germz be gone logo baby car seat cleaning, stroller cleaning baby gear cleaning disinfectant fogging
germz be gone logo baby car seat cleaning, stroller cleaning baby gear cleaning disinfectant fogging

Category: Science & Thought

  • Living Room Cleaning Tips

    Living Room Cleaning Tips

    Check out the recent Redfin article we were featured in: 

    The Complete Living Room Cleaning Checklist

    The living room is one of the most important rooms in the house. It’s where you relax, entertain guests, and spend time with your family. However, because people use it so much, it can be one of the most challenging rooms to keep clean. This is especially true if space is limited, like in a small apartment in San Francisco, CA, or a condo in Las Vegas, NV. From dusting to vacuuming to deep cleaning, there’s a lot to do to keep your living room looking its best. 

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    Full disclosure, we offer a disinfectant fogging service. We do not use hydrogen peroxide for some of the reasons outlined here.

    Hydrogen Peroxide For Fogging?

    Change is Here

    The pandemic brought about a lot of change in the world, particularly in the cleaning industry. We’ve seen the use of PPE explode, which meant resources we’ve been using in the industry for decades became scarce and expensive. Disinfectants that were once commonplace are now replaced with EPA List “N” chemicals. Companies have turned to “enhanced” cleaning practices, which means now they are actually cleaning. Another change has been the rapid adoption of electrostatic sprayers and ultra-low-volume foggers.

    From classrooms to churches to casinos to mom-and-pop storefronts, fogging has been deployed as a reliable, common sense solution to effectively combat viruses and other germs. Professionally, we’ve been using foggers for over a decade before the pandemic started and have been pushing for their use in the industry for a long time. To finally see foggers get their time in the sun is fantastic, but as with any rapid adoption, it comes with risks.

    One of those risks is improper application. Specifically, what is being used in the fogger as the disinfectant? Not all disinfectants are created equal and not all disinfectants are meant for fogging. For instance, you wouldn’t want to use bleach to fog with due to its myriad of detrimental health consequences. However, a very popular solution people have turned to is hydrogen peroxide. While hydrogen peroxide is known to be a good nontoxic solution for disinfecting, it has many risk factors to consider as a fogging agent. We’ll highlight a handful below.

    Dilution Rate

    In order for any disinfectant to be effective, the proper dilution rate must be achieved. One cannot simply eyeball an amount of disinfectant and slosh it around with water and expect to effectively disinfect. Hydrogen peroxide is no different. What percent of it do you need to kill germs? Can you use tap water to dilute it? Is the mixing container contaminated with other chemicals rendering the H2O2 useless?

    Those questions are reason enough to go with a ready-to-use (RTU) solution. The dilution is already optimal. However, in my research, an RTU hydrogen peroxide for fogging does not exist.

    Yellowing

    Making proper dilution even more important, hydrogen peroxide, like bleach, has oxidative properties. Apply H2O2 to a fabric that is not colorfast and watchout! Yellowing or whitening may occur (just like bleach). When fogging spaces that contain high-value inventory or precious, priceless items do you want to take that risk or allow a company who’s internal controls you can’t verify destroy thousands of dollars of goods?

    Reaction with other chemicals

    It’s true that, by itself, hydrogen peroxide is nontoxic; but it breaks down into hydrogen and oxygen. That latter element is known to be highly reactive with other elements. When H2O2 reacts with chemicals or their residue from prior cleaning, toxic gasses can form leading to detrimental health consequences. Imagine a janitorial crew cleaning with bleach (as most traditional services do). Now imagine that a few minutes later the fogging service comes in with hydrogen peroxide to fog with. If ventilation is not adequate, what happens?

    Flammability

    Hydrogen peroxide is not typically flammable. However, H2O2 is known to enhance the flammable effects of other combustible compounds because it does break down into oxygen. As we know, oxygen feeds fire.

    Return to Space

    No, not that space! Return to space or RTS is how long it takes you to re-enter your space, dwelling or what have you. While I do recommend an opportunity for the space to air out–45 minutes to an hour or so– fogging with hydrogen peroxide can lead to an RTS time over 24 hours. If you are trying to continue operations or want to forgo the expense of a hotel room, H2O2 may not be the best fogging solution.

