Ok, so who am I to start all of this and offer my advice as a “so called” expert?

As a child, I grew up in this vast industry. In my 40+ years of solving cleaning issues in a multitude of industries, whether it may be healthcare related, industrial cleaning, food service or institutional I have seen it all.

And, if there is something that I don’t know, I am hoping that our visitors will gladly pass along there experiences with certain situations to help educate others as well.

So, it is my pleasure to get this going and I hope to make many new friends along the way.

I will try and keep something new to talk/educate everyone at least once a week, but if there is anything anyone needs help with, please just jump on in and “Let’s get this ball a rollin!”

Information that you need to know about MRSA:

(1) MRSA or Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aures is a strain of staph bacteria that does not respond to penicillin or related antibiotics. MRSA can result in a skin infection and present itself as boils, sores or red swollen skin. More serious illnesses and or death can result if the infection enters the blood stream.

(2) The infection is spread by skin to skin contact or through sharing items such as sports equipment or a towel that has been used by an infected person. People with open wounds are extremely susteptable to MRSA if proper procedures are ignored.

(3) Preventing a MRSA outbreak is not difficult. Of course hand washing is always a key to prevent spreading any infection. Routine cleaning/disinfecting of common contact surfaces using clean or disposable cleaning equipment will prevent cross-contamination. Remember to dispose of any potentially contaminated waste.

Most responsible Janitorial Supply Companies have had disinfectants containing MRSA claims for a while now, but most sales people have not been instructed properly in why it is so important to make their customers aware of these claims and how important it is to pay attention to those areas within their facilities that are suceptable to infectious outbreaks.

Janitorial and custodial staffs really need to pay attention to the “touch areas”  when cleaning. Door handles, locker doors, benches, stairway handrails, restroom dispensers all need to be cleaned and disinfected on a daily basis as these areas represent the cross-contamination items where most infections will be picked up. We should avoid using dirty rags and move to using disposable wipes to assist us in our cleaning especially during flu or disease outbreaks.

A major issue that most sales and custodial staff neglect is to properly read the directions of the products they are using. If a disinfectant says that a 10 minute dwell time is needed to properly kill germs, well we better wet the surface enough with our disinfectant to allow the product to kill the germs. This is where I believe most of us FAIL!

In the end, this MRSA situation probably has been around for a longer time than we really want to admit, but for right now at least we have a name to put towards it. As you can see, it is not difficult to keep MRSA out of our facilities, we just need to take our time, be thorough in our cleaning, have all the proper cleaning supplies available to us and allow the products to do what they were intended to do in the first place.