Did you know we offer decontamination services as well as the services you see us blog about more frequently?

Decontamination services can be used in a wide variety of locations from homes to businesses such as doctors surgeries and care homes. Decontamination services can be used to control an outbreak of viruses, such as coronavirus, or where there has been contamination from a particular source.

Jon was called recently to assist with two bathrooms in a property in Bristol.

These bathrooms had been contaminated where routine unblocking works for a blocked toilet had resulted in ‘blow back’. This is where the materials blocking the pipes are forced back out through the toilets.

On this occasion the contaminated materials had sprayed all over all of the surfaces of the bathrooms, including the backs of the doors.

All disinfection/decontamination work begins with a systematic deep-clean to remove contaminating soils. The use of an appropriate cleaning solution will knock back the bacterial load at this stage. Certainly, post-Covid, most of us are aware of the sanitising impact of even household soap!

Once all soft furnishings had been removed Jon got to work addressing the soiling itself by thorough deep cleaning using a commercial cleaning solution specifically designed for disinfection.

To ensure all bacteria is safely removed a fogging process was then used.

During the early stages of Covid, we were aware of many companies offering fogging as an instant way to disinfect an area – please remember: ANY PROFESSIONAL DECONTAMINATION WORK BEGINS WITH SYSTEMATIC CLEANING!

Waving a fogging machine around is not going to cut it!

The fogging machine atomises a disinfecting solution into a fine mist that penetrates all the hardest to reach areas. Using the fogger does not cause any problems or harm to electrical devices, people, plants or pets but will kill contaminating pathogens on contact. We use a product with the following log kill:

ANTI-BACTERIAL EN1276 LOG KILL 6 = 99.9999%

ANTI-VIRAL EN14476 LOG KILL 4.33 = 99.99%

ANTI-FUNGAL EN1650 LOG KILL 6 = 99.9999%

What is Log Kill and why does it matter?

Disinfection professionals today are generally concerned with what percentage of a given germ is killed by a particular process or disinfectant. The highest percentage that is generally used is 99.9999%. In scientific research papers, this percentage is written as “ a 6 log10 reduction”, but in medical shorthand, it’s known as “a greater-than 6-log reduction” or “a log-6 kill rate.” ‘Log’ is short for logarithm, a mathematical term for a power to which a number can be raised.

Log rates are calculated using a logarithmic scale. Log reduction stands for a 10-fold (or one decimal point) reduction in bacteria, meaning the disinfectant or biocide reduces the number of live bacteria by 90 per cent for every step.

The log reduction achieved by a decontamination process is a measure of the reduction in the concentration of a contaminant and therefore the reduction of risk.

Generally, you can say that log Kill is a description of how effective a product is at killing pathogens and Log Reduction is the description of how much of the pathogen will be killed.

To help understand the value of each additional “log”, let’s do the sums for a small colony of a million MRSA bacteria on a work surface in a hospital in this instance we are using the ‘Log Kill as used to describe the efficacy of our Biocidal products:

• A 1-log kill reduces the colony to 100,000 MRSA bacteria after a 90% reduction;
• A 2-log kill reduces the colony to 10,000 bacteria after a 99% reduction
• A 3-log kill reduces the colony to 1,000 bacteria after a 99.9% reduction;
• A 4-log kill reduces the colony to 100 bacteria after a 99.99% reduction;
• A 5-log kill reduces the colony to 10 bacteria after a 99.999% reduction;
• A 6-log kill reduces the colony to 1 MRSA bacterium after a 99.9999% reduction... [- Info courtesy of Fragile Earth]

Science/Maths lesson over!

After careful application of the biocide, these bathrooms were now decontaminated, and the customer could be reassured that any contaminants & pathogens of the ‘blow back’ was removed and their bathroom was safe and pleasant to use again.

To see fogging and decontamination services in action, visit the website here. There is more information on the process and circumstances in which fogging and decontamination services may be necessary.

If you would like further information, use the button below to get in touch with us.