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No Masking Indoor Environmental Dilemmas Agitation Key to Odour Elimination
May, 2007
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NEW LIFE FOR OLD FIXTURES
As more and more facilities replace old toilets and urinals, facility managers now have the task of discarding the old fixtures. There are some interesting and innovative recycling options. The porcelain used in these fixtures can be recycled and used as a cost-effective alternative to make various materials:
* In Seattle, a city program that rewards building owners for replacing old water-wasteful restroom fixtures with those that use less or no water, grinds up the old fixtures and uses the resulting product to help pave roads.
* Old toilets and urinals can be crushed and re-used for building foundations. At the Inland Empire Utilities Agency's administration headquarters in Chino, California, these recycled fixtures helped the facility earn Platinum Certification from the US Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Program (LEED).
* A young entrepreneur in Texas has developed and patented a way to turn old toilets and urinals into terrazzo floors. Designers have found that working with the recycled restroom fixture terrazzo floors allows them to develop more varied and complex designs than working with conventional terrazzo aggregates of cement, marble and glass chips.
This offers dual environmental benefits. Water-wasting fixtures are removed from service, yet kept out of landfill.
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By Robert Kravitz
Building managers are becoming more aware of how odours can have an impact on building occupants. If not attended to, odours can increase and spread beyond their original source affecting the productivity and possibly the health of workers, plus presenting a very unfavorable impression to visitors and prospective renters.
In the 1970s, many building owners/managers throughout North America began banning smoking in their facilities not only because the secondhand smoke was unhealthy, but because the smoking odour was bothersome to many non-smokers. A few years later, some office managers started prohibiting perfumes, colognes and other fragrances in their facilities as well. Soon, even the cleaning contracts in many facilities instructed the janitorial crews to use only non-fragrant cleaning chemicals.
Although the elimination of personal care items and fragrant cleaning chemicals was effective in reducing odours, it did not help eliminate mould, mildew and other unpleasant and unhealthy odours often found in building washrooms. These odours can enter a facility's HVAC system and spread throughout the building.
A 1997 study looking into the source of odours in facilities such as office buildings, hospitals and schools discovered that uric acid crystals are a common source of odour. They are formed from dried urine and commonly found on washroom floors, partitions and walls.
Using UV black lights, researchers also found these odour-causing crystals on sinks and countertops, paper dispensers and, in some cases, air vents, ceilings and doors. Building operators can now carry out the same kind of monitoring with an inexpensive system known as a bio-waste detection kit. Small paper strips are dipped into a special chemical and then applied to floors, tile, tile grout, fixtures and other surfaces. The strip quickly changes colour, and depending on the colour, users can determine if the surface is clean and safe, or contaminated with urine.
Uric acid crystals support the growth of anaerobic bacteria, which releases an increasingly offensive odour as it grows. These crystals can attach to other forms of moist bacteria, generating even more odours.
Researchers also tested the effectiveness of different cleaning chemicals, products and cleaning systems to eradicate the bacteria. The products they used fell into two general groups: enzyme cleaners and detergent disinfectants.
Following manufacturers' recommendations, these cleaning chemicals were sprayed on surfaces, allowed to dwell on the surfaces so that the ingredients could work effectively, and then wiped clean with cleaning cloths. However, the researchers found this solution short lived. Odours generally returned within a few days.
"One reason these chemicals were ineffective may be because they lacked one of the most important components of cleaning: agitation," advises Angelo Poneris, Customer Service Manager for the janitorial/sanitation distributorship, Valley Janitorial Supply. For cleaning to be effective, the surface area must also be agitated to loosen soils and contaminants so that they can be emulsified and removed.
Meanwhile, some school systems in Canada and the United States were testing a new type of cleaning system referred to as no-touch or spray-and-vac. "Many school districts have been plagued with cleaning and odour problems in their restrooms for years," Poneris notes. "Some were at the point they would try just about anything to eliminate these restroom maintenance problems."
With the no-touch system, no handheld sprayers or cloths are used and cleaning workers never touch surfaces to be cleaned - thus the name of the system. Instead, a machine injects conventional or environmentally preferable cleaning chemicals or disinfectants onto fixtures and surfaces including walls, tile, floors and even ceilings.
"The same areas are then rinsed using as much as 500 psi (pounds per square inch)," Poneris says. "Similar to an indoor pressure washing system, this agitates the surfaces, loosening soils, odour and disease producing bacteria and other contaminants so that they can then be removed. Some of these machines also incorporate built-in vacuum systems to extract the contaminants from surface areas effectively removing odour causing bacteria from the areas being cleaned."
The systems are manufactured in various sizes for different locations and needs, and have become popular for cleaning washrooms in large public facilities such as airports and stadiums, as well as office buildings and medical centres.
Uric acid crystals, micro-organisms, germs, bacteria, mould and mildew can cause serious odour issues and possible health-related problems. Most facility managers have learned that they cannot simply mask the issue.
Robert Kravitz is an IICRC Certified Carpet Cleaning Technician and a writer for the professional cleaning and building industries. He may be reached at rkravitz@rcn.com
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