How to Create an A+ Education Cleaning Program

Why Healthy Schools are Important

A custodial worker uses 194 pounds of chemicals each year, 25% of which are hazardous substances, which can exacerbate asthma symptoms. Additionally, custodial staff experience one of the highest rates of occupational asthma. Custodians also suffer the highest exposures to chemical products used in floor care, glass cleaning, disinfection, and indoor and outdoor pest control.³ Purchasing and using only the least-toxic products for these tasks would help protect not just custodians but every member of the school community.

For these reasons, it’s important to understand the ingredients that are in the products used in your school.

How to Clean for Healthier Schools

Because of the harsh chemicals that can be present in cleaning supplies, and the nature of a custodian’s work, it’s important to help protect your custodial staff from potential negative health impacts. As an employer, you’re required to provide appropriate ventilation around cleaning materials, but also to provide protective clothing. Another important requirement is that the cleaning chemicals must all have labels on them so your staff understands what they’re exposed to on a regular basis.

Disinfection Tips for Your School

The importance of maintaining a clean, healthy environment to protect students and educational professions is in the spotlight. The best practices for doing this are well established. Cleaning is the fundamental first step in this process. It cannot be skipped and it must be well-executed to get the results you want. You may not need to disinfect every surface, and slathering disinfectants everywhere just in case only serves to unnecessarily expose students and staff to potentially harmful chemicals every day. It’s important to implement and follow situational policies and procedures for how and where sanitation and disinfection will be implemented in the school environment. Be sure to select an EPA-approved disinfectant and ensure the chemical you choose is approved for your particular application. The EPA maintains a list of registered disinfectants that meet its criteria and can be used to control the virus that causes COVID-19.⁴

Source: Greenschools.net and CDC

While every space in a school environment may have special considerations based on the use case and possible contamination factors, common practice is that cleaning is needed in every nook and cranny of the school and frequently surfaces should be routinely cleaned and disinfected according to CDC recommendations. Reduce the spread of germs by keeping surfaces clean and reminding students of the importance of hand hygiene.^6,7

The Importance of Hand Washing

Cleaners and disinfectants are important, but much of the health and safety considerations in our schools can come down to just using soap and water to wash your hands. That’s why so much focus is placed on teaching students to properly clean their hands. It’s a powerful tool for helping to protect the entire school population from the spread of disease.

You’ve probably seen variations of the proper hand-washing procedure in school or other public bathrooms. Yet, we continue to discuss and rehash the benefits and best practices of washing our hands. It’s such an easy procedure, and studies have shown that it can reduce exposure to viruses as well as other diseases or conditions. So, we’ll keep talking about it, and (hopefully), continuing the discussion will inspire more hand washing.

As an alternative to hand-washing, when soap and water are not convenient or easily accessible, you can use hand sanitiser. It’s not the best choice or the best way to prevent disease, but it is better than nothing. It’s important to understand, though, that not all hand sanitiser solutions are created equal. You should look for hand sanitisers that have a 60% to 95% alcohol concentration. Studies have shown that non-alcohol hand sanitisers don’t work as well, that the solutions can irritate your skin, and that germs become resistant to those solutions.⁵ 

Cleaning Equipment for Healthy Schools

Choosing Cleaning Products for Healthy Schools

The question sounds easy: How do you select the cleaning products that will support a healthy and safe school environment? You need to remove dirt, dust and other debris that adversely affect the overall cleanliness and health of the school, and cleaning products are a necessary component for maintaining your school’s appearance.

As you dig deeper, though, you discover that cleaning is also about preventing illness, so the function of cleaning evolves, which often means using more powerful cleaning supplies. In the effort to clean and protect the school environment, though, students, and staff are also exposed to toxins that can cause health and environmental concerns. Fortunately, there are cleaning solutions that are specifically formulated to offer healthier and more environmentally safe cleaning.

Here are a few factors to consider when you select products to use, according to the EPA:

1. What is the impact on the environment? Green cleaners help to improve air quality, while also helping to reduce air and water pollution.
2. What about waste management? When you buy green cleaners in bulk you’re also reducing waste. There’s less packaging and you can often get them in a concentrated form to allow for dilution.
3. Are they certified? Not all green products are the same, but if the product is certified, you know that an independent organisation verified that it is less harmful to the environment and safer for you to use. Some 83% of respondents surveyed said they’d trust a “certified” product compared to a non-certified one.⁷

When researching and purchasing cleaning products, purchasers should be sure to do their due diligence in interpreting claims from cleaning solution companies to ensure their products really are safer than their conventional counterparts. While this may add time to the purchasing process when choosing new suppliers, not doing the proper research may cause you to purchase products that aren’t really as healthy as advertised.

What to look for in safer cleaning products:

With all of the information available, it can be confusing and time consuming to change cleaning supplies. Here are some things to look for when researching safer cleaning products:⁸

• Minimal presence of corrosive or strongly irritating substances such as known carcinogens or reproductive toxicants, ozone depleting compounds or regulated hazardous materials.
• Use of renewable resources, such as solvents from citrus, seed, vegetable and pine oils.⁸
• Low volatile organic compound (VOC) content.
• Low flammability (flash point of > 200).
• Environmentally friendly packaging and shipping processes, such as refillable bottles, bulk shipping options, pump sprays versus aerosols, etc. 

Implementing a Healthy Schools Cleaning Program

The process and strategy for implementing a healthy school cleaning program will be different depending on your role. Here are three role-based categories to consider:

It's Time to Clean for Health

Conclusion

You know that cleaning products can be hazardous and that indoor air quality is of utmost importance. Members of the school’s population could experience unfortunate side effects from your school’s current practices if you are not employing a cleaning program that supports the health and well-being of your staff and students in the best way possible. As you move forward toward the implementation of a healthy school cleaning program, try to:

• Use less toxic cleaning supplies.
• Use tools and equipment that are proven to improve air quality and promote the health of those spending time in your school.
• Train all employees, not just custodians, on appropriate strategies for disinfecting. 

Getting Help Keeping Your School Safe and Healthy

As a recognised industry leader, Tennant Company has made it our mission to change the way the world cleans. With products and solutions designed to help create a cleaner, safer, healthier world, we can help you build a cleaning program that keeps students and staff safe.

Download the White Paper

Sources