    Not Approved

    Every disinfectant sold on the market must be registered with the EPA. The EPA registration includes a review of the disinfectant’s efficacy such as log reduction, dwell time, hazards, application and such. Hydrogen peroxide sold in the market follows this same process.

    Read the label of most H2O2 bottles and notice there is no mention of use in a fogger. This means that using H2O2 in a fogger is a severe violation of EPA regulations.

    There are disinfectants approved for use in foggers. Hydrogen Peroxide is not likely one of them.

    The Bottom Line

    Hydrogen peroxide is a great nontoxic disinfectant in general; just not as a fogging agent.

  • Las Vegas Baby Expo 2021

    Las Vegas Baby Expo 2021

    germz be gone logo

    LAS vegas baby expo 2021.

    What a great event for new and expecting parents to ask questions, get info, receive free products and services, and become part of the Las Vegas parenting community.

    Look for us at the 2021 Las Vegas Baby Expo, October 9th, from 10am to 3pm, at Opportunity Village (Oakey Campus). We’ll be there, along with over 40 other vendors, to meet you, answer your questions and easily schedule your next service.

    Book your child’s car seat cleaning service below.

    [product_page id=”8977″]
  • Electrostatic Sprayers and Their Disadvantages

    Electrostatic Sprayers and Their Disadvantages

    Over the last couple years I’ve seen numerous cleaning services now offering electrostatic spraying. While it sounds fancy and good in practice, there are several drawbacks to using an electrostatic sprayer. I outline those disadvantages of electrostatic sprayers below.

    Large Droplets

    Droplet size. This is my biggest concern when it comes to electrostatic sprayers. These sprayers produce large droplet sizes over 80 microns. While that may seem small, in the disinfectant world, that size droplet is pretty large.

    Why does droplet size matter? It has to do with float time. The smaller the droplet, the longer amount of time it stays in the air to combat germs floating in the air. Conversely, the larger the droplet size, the lesser amount of time a droplet stays in the air to combat germs. Picture a cloud of fog versus a squirt from a spray bottle. Which one do you think has a better chance of fighting airborne germs? In this way, electrostatic sprayers are no more effective at fighting airborne germs than a standard spray bottle.

    Positive Charge

    The only thing that separates an electrostatic sprayer from a standard spray bottle–besides automatic spraying–is a missing electron. As the disinfectant passes through the nozzle, it is hit with an electrostatic charge. This positive charge allows the large droplets to cling to many negatively charged surfaces and provide “even” coverage. Pretty neat, but it has its drawbacks.

    What about positively charge surfaces? Don’t like charge repel each other? You see, with electrostatic sprayers, you may not be getting the coverage you want because it is impossible to determine the charges of all surfaces and particles in your environment. Using an electrostatic sprayer means you are making a pretty large assumption about the area you are treating as well as the type of germs that are living there. As someone who has been in the disinfecting services industry for almost 15 years, I can tell you that a one-size-fits-all approach to disinfecting is a dangerous game to play.

    Just Spray and Walk Away

    Much of the hullabaloo about electrostatic sprayers is this claim their sellers make that all you have to do is spray and walk away. Can’t reach an area by hand? Spray it! Tired of wiping up the microbes after they die? Just spray it! Don’t want to do a thorough job? Spray it! I’m all for “easy”, but not at the expense of “thorough”.

    While electrostatic spraying of disinfectant can be beneficial, there is always one critical step before disinfection can happen: cleaning. A surface must be cleaned first in order for it to be disinfected. That is, the dirt and debris on a surface must be removed before a disinfectant can be effective (just read the label on any disinfectant).

    Therefore, this notion of simply spraying a disinfectant and walking away is not the same as cleaning and properly disinfecting. The manufacturers of electrostatic sprayers know this and I’m sure some kind of verbiage is buried in the instruction manual that folks won’t read. But you should be aware that there is and will be a degree of manual labor involved in any true disinfection process.

    Hefty Price Tag

    The price of electrostatic sprayers is as large as their droplet size. Most units cost over $2,000 a piece. For a service company to recoup that cost, they have no choice, but to charge their clients an arm and a leg or skimp out on service elsewhere. For a do-it-yourself-type company, it’s probably a hard sell to management to splurge on such a thing.

