Industry Solutions

Seems every week you read about a disease outbreak on a cruise ship. The industry doesn’t understand microbiology and has done little to address modes of transmission. Persistently clean air, clean hands, clean water and clean surfaces are required to minimize the spread of disease.

With you in the room, bacteria counts spike: Human shedding exceeds 30 million bacteria per hour. With numbers like that, it is not difficult to understand why outbreaks occur in the tightly confined spaces of a floating city. The cruise ship industry has yet to move toward persistent cleaning technologies, and the negative results are consistently demonstrated.

Passenger behaviors during norovirus outbreaks on cruise ships: Prevention and control of norovirus gastrointestinal illness may be improved by routine screening of embarking passengers, education about gastrointestinal illness and its impact on public health, a focus on improving handwashing practices, and identification of public hand sanitizer dispensing locations.

Cruise ship travels: Cruise ships bring together large numbers of people from a variety of communities and backgrounds. Communicable diseases can be introduced onboard by embarking passengers and crew members or acquired during visits to seaports. The crowded, semi-enclosed environment of the cruise ship can facilitate the transmission of infectious diseases from person to person or from contaminated food, water, air, or environmental surfaces. Crew members who remain onboard during successive sailings can sustain transmission of communicable diseases. Certain groups, such as pregnant women, the elderly, and those who are immune-compromised, might be more seriously affected by infectious diseases. In addition, the stress of travel can worsen chronic conditions in any population.

Acute Gastroenteritis on Cruise Ships: To determine recent rates of acute gastroenteritis on cruise ships, CDC analyzed combined data for the period 2008–2014 that were submitted by cruise ships sailing in U.S. jurisdiction (defined as passenger vessels carrying ≥13 passengers and within 15 days of arriving in the United States).

Norovirus Transmission on Cruise Ship: This investigation suggests that efforts to control gastroenteritis outbreaks on cruise ships should address all possible modes of NoV transmission, including foodborne, environmental persistence, and person-to-person spread. Such measures should include extensive disinfection, good food, and water handling practices, isolating ill persons, providing paid sick leave for the ill crew, and promoting hand-washing with soap and water among passengers and crew.

A large outbreak of influenza A and B on a cruise ship causing widespread morbidity: While influenza vaccination of passengers and crew may afford some protection, uptake and effectiveness may not be sufficient to prevent outbreaks. Surveillance systems and early intervention measures, such as antiviral therapies, should be considered to detect and control such outbreaks.

The pharmaceutical industry is heavily regulated to ensure safe products are delivered to its customers. The code requirements and hygiene procedures vary based on activity. Environmental excursions create significant downtime, which means production stops. And when production stops, profits do, too. IDA Construction has a unique program to reduce risks in this environment. We filter with the best HEPA systems on the market, and our pre/post filter the HEPAs with submicron filtration. We account for the dirty little secret in the filter industry tied to the biology growing through the filter media. With air circulating through filters and pre-filters between 12 and 30-plus times per hour, we dramatically reduce the potential for air contamination with our product. We coat cleanroom surfaces with a biostatic coating that provides another layer of continuous cleaning. Finally, we introduce lighting that provides a third layer of persistent cleaning within the cleanroom. We work in conjunction with the pharmacy to write hygiene operating procedures that use best practices to limit risk to the business and their customers. The use of non-shedding microfiber, rotation of disinfectants, and a full understanding of the dwell time required for the disinfectant to work deliver exceptional hygiene to the advantage of customers and pharmacies’ bottom line.

• Guideline for Hand Hygiene in Health-Care Settings: Recent developments in the field have stimulated a review of the scientific data regarding hand hygiene and the development of new guidelines designed to improve hand-hygiene practices in healthcare facilities. This literature review and accompanying recommendations have been prepared by a Hand Hygiene Task Force, comprising representatives from HICPAC, the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), APIC, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).

