UW News

April 1, 2010

A study in clean: Custodial Services tests cleaning methods, becomes magazine cover story

There’s an experiment being conducted at the University, but it isn’t in a laboratory. It’s in the 320 restrooms on the Seattle campus. The management team of Custodial Services — which is part of Facilities Services — is testing for the presence of organic matter on the “touch surfaces” of the rooms — the faucet handles, towel dispenser handles and so forth. The purpose of the experiment is to determine which cleaning processes are most effective.

It’s all part of a pilot study that tests a system called Integrated Cleaning and Measurement. The idea is, you clean a room using different processes, you test surfaces in the room before and after, and you determine from your tests which cleaning process works the best. The UW is the first university in the country to try out the system, which is what landed the Custodial Services management team on the cover of Executive Housekeeping Today’s March issue.

“We were asked to be part of the pilot study,” said Gene Woodard, director of custodial services. “We did some similar testing back in 2004 and we have a reputation for being thorough.”

The study is sponsored by the International Executive Housekeepers Association, of which Woodard is a member. The work is being coordinated by Allen Rathey, who’s the president of Instruction Link/Jantrain, a training consultant in the cleaning industry. Rathey and others came to the University to train the Custodial Services people on how to do the testing.

The restrooms are one place where the team is testing using a luminometer (three were provided by the study sponsors) to detect ATP. ATP stands for Adenosine Triphosphate, a chemical produced only in living cells. Since ATP is found in organic material, when large amounts of ATP are detected, it strongly suggests an unclean surface. To test, one uses a Q-tip-like device pretreated with a reagent to swab the surface to be tested. The device is then inserted into the luminomenter, which gives a light reading. The larger the reading, the greater the amount of ATP in the sample.

“In the food industry, any reading below 30 is considered sanitary, so that’s a mark we want to hit every time,” Woodard said.

What the team has learned so far is that cleaning a restroom with a restroom cleaning machine is more effective than cleaning it by hand the traditional way. The restroom cleaning machines are like power washers. The worker first sprays the surfaces, then does follow-up cleaning using attachments — it’s a no-touch system. After the surfaces are rinsed, a switch is turned and the machine becomes a vacuum that vacuums the surface that’s just been cleaned.

Although both traditional methods and the machines lower ATP counts to acceptable levels, the machine lowers them further. It is also faster and requires less bending, reaching and scrubbing by the staff. But such systems are expensive — they cost $5,000-$6,000. The UW currently owns 12 of them and uses them for deep cleaning.

“Now that we have this data from the study, we’re going to purchase more of these machines and incorporate them more fully into the cleaning processes ,” Woodard said.

The team is currently beginning to test what’s the best method for cleaning hard surface floors — a dust mop with a microfiber pad or a vacuum cleaner. In this case, the measurement will be of dust particles in the air before and after the cleaning. The University does not have a machine to do the monitoring (these machines cost $5,000 or more and were not provided by the study sponsor), so it is bringing in the equipment from a private company.

This isn’t the first time Custodial Services has been involved with testing. For a number of years they’ve partnered with Environmental Health and Safety to test for asbestos fibers in the air during and after aggressive floor maintenance procedures such as floor stripping. And now for the first time, floor stripping products that are Green Seal certified (environmentally friendly) have been developed, so they’ll be testing to see which ones are most effective and least harmful to air quality.

Woodard said the pilot study, which they began last summer, does not have a definite end. He stresses that the tests are not being done to validate the work of the custodians, but rather to validate the processes being used.

“It’s nice to get some good publicity,” he said of the magazine article. “Hopefully it communicates to the staff that our mission of providing a clean and sanitary environment is not just words. We are a professional department and we’re providing a very important service to this campus.”