    The Disadvantages of Electrostatic Sprayers

    To summarize, electrostatic sprayers are more useful and efficient than the traditional spray bottle, but they do have some shortcomings:

    • They produce large droplet sizes that don’t float in the air long enough to combat airborne germs like coronavirus.
    • Their positive charge means they won’t be as effective on positively charge surfaces or particles.
    • Cleaning is still required before you disinfect with the machine.
    • A hefty price tag may trigger a cutback in service elsewhere by a service company, creating an unwanted scenario for the customer.

    One can likely assume that if the cleaning service is using an electrostatic sprayer, they probably don’t believe in doing a thorough job for the client. In contrast, at Germz Be Gone we use foggers that produce small droplets (between 5-50 microns) so our disinfectant can combat airborne germs and allergens while penetrating the most unseen, hard to reach corners–still providing a “360”-like coverage. We don’t stop there though; we then apply a layer of probiotics to replace and restore what the disinfectant destroyed as well as eat up the dead microbes and provide days of benefits.

    I believe in doing the right thing. I believe in doing a thorough job. I believe in providing value and friendly, customer-oriented services. My team believes the same. What can we do for you today?!

  • How To Combat Aerosolized Coronavirus Droplets

    How To Combat Aerosolized Coronavirus Droplets

    How Do You Combat Aerosolized Coronavirus Droplets?

    disinfectant fogging by germz be gone lyndon conawayLyndon Conaway

    We have the service for just that!

    More and more evidence is being released–even by the Trump administration–that coronavirus is spread through the air. What does this actually mean though?

    For starters, as a new NBC News article states, “Until now it was understood that the coronavirus is spread through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes, sings, talks or breathes, and experts still believe that is the main way it is spread. But now experts also agree that airborne transmission is a key piece of the COVID-19 puzzle.”

    To some it may sound like “respiratory” and “airborne” are the same thing; when in fact, they differ in important ways.

    Respiratory droplets are quite larger than airborne or aerosolized particles (microscopic droplets). This size difference means respiratory droplets are heavier and don’t travel as far since they fall to the ground quicker. Hence the CDC guidelines of six feet or more of space. If someone coughs or sneezes in your area, and you are more than six feet away, it’s thought you have a better chance of not inhaling infected particles as they haven’t had a chance to get to you.

    Aerosolized particles on the other hand are extremely small–we are talking smaller than 5 micrometers in size. At this size, infected particles can travel much farther than respiratory particles. As wind currents and other forces help keep them afloat, the likelihood you inhale one is much greater even though the droplet size is smaller. So keeping your distance (particularly indoors) won’t help you as much in the case of a sneeze or even regular breath.

    No wonder the novel coronavirus is so contagious. 

    As the owner of a cleaning and disinfecting company, when I come across news like this, I think about what I have in my cleaning arsenal to combat certain modes of germ transmission. To clean or disinfect surfaces, spray bottles and fancy electrostatic sprayers are great; the latter of which will cost you over a couple grand. In the case of disinfecting surfaces where the larger respiratory droplets may have settled, a simple spray and wipe with those tools will do most often. But what do you do about the smaller aerosolized droplets that are lingering in the air?

    Luckily, over the last 14 years I have introduced novel ways to combat everyday diseases and improve the health of homes and communities. In those years I’ve learned that sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. As it relates to coronavirus and germs: fight infected aerosolized droplets in the air with fog.

    Crazy question: why fog? Fog can be generated at a small enough size for disinfectants to stay afloat for hours–much longer than droplets from spray bottles. The longer the disinfectant remains in the air, the greater the chances of it coming into contact with germs and infected particles.

    Although this practice has been deployed where infection control is critical, applying this logic is starting to take hold in everyday spaces as negative news about the coronavirus is coming out. Venues like classrooms, storefronts, places of worship and more are quickly adopting our fogging services as a way to take extra steps to protect their students, customers, and congregants.

    If you’re looking for extra protection and disinfection, look no further than Germz Be Gone Disinfectant Fogging Services. You can price your fogging online or we can customize a disinfecting program with you. Either way, start protecting yourself and those you care about today!

    Get Extra Protection

    BOOK YOUR FOGGING NOW

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