Commercial Cleaning Services to Control Employee Exposure to Occupational Hazards

When it comes to protecting your staff from dangers on the job – that includes that current threat of COVID-19 – there’s a protocol in place that’s endorsed by the CDC.

More specifically, there is a “hierarchy of controls” that dictates how to deal with a hazard. However, you might be surprised that wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) is actually at the bottom of the list.

However, at the top is eliminating the hazard itself, and that’s where commercial cleaning services in Mississauga comes into the picture.

Sanitizing Is Not Enough

You may take that as cleaning will eliminate any pathogens on surfaces. But regular cleaning alone (and even “deep cleaning” as advertised by some commercial sanitizing services in Mississauga) will not destroy viruses and other germs on its own.

The key to elimination of the threat, in this case, is disinfection. But again, that doesn’t just mean wiping down surfaces with disinfecting wipes. It means “deep disinfection” by commercial cleaning services in Mississauga that use methods such as fogging (dispersed droplets from special equipment) used in the right amounts to disinfect all surfaces that are easily missed in routine cleanings.

Putting Barriers Between the Hazard and Staff

Further down the hierarchy is “engineering controls,” which basically refers to ensuring your employees are separated from the hazard itself.

This could mean preventing staff and customers from entering areas of a commercial space where there’s been known exposure to COVID-19 (whether you’ve confirmed the presence of the virus or not, office sanitizing services in Mississauga that include disinfecting is a good idea.)

This can also mean erecting a barrier between the workers and the source of the hazard, without interfering with the workflow of the business.

There may be a higher cost of implementing this method than buying PPE for example, but as mentioned before, PPE is regarded as the least effective way of guarding against occupational hazards. The CDC also mentioned there could actually be a cost savings over the long-term by following this approach.

PPE Doesn’t Replace Commercial Cleaning

While there’s no harm in outfitting your staff with PPE (that could include masks), it’s not a substitution for regularly scheduled commercial sanitizing services in Mississauga.

In addition, the CDC notes that PPE may be relatively inexpensive to implement in the short-term, but could become more costly over time. PPE has also been shown to be less effective at protecting employees than the other methods.