The ongoing pandemic has made cleaning and disinfecting necessary more than ever before. You might be taking all the precautionary measures to combat this virus, but can still make mistakes while sanitizing and disinfecting your workplace or home.
Disinfecting is more than just spraying and wiping it off. Although disinfecting a place is important to be safe from this virus, any mistake in the process can damage your health. Therefore, you must know the right way to disinfect a place. You can rectify the mistakes, only when you know where it is going wrong. To enable you to check and rectify your disinfecting mistakes, the article explains the most common mistakes people make while disinfecting.
Eyeballing Disinfecting Solutions
Always follow the manual given for the dilution and use of the disinfectant. Measure everything and make a perfect solution. The common tendency is to go light on disinfectants, either due to incorrect measurements or in an attempt to save money by using less product. Both strategies can lead to a solution of disinfectant too weak to perform its job properly.
These naive decisions can make the best disinfectant fail in providing you protection from the virus or germs. You can ensure proper mixing of the product in your facility, by providing the mixing pump or a full dilution system to do the mixing job.
Failing To Reach The Designated Contact Time
In simple words, the surface being cleaned does not remain wet with the disinfectant for the designated time required to achieve complete efficacy. If the product does not remain in contact with the surface for the contact time, it will not do any good except for wasting the product and money.
Ensure the staff members are aware of the contact time of the product being used and let the product stay on the surface for the required time.
Using A Dry Cloth
Contact time for disinfectant means the time the surface needs to stay wet with the disinfectant to achieve cleaning efficacy. No disinfectant kills immediately on contact. If you wet the surface using the spray and immediately wipe it off with a dry cloth, it won’t be effective. This is something all of us are used to doing, even in our homes.
It is all about training a new behavior, making sure the staff members are leaving the disinfectant solution on the surface for the contact time, and then wiping it off. Letting the product air dry on the surface and then wiping for your satisfaction is a better way to go.
Not Knowing The Shelf Life Of The Dilute Disinfectant
Besides knowing the shelf life of the concentrated form of disinfectant. It is important to know how long the dilute solution is good to use. This is important to ensure the solution you are using has enough active particles to work properly.
The in-use dilution shelf-life for the disinfectants might only be 24 hours, a week, or for better, 90 days. The point required is to check the provided manual or label from the manufacturer. To ensure you know how long the dilute solution is good for use.
Mixing Cleaning Chemicals
There are many dangers involved in mixing one chemical with another. There are also chances that mixing various cleaning chemicals will make them ineffective. For example, there is an ample possibility. That you will disturb the potential of your disinfectant by simply adding a scented product to it. Just because you like the smell better.
This ineffective disinfectant increases the chances of pathogen transmission to your staff or animals. You might consider the surface clean after disinfection. But if the disinfectant is inefficient it will leave dangerous pathogens on the surface.
For best practices, always keep one disinfectant in your facility. Or at least train your staff that no matter the circumstances chemicals will not be mixed together.
