Public Schools Facilities Act, funding for green school construction and renovation as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and the “Making green Schools a Reality” Resolution.

USGBC’s LEED for Schools green building certification has helped grow the stock of green schools nationwide, and more than one school a day registers with LEED on average. There are currently more than 185 LEED certified schools and nearly 1,706 more have registered their intent to seek certification.

“However, given that there are some 126,000 schools in America, we clearly have more to do,” Fedrizzi said. “We anticipate that this effort will continue to attract policy makers, parents, student, teachers, and the many groups who see this as a concrete way to care for our children’s future, and save taxpayer dollars in improved long-term operations of these facilities.”

As reported by The New York Times.

It sounds so simple as to be innocuous, a throwaway line in public-health warnings about swine flu. But one of the most powerful weapons against the new H1N1 virus is summed up in a three-word phrase you first heard from your mother: wash your hands.

A host of recent studies have highlighted the importance and the scientific underpinning of this most basic hygiene measure. One of the most graphic was done at the University of California, Berkeley, where researchers focused video cameras on 10 college students as they read and typed on their laptops.

The scientists counted the times the students touched their faces, documenting every lip scratch, eye rub and nose pick. On average, the students touched their eyes, noses and lips 47 times during a three-hour period, once every four minutes.

Hand-to-face contact has a surprising impact on health. Germs can enter the body through breaks in the skin or through the membranes of the eyes, mouth and nose.

The eyes appear to be a particularly vulnerable port of entry for viral infections, said Mark Nicas, a professor of environmental health sciences at Berkeley. Using mathematical models, Dr. Nicas and colleagues estimated that in homes, schools and dorms, hand-to-face contact appears to account for about one-third of the risk of flu infection, according to a report this month in the journal Risk Analysis.

In one study of four residence halls at the University of Colorado, two of the dorms had hand sanitizer dispensers installed in every dorm room, bathroom and dining area, and students were given educational materials about the importance of hand hygiene. The remaining two dorms were used as controls, and researchers simply monitored illness rates.

During the eight-week study period, students in the dorms with ready access to hand sanitizers had a third fewer complaints of coughs, chest congestion and fever. Over all, the risk of getting sick was 20 percent lower in the dorms where hand hygiene was emphasized, and those students missed 43 percent fewer days of school.

Young children benefit, too. In a study of 6,000 elementary school students in California, Delaware, Ohio and Tennessee, students in classrooms with hand sanitizers had 20 percent fewer absences due to illness. Teacher absenteeism in those schools dropped 10 percent.

Better hand hygiene also appears to make a difference in the home, lowering the risk to other family members when one child is sick. Harvard researchers studied nearly 300 families who had children 5 or younger in day care. Half the families were given a supply of hand sanitizer and educational materials; the other half were left to practice their normal hand washing habits.

In homes with hand sanitizers, the risk of catching a gastrointestinal illness from a sick child dropped 60 percent compared with the control families. The two groups did not differ in rates of respiratory illness rates, but families with the highest rates of sanitizer use had a 20 percent lower risk of catching such an illness from a sick child.

Regular soap and water and alcohol-based hand sanitizers are both effective in eliminating the H1N1 virus from the hands. In February, researchers in Australia coated the hands of 20 volunteers with copious amounts of a seasonal H1N1 flu virus. The concentration of virus was equivalent to the amount that would occur when an infected person used a hand to wipe a runny nose.

When the subjects did not wash their hands, large amounts of live virus remained even after an hour, said the lead author, Dr. M. Lindsay Grayson, a professor of medicine at the University of Melbourne. But using soap and water or a sanitizer virtually eliminated the presence of the virus.

Frequent hand washing will not eliminate risk. When an infected person coughs or sneezes, a bystander might be splattered by large droplets or may inhale airborne particles. In a recent Harvard study of hand sanitizer use in schools, hand hygiene practices lowered risk for gastrointestinal illness but not upper respiratory infections.

