Photo by lilartsy on Unsplash
How would you like to have a job as a Biohazard Cleaner? Around the clock, you answer calls from home and business owners who want their property restored to normal.
You pull up to the location and assess the situation. You put on your protective covering: a hazmat suit, rubber gloves, booties, and respirator.
Unless you work in healthcare or as a first responder, you don’t think much about the dangers. Even so, biohazards can occur anywhere: workplaces, private homes, food services, schools, chemical laboratories. And that’s the short list.
Anywhere people exist, biohazards can turn lives upside down.
Do you know the telltale signs? Some biohazards require professional cleanup; others do not. Consider the following:
Biohazard Cleanup for Bloodborne Pathogens
It’s break time, so you head to the nearest caffeine fix. Your coworker drops the coffee pot and cuts his hand. Now there’s blood all over the counter. You rush to help, grabbing a paper towel or napkin and start wiping it up. Are you wearing gloves?
Your coworker leaves to get stitches. You continue to clean the counter with a rag found in the sink. Do you spray the surface with disinfectant? Do you alert other coworkers and management to the incident so they can decide whether or not further action is needed?
How do you dispose of the bloody rag – in the trashcan? Did you bag it first?
Bloodborne pathogens are no joke. Depending on the severity of the injury, blood can seep into crevices.
Bloodborne pathogens can cause long-lasting infections, including Hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV). These viruses can lead to diseases, liver damage, and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).
Cleaning up blood doesn’t always require a professional. When you slice your finger fixing supper, you stick your finger underwater and then apply a bandage.
However, if there’s a good amount of blood, such as a crime scene, or a vehicle accident, your wisest strategy is to use caution. Do not touch it if at all possible, and call a professional.
Mold
Your basement floods every time it rains. Although the landlord installed a pump, the basement walls continued to stay wet, and now you’ve got mold. Your bathroom wall has a black spot, and there’s a mushroom growing out of the tub. Outside the tub! By the way, mushrooms in the bathroom are more common than you may think.
If you’ve got the kind of moisture that promotes fungus, you can try to remove it, but you probably won’t get it all unless you have the right PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) and the problem repeats itself.
Mold exposure can release allergens and poisons into the atmosphere and cause serious health issues, including headaches, allergy symptoms, coughing, wheezing, tiredness, and shortness of breath. Unsure whether you have a mold problem? Try doing a wellness check. How are you feeling?
Perhaps you’ve gone to the doctor, only to return days later because the medication didn’t work. One of the last things you might suspect is mold, so how’s the doctor supposed to treat it?
Human Waste
Human waste is a nasty biohazard. Although it is an embarrassing subject, if left unaddressed, those living in these conditions can suffer repercussions such as E. Coli, Hepatitis A or E, and Norovirus, to name a few.
Rodents
You moved to a new house a year ago during the winter and haven’t finished unpacking the boxes stored in the garage.
It’s spring now, and you notice that many of the boxes have evidence of mice, and there are rodent feces.
Rat feces can carry bacteria. After rodent droppings are dry, particles can become airborne and spread bacteria. Food service inspectors are adamant about eradicating rats and mice from food establishments because of this bacteria.
But you don’t have to eat food contaminated by rat droppings to be affected.
In addition to droppings, rodent urine and saliva can also carry viruses and other diseases; Salmonella, Hantavirus, and even Bubonic plague and rat-bite fever.
Any place with shelter, heat, and food will attract rats. Rodents infest homeless camps and hoarder homes and houses occupied by squatters.
Hoarding
Your friend has a high-school-age special-needs son. For years he’s shown signs of hoarding, but his mom kept on top of it. She’s done his cleaning, laundry, and food prep.
Things were getting worse, though, because she fell on her kitchen floor, broke her femur, and spent two months in a rehab facility. Her husband did his best to take care of their son and work full-time during that time.
Although she contacted the state and asked for help, they informed her that they couldn’t help her.
She came home from the nursing facility and took over caring for her son, but because she was still unable to walk, she couldn’t make it down the hall to his room. Besides, he had it barricaded with a chair because he wanted his privacy. He didn’t want his mom to know he was hiding used food containers, half-eaten hot dogs, and open packets of ketchup and cola under his bed.
His mom started seeing roaches, and when she finally got to his room with her walker and opened his door, cockroaches were everywhere. On the ceiling, the walls, in his bed. She immediately called an exterminator, who sprayed and disinfected. Her only recourse was to pay someone to purge his entire room, including the furniture, his DVD player, and all of his clothes.
Sometimes circumstances get the better of people. Sometimes they need help but lack the resources.
Hoarding is an intense problem that can cause roach infestations, which in turn can cause health conditions such as diarrhea, cholera, and even typhoid fever.
Call Semper Fi Yuma for Help with Biohazard Cleanup
Biohazard cleanup is not a profession for the squeamish. It takes equipment, knowledge of the substances, and proper disposal of waste materials to avoid legal penalties.
Biohazards are not as rare as people think. They can occur at any time, intentionally (such as a murder or suicide) or unintentionally (such as a chemical spill).
Image by https://unsplash.com/@andrew_haimerl
If you need a professional biohazard cleaning service, don’t hesitate to call Semper Fi Yuma Floor Care and Restoration today. It’s the best way to protect yourself.