• Good Hand Hygiene Includes More Than Hands: A quick way to save 90,000 lives annually would be to teach health care workers to wash their hands often. Each year, up to 10% of acute care admissions and 25% of intensive care patients acquire one or more nosocomial infections.

• Measurement of Surface Contamination From Nucleoside Analogue Antineoplastic Drugs by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography in Occupational Hygiene Studies of Oncologic Hospital Departments: Within the frame of a continuing interest in occupational hygiene of hospitals as workplaces, we describe an automated analytical method by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography for the measurement of contamination from the three most important nucleoside analogue antineoplastic drugs (5-fluorouracil, 5FU; cytarabin, CYA; gemcytabin, GCA) on such surfaces as those of preparation hoods and work-benches in departmental pharmacies of oncologic departments.

• Preventing exposure to hazardous drugs: This Alert is to increase awareness among healthcare workers and their employers about the health risks posed by working with hazardous drugs and to provide them with measures for protecting their health.

Antimicrobial resistance is prevalent in industrial animal husbandry. Market forces are shifting to stopping the use of antibiotics to support the rapid growth of animals in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). The U.S. government, food producers, restaurant chains, and consumers are now looking to purchase meat raised without antibiotics. This change will require biosecurity measures to change inside the industry. Stopping the use of antibiotics will require higher levels of hygiene in all CAFO facilities. Solid biosecurity programs should model good hospital infection control programs.

Bio-aerosol in barn air impacts the health of people and animals: This study concludes that multiple exposures to endotoxin-containing swine barn air induce AHR, increase in mucus-containing airway epithelial cells, and lung inflammation. The data also show that prolonged multiple exposures may also induce adaptation in AHR response in the exposed subjects.

Threat of campylobacter in poultry flocks: Travel-associated infections are an important factor to consider and together with the changing global food markets, such as increasing consumption of imported chicken, these will affect Campylobacter infections worldwide.

Multi-site study on handwashing after contact with animals: The goal of this study was to compare and contrast the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and the practice of handwashing among participants of four studies assessing poultry and swine farms in the midwestern United States and in Thailand.

Aerosol transmission and disease: The results from this study indicate that the risk of the spread of PRRSV via aerosols is likely minimal and supports the observations and conclusions of several previous studies showing that aerosol spread of PRRSV is limited to a couple of meters. This is in contrast to recent reports indicating that isolates such as MN-184 can spread via aerosols over distances of several miles.

Wind-borne disease modeling: To assist management of the potential spread of serious disease like FMD in cloven-hoofed animals, prediction models should be able to determine an accurate range and area of the outbreak in advance, as well as required minimum data can be obtained since the error of prediction, might cause serious impact

Hospital-acquired infections and antimicrobial resistance is being covered by every major news team, and for good reason. The Center for Medicaid and Medicare Service (CMS) is no longer footing the bill for many secondary infections, forcing hospitals to re-evaluate yet again their infection control procedures (Read details here…). One in twenty who enter the hospital end up with problems related to secondary infections. With bacteria becoming more and more resistant to antibiotics, it is clear we must reduce the spread of infections within our hospital systems. Learning how to deal with a secondary infection will also help us with larger-scale pandemic control.

Bio-aerosol in hospitals: Exposed-plate method was found to capture microorganisms efficiently with little variation in duplicate samples, suggesting its use in hospitals for preliminary assessment of indoor air quality and determine pathogenic microorganisms due to particle fallout.

Airborne bio loads in health care settings in South Africa: Results from this study indicate the importance of air quality monitoring in healthcare settings to prevent possible hospital-acquired infections and contamination of hospital surfaces including food contact surfaces by airborne contaminants.

Evidence of hand hygiene to reduce transmission and infections by multidrug-resistant organisms in healthcare settings: The emergence of resistance in these microorganisms has mainly been caused by inappropriate use of antibiotics in general and the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics in particular.

Cleaning Hospital Room Surfaces to Prevent Health Care-Associated Infections: A Technical Brief: Emerging technologies have led to increased interest in evaluating environmental cleaning, disinfecting, and monitoring in the acute care hospital setting.

