Green Cleaning and Infection Control: An Expert Roundtable Discusses the Issues

Sawchuk: The products are proved safer for people — cleaning staff, patients, doctors, nurses, administrative staff, visitors, etc. The cost-benefit advantages have been proved in many studies — that there are green-certified cleaning products that work as well as or better than traditional products and are cost-competitive for the complete bundle. It is also suggested that hospitals and nursing homes consider looking outside of their buying groups for these types of products. Just as with medical specialists (Would you want your open heart surgery done by a specialist or a general practitioner?), when researching and selecting the green cleaning products, procedures, etc. for your facility, search out local green experts.

Sheldon: Being in the business of executing a healthcare-driven ES service we do not promote any “green” program that would preclude the use of proper disinfectant chemistry in any and all health care environments. The lack of proper aseptic cleaning taking place today in all phases of healthcare facilities demands we address this very real issue in our own built environments. Our objective is and should always remain to reduce the risk of infection in our population by utilizing safe and proven science which includes the use of disinfectant chemistry and advanced soil and matter removal systems.

Additional Resources

Hospitals for a Health Environment offers a 10-Step Guide to Green Cleaning Implementation. This guide addresses policy development, careful selection of products, staff training, standardized operations, adequate equipment and supplies, and monitoring of innovative efforts. The guide can be accessed at:

www.h2e-online.org/docs/h2e10stepgreenclean-r5.pdf