Still, it is a good idea to wash your hands regularly even if you’re not in contact people who are obviously ill. In a troubling finding, a recent study of 404 British commuters found that 28 percent had fecal bacteria on their hands. In one city, 57 percent of the men sampled had contaminated hands, according to the study, which was published this month in the journal Epidemiology and Infection.

“We were surprised by the high level of contamination,” said Gaby Judah, a researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Ms. Judah added that many of the contaminated commuters reported that they had washed their hands that morning. They may have been embarrassed to admit they hadn’t washed, or they may have picked up the bacteria on their hands during their commute.

For all those reasons, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with other health organizations around the world, urge frequent hand washing with soap and water or alcohol-based hand sanitizers. (They also repeat some advice you may not have heard from your mother: cough or sneeze into the crook of your elbow, not your bare hands.)

And as hospitals put stricter hand hygiene programs in place, absentee rates during cold and flu season also drop.

“Statistically, you can’t determine a causal relationship, but it’s very suggestive,” said Dr. Neil O. Fishman, infectious disease specialist at the University of Pennsylvania. “Our vaccination rates remained relatively stable, so what else changed? The only thing different was that hand hygiene rates increased.”

Via Cleanlink:

CRI answers the demand for environmental standards in carpet care equipment
By Corinne Zudonyi, Editor

Within the last decade, the green movement has really taken shape in the jan/san industry and the demand for certified products and equipment has grown. As this environmental consciousness continues to evolve, so does the development of products and equipment that meet the “green” needs of the facility manager.

Roughly seven years ago, Dalton, Ga.-based Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI) conducted a survey among carpet customers in residential and various commercial market segments. It was determined that the number-one issue among every demographic was that carpets couldn’t be properly cleaned or maintained. Upon further examination, Werner Braun, president of CRI, found that no organization was testing or certifying carpet cleaning products — which is when CRI got into the game.

“We started addressing this concern pretty quickly after the survey,” says Braun. “The first set of products we looked at were spot removers. We developed protocols and then went out and bought existing products off the shelves for testing. To our amazement only four of the 24 performed better than water.”

This initial revelation was followed by a positive response from the industry and CRI further expanded their certification program to also include equipment such as vacuums, extractors and complete carpet systems.

Certification Checklist
Spot removers (pre-spray and in-tank) were the first target for CRI. When evaluating these products for their Seal of Approval (SOA) program, CRI officials test for a number of things. First, testers determine whether a product actually removes spots. Then the chemical is analyzed for accelerated resoiling.

“You might have a spot remover that gets a spot out, but it has other solvents included in its formulation that attracts soils,” Braun explains the “resoiling” phenomenon. “Over the next few days, that spot might come back with a vengeance by attracting additional contaminants.”

The third certification step tests how the spot remover effects color fastness and whether the product causes any bleaching. Lastly, the pH is measured, since certain levels of pH can damage carpets. A product that passes all these tests is approved for the SOA certification.

On the equipment side, vacuum cleaners are tested for their ability to remove soil, but also receive close scrutiny relative to the pollutants they emit.

“CRI measures the total emissions from the vacuum, which comes from three different sources,” says Braun. “We measure the emissions from the filter and from under the housing, and we know the vacuum has plastic and rubber parts so we measure those as well.”

Other certifying bodies might only evaluate the emissions from the vacuum filter, and according to Braun, this is a disservice to those seeking a truly “green” machine.

The final test measures the wear and tear the vacuum has on the carpet.

“We know there are vacuums out there that do a good job of removing soil, but they can also put a years worth of wear on carpets in just 10 passes because the brushes are so aggressive that they damage the carpet fibers,” says Braun.

As interest in certified equipment grew, CRI ultimately expanded testing and certification to include deep cleaning extractors and carpet care systems.

Extractor testing is designed to answer key questions: Does it get the soil out? Does it extract the water? Finally, does the machine have a deleterious effect on the carpet’s texture? Passing all three of these tests is mandatory in order to receive any of the three levels of certification (Bronze, Silver and Gold).

Carpet care systems must meet the standards for each individual system component. For instance, if the system vacuums and extracts, it must meet the certifying requirements for both those types of equipment.