How sinks cause the spread of disease: In a devilish case of unintended consequences, sinks have been linked to a number of outbreaks of serious infections in hospitals from Baltimore to Shanghai and many places in between in recent years.

Poor expeditionary health negatively impacts a company’s bottom line. The cost of an illness at a remote site can cost thousands of dollars to the business. An air evacuation from many of the remote sites we have visited can run your company more than 20K. Improving hygiene levels directly impacts productivity, absenteeism, presenteeism, and energy costs. Using our program also lowers your cleaning costs. We build infection control programs for all environments to keep your employees healthy and productive. Our programs are scalable for every business budget. When using our hygiene program, cleaning moves from a cost to a significant return on investment. Happy, healthy employees positively impact your bottom line. Put your numbers through our Benefits Calculator to get a sense of your return on investment. This same program can be used in corporate goodwill programs focused on the schools your employees’ kids attend. Virtually all companies in mining, and oil and gas, have significant corporate giveback programs. Focusing on hygiene in the local community will further keep healthy the children of your employees. It is time to start looking at an investment in hygiene as a revenue driver.

Universities are not immune to disease outbreaks in our communities. Schools are the epicenter of disease outbreaks in our communities. The Environmental Protection Agency lists poor indoor air quality as a top environmental threat in the United States (Creating Healthy Indoor Air Quality in Schools). Our HELP addresses surface hygiene, air quality, and water hygiene within your facility. Our program addresses surface hygiene, air quality, and water hygiene within your facility. Our measured, quantified system evaluates air, water, and surface hygiene, and the information is used in an approach that combats the hidden cost of presenteeism and absenteeism. Productivity levels in schools drop when teachers and students are absent. Improved indoor air quality in schools is a program pushed by the EPA to enhance hygiene and air quality in school systems throughout the country. Outbreaks of various diseases are growing. Numerous schools are shut down annually for decontamination. This year we have had outbreaks linked to whooping cough, mumps, and measles. These outbreaks impact both the school and community. We have point-of-use water filtration available.

Enhance air filtration with energy savings: Ventilation is associated with thermal comfort and students’ learning outcomes. The ventilation system requires scheduled maintenance or replacement as well as ongoing ventilation adjustment to accommodate the number of students at any one time.

The Built Environment and Childhood Allergic Asthma: Susan Lynch presents potential links between the built environment and childhood allergic asthma.

Hand hygiene program: Hand washing should become an educational priority.

Surface hygiene program: Cleaning Up: Battling Germs in School Facilities.

Our global transportation industry has the ability to move a sick person around the globe. The ability to move disease from continent to continent dramatically increases the spread of disease. Airplanes moved SARS, Ebola and the MERS throughout the world. Our mass transportation systems dramatically help spread disease. Large numbers of people packed into small places increase the bio-loading significantly. Bugs move in sewage, air and as fomites on the surfaces of these platforms. To combat the next pandemic, we need to change how we clean and design our transportation system.

Sewage and antimicrobial resistance: Global spread of antimicrobial resistance in bacterial pathogens is another major threat against human health, yet we don’t know much about how these genes travel and spread worldwide.

Urban Transit systems and bacteria: Mass transit systems host large volumes of passengers and facilitate a constant stream of human/human and human/built environment microbial transmission. The largest urban mass transit system in the United States (that in New York) facilitates an average of 11 million trips per weekday.

Global transportation systems aid in the spread of disease: Future challenges must focus on incorporating information on temporal variations in passenger numbers, stopover risks, intra-species competition, human populations at risk, breeding site availability, possible climate change, disinsection, and land transport, as well as quantifying the relative importance of all types of transport for vector and disease movement.

Mass transit and germs: Mass transit environments, specifically, urban subways, are distinct microbial environments with high occupant densities, diversities, and turnovers, and they are thus especially relevant to public health.

Air quality in mass transportation: The air quality in mass transport buses, especially air-conditioned buses may affect bus drivers who work full time.

