Clean Workspaces, Healthy Teams

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Clean is more than appearance. That much is easy to say, and cleaning companies say it often, usually followed by large promises about health and productivity. This article keeps to what can be backed up. Where we cite a health effect, the source is a public agency and it is linked. Where all we have is our own experience, which goes back to 1988, we say so.

What cleaning does to germs

In its guidance for community buildings such as offices, gyms and businesses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that cleaning alone removes most types of harmful germs, such as viruses, bacteria, parasites and fungi, from surfaces (CDC). Not disinfecting: cleaning. The same page says that in most situations, cleaning regularly is enough to prevent the spread of germs. Disinfectant is for what remains, and the CDC points it at the areas of a facility where people have obviously been ill. Health care settings have rules of their own, which that guidance does not cover.

Which surfaces depends on the building, and this is where one cleaning plan differs from another.

Building	What everyone touches
Office	Door handles, light switches, the copier, the break room faucet and refrigerator, shared phones
Clinic	The check-in counter and its pens, waiting room chair arms, restroom doors, the water cooler
Store	The entrance door, shopping carts and baskets, the counter, the card reader, fitting room hooks
Church	Entrance doors, pew backs, the nursery and classroom tables, the kitchen and the coffee urn

The CDC’s own examples of high-touch surfaces include pens, counters, shopping carts and door handles. A team’s health is served when that list is written into the cleaning scope for the building in question, and not left to a general promise to wipe things down.

The sink matters as much as the mop

According to the CDC, handwashing education in the community reduces respiratory illnesses such as colds in the general population by 16 to 21 percent, and reduces the number of people who get sick with diarrhea by 23 to 40 percent (CDC). Nobody washes properly at a sink with an empty soap dispenser. OSHA’s sanitation standard requires employers to provide hand soap or similar cleansing agents at lavatories, and individual hand towels, air blowers or clean sections of continuous cloth toweling (29 CFR 1910.141).

So one of the most useful things a janitorial routine does for a team’s health is also one of the dullest: it checks the dispensers on every visit. If your arrangement leaves restocking to nobody in particular, fix that first.

The air and the dust in it

The Environmental Protection Agency reports that Americans spend about 90 percent of their time indoors, where the concentrations of some pollutants are often two to five times higher than typical outdoor concentrations. It notes that soils and dusts come indoors on shoes and clothing, and that cleaning supplies are themselves among the products that release chemicals into indoor air (EPA).

Two conclusions follow for anyone responsible for a workspace in the Valley, where dust is a fact of life. First, dust has to be taken out of the building and not stirred up inside it. The Carpet and Rug Institute says regular vacuuming can have the largest impact on the air you breathe, because it removes dust, dirt, allergens and particles (CRI). We use HEPA vacuums. Second, the products count. We use non-toxic, biodegradable cleaning products, and we think a client is entitled to know what is being sprayed in the building. Under OSHA’s hazard communication standard, an employer has to keep the safety data sheet for each hazardous chemical readily accessible to its employees during each work shift (29 CFR 1910.1200), so a cleaning company has those sheets and you can simply ask to see them.

Damp, and what grows in it

The EPA’s guide to mold in schools and commercial buildings is blunt about the cause: mold needs water, and mold growth indoors is controlled by controlling moisture. It adds that molds can produce allergens that trigger allergic reactions, or even asthma attacks, in people who are allergic to mold (EPA). A cleaning crew does not repair leaks. It is, though, well placed to see one: under the break room sink, behind a toilet, beneath a refrigerator, at the foot of a window after a monsoon storm. A crew that reports what it sees is doing the team’s health a real service.

Floors people can walk on

Health includes not falling over. OSHA requires that the floor of each workroom be kept clean and, to the extent feasible, dry, and that walking surfaces be kept free of hazards such as leaks and spills (OSHA 1910.22). That is a good reason to mop when the building is empty, to put out wet floor signs, and to deal with a spill at two in the afternoon then and not leave it for the evening crew.

What we cannot prove

We have no public study that lets a cleaning company promise a given number of sick days saved or a given gain in output, so we promise neither and quote no figure for either. The sourced points above are as far as the evidence we have read goes. We will add one line from our own advertising, which is an opinion and not a finding: employee morale sinks when the place stinks.

A healthy team needs a great deal that no cleaning company can supply. What a cleaning routine can supply is clean surfaces, stocked sinks, dry floors and less dust. The routine that delivers those is described on our page about janitorial services in Gilbert, AZ.

Questions people ask