Benefits Of Certification
The CRI continues to streamline its certification programs, providing the jan/san industry with a guideline to the most environmentally effective carpet care products possible.

“Using the right cleaning chemical and equipment has highly desirable environmental benefits,” says Braun. “If you have a carpet that has a design life of 10 or 11 years and you use poor cleaning chemicals or equipment, you are going to shorten that design life and the carpet will end up in a landfill prematurely — flushing out half the financial investment.”

Because of this, many carpet manufacturers require the use of CRI SOA-certified chemicals and equipment for the warranty to remain validated.

In addition to the life-cycle cost incentive, there are many green and overall health benefits associated with the use of certified products. Specifically in the vacuum category, CRI developed the “SOA Green” program to target indoor air quality and reduce airborne contaminants from the equipment. Launched in 2000, the SOA Green program required an emissions level at 100 micrograms per cubic liter. At the testing program’s inception, only a quarter of the machines passed the certification requirements.

By 2008, the CRI renamed the program “SOA Green Label Vacuum” and tightened emission requirements to just 35 micrograms in order to achieve the gold label. These elevated emissions standards have substantially contributed to improved indoor air quality in facilities across the country.

“If you think about it, emissions from the vacuum are important because you don’t want to spew dust back into the room or the air you breath,” says Braun. “There are also huge benefits for building occupants or workers with allergies or asthma.”

As the CRI continues to move its certification forward, the demand for stricter certification grows among facility managers. For example, two large districts sought help from CRI in order to improve their indoor environment without sacrificing cleanliness.

After reviewing the benefits of the SOA programs and the improved health that cleaning green can provide, both districts signed a memorandum of understanding to use only SOA products in their carpet cleaning. The move has brought such positive response by workers and parents that the superintendent of schools is considering implementing the policy state wide.

Moving Forward
The concept of green and its demands among facility managers is constantly changing. To meet the growing demands of the industry and in a quest for improved environmental efficiencies, CRI is continuously making changes and improvements to its certification program.

“When we develop a program, it probably isn’t perfect,” says Braun. “But we take feedback from those in the field and we modify it on a fairly regular basis as we become aware of how to do things better and smarter.”

CRI started with a modest spot remover program and now they provide the “Seal of Approval Green” program to promote green carpet cleaning chemicals, as well as the “Seal of Approval Green Label Vacuum” program. They are even exploring a Seal of Approval Green category for extractors and carpet care systems for introduction in the next year or two.

Working towards the introduction of green protocols for extractor and system certification, CRI has enlisted the help of NASA. To help measure equipment efficiencies, NASA developed a machine called X-Ray Fluorescents (XRF Gun), which measures the precise amounts of soil removed from carpets. Tools and measurements such as these will aid in the development of new and improved standards for the industry.

“We are also looking at SOA for pet stains and odor removal,” says Braun. “Cleaning for health is also something we are pursuing, which would expand upon green to include testing for dust mites, mold spores, viruses, bacteria, etc. This introduction would have applications across the entire carpet spectrum.”

CRI is always looking for new ways to advance their certification programs in an effort to support the green and environmental movements within the jan/san industry. As Dr. Howard Elder, former chair of CRI’s sustainability committee, once said, “Let’s not let perfect get in the way of progress.”

Providers Plus Program
In addition to the existing certification programs from the Carpet and Rug Institute for chemicals and equipment, cleaning departments can also seek certification through the “Seal of Approval (SOA) Service Providers Plus” program.

Departments involved with this program must agree to use SOA products exclusively in their cleaning by adhering to a code of conduct and customer satisfaction. Another qualification for inclusion in this program is an involvement and certification from the Institute for Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC).

“To have the very highest desirable outcome from cleaning, you have to have three things,” says Werner Braun, president of the Carpet and Rug Institute. “One, you must have the right cleaning chemicals. Two, you need to have the right equipment. And three, you need a trained and qualified cleaning professional and the IICRC does a great job of training technicians and certifying departments.”