Risk assessment for the spread of disease on planes: The resulting disease-specific operational documents provide a host of viable options for decision-makers, particularly when faced with the choice of whether to contact trace air travellers and crew that were potentially exposed to infectious diseases during a flight.

Our prison system is dealing with the rising cost of healthcare just like the rest of us. They also have unique cleaning challenges. Our mandate to care for all, including those locked up, leads to significant health costs. Our program saves significantly in the cost of chemicals. We treat all surfaces and clean them with air filtration, microfiber, and water. Additionally, we use an electronic surveillance system to monitor the temperature of inmates. If we identify a temperature rise, they can be isolated to limit additional exposure to fellow inmates. As the adage goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It is time to attack healthcare costs with wellness.

Infectious diseases in prison: An effective infectious disease strategy is impossible without close collaboration between health care staff and custodial staff.

Legionella discovered at SCI-Pittsburgh: SCI-Pittsburgh at Woods Run discovered higher than acceptable levels of Legionella bacteria in its water cooling tower and its medical building Monday, state prison officials said.

Several San Quentin prison inmates have tested positive for Legionnaires’ disease: Six San Quentin prison inmates have tested positive for Legionnaires’ disease, and more than 50 others are showing early symptoms following an outbreak discovered at the Bay Area prison in August 2015, officials said.

Prisons around the world are reservoirs of infectious disease: Prisoners around the world and people who were formerly incarcerated have a higher burden of HIV and other infectious diseases than the general population, worsening the spread of diseases inside and outside of prison, according to research.

Fungal infection hit prison hard: In the past three years, more than 900 inmates at the prison have contracted the fever, a fungal infection that has been both widespread and lethal.

Skin infections in prison: Skin infections and infestations are common in prison. A change in living conditions and personal hygiene will definitely help in reducing these infections.

We know that computers are not worried about health. So how does HELP support Data Centers? Our filter systems clean the air, that’s how. Dust particles and pollution can settle on circuits and corrode or destroy them. And when our molecule is used on surfaces inside the data center, they are much easier to clean and because of the anti-static barrier. Our filter system has less static pressure than the filters you are using (energy savings), and it cleans the air significantly better. Lastly, our cooling tower filter reduces water usage, requires less maintenance, and reduces chemical consumption. Additionally, we often provide energy savings to the facility. Some benefits:

• Energy savings from the cooling tower filter

• Energy-saving from lower static pressure filters

• Facility cleans faster

• Anti-static floors

• Near dust-free environment (Sub-micron filtration)

The manufacturing environment is very focused on health and safety. Most companies view cleaning as a cost, but we view cleaning as a revenue center. HELP impacts a company’s bottom line. The cost of an illness in any industry costs the company a significant amount of money. Changing hygiene levels directly impacts productivity, absenteeism, presenteeism, and energy cost. Using our program also lowers your cleaning costs. We build infection control programs for all environments to keep your employees healthy and productive. Our programs are scalable for every industry and budget. When using our hygiene program cleaning moves from a cost to a revenue generator. Happy, healthy employees impact your bottom line. Put your numbers through our Benefits Calculator to get a sense of your return on investment. This same program can be used in corporate goodwill programs. If you focused on the schools your employees’ kids attend, it will keep them healthy, too, ensuring they remain in school, helping you to keep your business on schedule. Virtually all companies today have corporate giveback programs. Focusing on hygiene in the local community will further keep the children of your employees healthy. Additionally, you can focus outreach programs so they impact the families of your employees. It is time to start looking at hygiene as a revenue driver.

​​​​​​​HELP addresses absenteeism, presenteeism, and our hygiene program improves productivity. We can build our program into construction and build it into your cleaning program.

Molds impact businesses in numerous ways, affecting customer and employee health and degrading hygiene levels needed to support food safety.

​​​​​​​In the educational system, mold impacts school indoor air quality requirements. For businesses with offices, it affects hygiene and productivity levels of employees and students.