Odour Management in Buildings
Some odours are caused by a particular event, and can be easily addressed if you can identify the source, physically remove it, thoroughly clean up and adequately ventilate.
On the other hand, invisible persistent odours, can be very problematic to trouble shoot. These types of odours, are a warning sign that something is not right with your indoor environmental quality.
If left unresolved, persistent odours can create long term detrimental term health effects for staff, or residents. Odours can also create negative customer experiences, affect your brand image, and ability to attract customers, and keep them turning up.
Why worry about odours?
Behind every odour, there is a cause for that odour. If not caused by a one off event, odours are likely a result of poor indoor environmental quality (air and surfaces) created by the presence of mould, bacteria, fungi, or yeasts. The cause can be due to sub-optimal cleaning regimes, cleaning products, ventilation and filtration.
One of the most commonly known issues to cause offensive odours is mould, and dealing with it can be tricky. It tends to grow on walls, windows, carpet, furniture, or behind walls. Mouldy, damp or poorly insulated buildings can lead to serious health issues, including respiratory problems or serious diseases like rheumatic fever, especially if there is long term exposure.
Sub-optimal management of air and surfaces quality also leads to higher rates of transmission of bacteria and viruses.
Regardless of the source or cause, what’s most important, is how you properly identify and resolve the problem to avoid health and business related impacts.
We have prepared some helpful tips to help you trouble shoot your odour problems.
1. Ensure you ventilate adequately
Provide adequate ventilation and fresh air by opening windows regularly. If you have a ventilation system installed, checking it is providing sufficient fresh air. Also check all your kitchen and bathroom extraction fans are working correctly to remove moisture from these wet / damp areas. Understand what filters are installed in your ventilation system, and what they are capable of capturing. In most cases, they do a great job at capturing dust and lint to protect the equipment itself. But they are not designed to adequately capture minute airborne particles like bacteria, mould and viruses that are most harmful to our health. If you have no filters, or basic filters, minute microbes can freely distribute throughout your building and cross contaminate areas.
Balance is required between supplying the minimum ventilation required to minimise indoor air contamination, and supplying too much ventilation. The latter can cause other problems, such as temperature control issues, higher electrical costs, and spread microbes faster around your building. Introducing too much outdoor air can also lead too much humid air being supplied, and outdoor air which is contaminated that can create and promote microbial growth (and odours). Therefore, increasing fresh air and ventilation helps, but it is not the entire solution.
2. Ensure you clean adequately
A simple way to keep surfaces clean and avoid everyday odours, is to stay on top of mess and spills everyday. Adequate regular cleaning regimes are important as they can help to minimise microbial colony forming units (CFUs) from multiplying.
As colony forming units multiply they create microbial VOCs. The types of VOCs they can produce includes ammonia, volatile sulfur compounds (VSC), indole and certain volatile amines (including putrescine and cadaverine), which are all products of amino acid utilization for catabolism. The result of this process is the odour you experience.
There are many factors that influence the quality of cleaning, ability to reduce CFUs and odours. Such as the performance of the cleaner, type and dilution of product, contact time, time given to perform the task, frequency, and the ability to clean every single surface.
Additionally a lot of disinfectants are not broad spectrum, meaning they do not remove all of the harmful types of microbes. Alcohol based cleaning products have also been proven to create microbial resistance. So you should ensure you choose the right product for the best results.
Selection of quality cleaning equipment like the Emist EPIX360 or EX7000 can assist with covering more surfaces in less time. This equipment can be used in combination with a natural and highly effective cleaning product such as this surface and hand sanitiser. It is BioGro certified, alcohol free and food grade. In using these products, you can cover more surfaces faster, remove harmful chemical laden cleaning products, and create a healthier indoor environments.
3. Sunlight
When ever possible, keep curtains open to let the sunshine in. Sunlight (UV light) is a natural oxidiser that will help to oxidise microbes and dry out damp or musty rooms. Even during the winter, a sunny day is a perfect opportunity to let the Sunlight to perform its natural oxidisation process.
4. Cooking odours
Cooking with strong spices, or seafood can create lingering odours. The odours may not be apparent to those who have made them and for others they can can be very offensive. Cooking can also create VOC loads. Ensure your kitchen extraction system are operating correctly, and ensure your residents use them to help minimise odours and VOCs.
5. New furniture and other materials
New furniture, carpet, paint, or chemical odours contain chemicals known as Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). Certain products and materials can ‘off-gas’ for many years, creating unpleasant odours and polluting indoor air quality. You can source alternatives like low-VOC or zero-VOC paint that performs just as well as the standard product, and choose natural cleaning products to minimise VOC loads.
6. Avoid cover-ups
When it is not clear what is causing the problem, you may think the best way to resolve it, is to use an air freshener. This is the worse thing you could do, as it not only masks the problem, but many people can react to the strong chemicals in air fresheners, leading to headaches, skin conditions, or develop respiratory problems such as asthma.
Have an appropriately experienced expert check for plumbing leaks, any signs of external water ingress, or signs of rot. Resolving any obvious causes of odours is better than covering it up. There is nothing better than crisp clean air!
7. Tried everything and still have odour problem?
There is another highly effective and proven solution to tackle your problems (odours, microbes and VOCs).
Whist the above recommendations can significantly help, a properly considered indoor environmental strategy that considers all of the factors that make up the full picture of indoor environmental quality, will achieve the best results. Especially in regard to indoor odours and microbial contamination.
This is backed by recent medical studies that have concluded that manual cleaning is only 40-50% effective [1], and surfaces can be re-contaminated in as little as a few hours after manual surface disinfection. The same studies conclude that frequent manual disinfection of surfaces is unlikely to control microbial recontamination effectively, and recommend alternative continuous disinfection strategies and technologies. [2]
This is due to the infrequent nature of cleaning regimes and the inability to clean every surface every day - it is simply not economical. People constantly touch surfaces, and release aerosols when they breathe, cough or sneeze. These aerosols contain microbes which re-contaminate surfaces very rapidly all day long.
Additionally, outdoor contaminates including mould are also constantly introduced into buildings daily through windows, doors, and ventilation systems [3] i.e. introducing fresh air does not necessarily mean you are introducing clean air.
Selecting the right product that can continuously fill in the gaps between what your cleaners, ventilation system and filters miss all day long, is the solution.
So what is the solution?
The use of continuous air and surface purification products, such as the Flex or Induct devices. These devices are designed to continuously eliminate all odours by removing the underlying microbes and VOCs from the air and every single surface at the source. The devices are can be tailored to any sector including healthcare, food production and processing, hotels, schools, gyms, offices, retail and transportation.
Please visit our website to see testimonials from happy customers who use our products and can verify their odour removal efficacy.
Get in touch with our Team today to learn more.
Foot notes:
Boyce 2016
Cambridge University Press - Candida auris Rapidly Recontaminates Surfaces Around Patients’ Beds Despite Cleaning and Disinfection;
https://www.cdc.gov/mold/faqs.htm#:~:text=How%20do%20molds%20get%20in,can%20and%20be%20carried%20indoors.
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