With any luck, you will not ever need the services of a biohazard cleanup company.. The amount of times a person should use a cleaning service with biohazard remediation experience, though, is surprising.
While some biohazard situations are obvious, many might seem like something you can handle yourself. Failing to realize when biohazard cleaning is needed can result in accidental exposure to chemicals, germs, and risk of injury.
Here are a few of the most common situations where professional biohazard cleaning is appropriate.
When Significant Human Blood Is Present
Personal protective equipment (PPE) is enough to keep you safe if you are wiping up small amounts of blood. However, if you are faced with significant amounts, you need to consider hiring a professional. Situations that would require biohazard cleanup include, but are not limited to:
- Suicides or unattended death
- Work or home accidents that cause trauma
- Vehicular accidents
Depending on the situation, exposure to blood can be significant and pervasive. That poses a risk to anyone that has to move through, or live, in that area. Handling these situations yourself means that some blood will get missed or an area will not be properly sanitized.
Sewage and Fecal Matter
Several situations involve human waste or raw sewage and demand a biohazard team to handle the cleanup. Broken pipes, floods, and storm overflow can result in property, basements, and even primary dwelling floors flooding with toxic human waste.
Other situations can create fecal matter emergencies beyond the scope of most people’s knowledge or ability to thoroughly sanitize the affected area. One scenario that often exposes people to fecal matter is caring for the severely ill or elderly.
Bodily Fluids
Many situations lead to bodily fluids being released into a living or working area. Incidents that can cause exposure to bodily fluids include, but are not limited to suicides, homecare for the ill, trauma and violent crimes involving shootings or stabbings.
Hoarding
Hoarding might be one situation where people do not realize the benefit of a biohazard cleanup. Many hoarding situations, however, have discarded food, food containers, sewage, and human waste disposal issues and hidden injury dangers. Potential injuries can come in many forms:
- Punctures
- Scrapes and cuts
- Rick of injury by being struck by a falling object
- Exposure to chemicals
- Mobility challenges that risk turning and breaking legs and ankles
Most people do not realize that a hoarding situation is just as unhealthy and potentially dangerous for the people cleaning the place out as it is for the hoarder. A biohazard cleanup team can address the risk of injuries via punctures, and exposure to sewage, human waste, food, food containers, and chemicals.
Animal Waste
Animal fecal matter can pose a major health risk to anyone inhaling or touching it. Animal waste includes carcasses, fecal matter, blood, and bodily fluids. Even domestic animals could produce a biohazard cleanup incident if left attended.
By far, however, the most significant form of animal waste that needs professional cleaning up, besides animal carcasses, is fecal matter that has collected in an enclosed space. Attics, crawl spaces, garages, rafters, and places within your home that the animal has chewed its way to can be full of animal waste in various forms of decay. The animals that can cause the type of waste include:
- Squirrels
- Bats
- Nesting birds
- Raccoons
- Rats
- Mice
The presence of any of these animals in your house or any other building on your property likely means there is more than one animal and a pile of their waste somewhere.
Presence of Sickness-Causing Agents
Caring for a loved one exposes you to whatever viruses, bacteria, or parasites they might be combatting. Worse, once they are restored to health or moved out of the place you are caring for them, those dangerous entities can linger in bedding and clothes on bathroom surfaces, walls, floors, and furniture.
In some cases, the agent that can make you sick can hold on for a very long period, sometimes days and even weeks, on the surfaces they were deposited. With common illnesses like a cold or flu, cleaning everything by yourself is sufficient. In situations, however, where the victim was ill from more dangerous viruses, bacteria, or viruses, or where an unattended death occured, professional help is required.
Crime Scenes
A crime scene can present several types of situations that require biohazard cleanup. These include unattended deaths like suicide, incidents of trauma, chemicals from meth labs and other drug-producing spaces, exposure to potentially lethal drugs, and removal of “sharps” are just a few of the situations where biohazard cleanup is a good idea.
In some situations, like unattended death or suicide, you might be tempted to handle the cleanup yourself. Doing so can potentially expose you to deadly illnesses the deceased was aware of and other toxins and diseases they did not know about before they passed on.
In addition, the chances of you getting every surface affected sanitized are slim if for no other reason than you do not have a biohazard remediation process performed by trained biohazard cleanup professionals.
How to Get Biohazard Cleanup Help
Biohazard cleanup makes spaces that contain potentially sickening and deadly elements safe. The situations where a biohazard cleanup team is appropriate can be surprising.
If you are unsure whether you should hire a biohazard cleaning team, you should contact Scene Clean today to discuss your options. Erring to the side of caution in these types of situations, however, is not just good advice, it can be life-saving.
