Hygiene First! Theory Bubble Theory of Cleaning
Cleaning is hard work, and cleaning is what we do. Our type of cleaning is different than the cleaning others perform. Our cleaning means to re-clean. Our cleaning also includes demolition. We made decisions and we destroy. What is more cost effective for our client, for ourselves? To clean or to destroy?
Of course, if the responsible party (the guy with the money) wants everything "spotless," so be it as long as they understand that we are now on the clock. It is important to ensure that clients understand that we will do our best, and that we have fees.
When we do demolition it is because destroying objects and parts of buildings must be done. Without doing the demolition, infectious material could be left behind. We have no right to hand property back to its owners, its users, in a bloody state, no matter how well concealed.
Cleaning is hard work, and cleaning is what we do. Our type of cleaning is different than the cleaning others perform. Our cleaning means to re-clean. Our cleaning also includes demolition. We made decisions and we destroy. What is more cost effective for our client, for ourselves? To clean or to destroy?
Of course, if the responsible party (the guy with the money) wants everything "spotless," so be it as long as they understand that we are now on the clock. It is important to ensure that clients understand that we will do our best, and that we have fees.
When we do demolition it is because destroying objects and parts of buildings must be done. Without doing the demolition, infectious material could be left behind. We have no right to hand property back to its owners, its users, in a bloody state, no matter how well concealed.
There are cleaning theories and different cleaning practices.
Hygiene First!
I believe in the cleaning theory called "hygiene first!" and for good reason. Hygiene First! says that the cleaner needs to remain as distant from the object's first cleaning as possible. Sometimes getting distance from the object requires altering it with chemicals, sealing it, or destroying it. Sometime tools on extension polls are used. Gloves are always used as are goggles and nose and mouth shields.
Rarely do I get up close to what I am cleaning, at least not until the third tier. The Hygiene First! theory sounds more like a practice, a method, and it is a practice, but it is still a theory because it helps to explain how and why something is do as it is. By keeping the Hygiene First! cleaning theory in mind, cleaners understand that before they approach any by-product of a homicide, suicide, or unattended death, they are going to be armed with a distance causing device (DCD).
More will fallow shortly on this page. It is the page receiving the most attention at this time.
Scene
A “scene” is almost too perfect for the 21st Century because it is exactly what fits many of today’s worldly philosophers’ ideas about life: Everyone has a story. Stories consist of “scenes,” so we might think of every crime scene as a story in the eyes and minds of the perpetrator (law breaker), victim, police, coroners, family, and cleaners. Everyone has a different story about the scene because everyone sees it differently, has a different take on it, different emotions, different words to explain it. So Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage” sure hit the mark. He certainly knew what a bloody scene meant!
Every scene is different and they all have commonalities. You might guess that planning ahead is very important for this type of cleaning.
Here’s a hypothetical (as if) story to explain what this writer means when saying, "cleanup."
A shotgun murder-suicide occurs. You get the call and bid $4.99. You get the job. You arrive and find blood, snot, and gore everywhere on the scene, which happens to be the master bedroom of a 4 bedroom house. It’s on the second floor, too.
While on the telephone, you ask questions like these:
- Has the coroner released the scene?
- When were the deceased removed?
- What diseases did the deceased have if known?
- When does the job need to be completed?
- Where did this scene occur and does it go beyond xyz? (Never trust the caller’s story because they do not know what is involved, but do ask.)
- When did this event occur?
- Who is the responsible party?
- Who is paying and how and when?
You then arrive at the scene safe-and-sane because you learned the secret to driving from my crime scene cleanup page on the secrect to driving.
You introduce yourself to the responsible party. You offer them a card rather then shake their hand. If they insist on shaking your hand after you hand them your business card, OK, shake their hand. Then explain what you are going to do, how you are going to do it, and what they should expect and not expect when you are “done.” Do not ramble. You will find that you sometimes need to act as a sounding board (more on this later) because they are still trying to figure out what happened and why. Telling their story helps sort things out. Your presence and willingness to listen helps validate their story telling. More on this later.
I will be using the “I” (first person) to share the following information. I chose this personal approach because Crime Scene Cleanup is a person-to-person business and deals with life in its starkest reality - - nature becoming and nature passing away (which I refer to again).
The “ I ” narrator takes responsibility for what he/she writes and the “ I “ perspective is narrower than the third-person narrative, the impersonal, all knowing perspective. Large corporations, the military, and many popular authors use the third person. I am fallible and try to be humble, so I will write like I’m just a dude with a training course.
So I do not claim to know everything and I hope that you do not do so, especially in this business of life-and-death. We try to be humble and once we see what death does to our fragile body, humility should come more easily. Arrogance (self-importance attitude) is for amateurs, anyway.
And I will say this three times: Nothing written here is truth. Nothing written here is truth. Nothing written here is truth.
Find the truth for yourself and be careful doing it. If anything that I have written here helps point you toward the truth of the matter, then good. Always question your thoughts and actions for yourself before doing any activities in Crime Scene Cleanup.
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Odors
Remove source material to begin the odor removal.
For our purposes in this school, I refer to the human decay odor as "miasma." There adantages to using this lable in the field. It sounds like an inoffensive term. It tends to give people a new understanding for something related to death that they were previously afraid to learn about. With this newly learned lable, there is a new learning and a willingness to begin understanding what has occurred. Its use also gives the cleaner something to share without puffing herself (himself) up; the cleaner will now appear more professional.
Every home has its own odores, even odors that many of us cannot detect. Some of these odors grow from cooking ethnic dishes unfamiliar to our sense of smell. Other odors arise from certain cleaning chemicals. Other odors may arise because of the age related odors eminating from infants and the elderly.
So why should we care about any odors other than those related to death?
We should care about any and all odors arising in an indoor environment. Only by understanding how far we need to go in combatting the death odor, miasma (see above link to Wikipedia), will we know now what resources and time to invest on a cleanup.
While cleaning a death or trauma scene, our sense of smell begins to lose its sense of various fragrances after about twenty minutes. By the time that we are ready for our first and possibly only break and debriefing, say twenty minutes, we find it hard to detect miasma and other odors.
We call the death odor "miasma" because miasma was once accociated with a plague in Europe around the 17th Century. No, diseases are not passed by the death odor, but the death odor must be overcome, at least to a passing level to get paid.
Using a fogger is one step toward reducing miasma. Fogging will not destroy the odor in total if it is heavy. Fogging will also allow for some part disinfecting upon solid, or nonporous surfaces.
More to consider.
Products
Disinfecting
Manual sprayers - Disinfecting large areas can be done in a number of ways. For a low budget approach, hand sprayers and garden sprayers are useful, but not desirable. The mist from these sprayers may be harmful.
Fogging
For an investment of about $99 to $500, an entire room can be fogged quickly and easily. A fogger reaches hard to reach areas. It will cause the disinfecting solution to reach all exposed surfaces, given the time and solution. It is hard to beat a good fogger with a good solution for disinfecting.
Ozone
Ozone machines are expensive, and they can be very dangerous. There is really no point in trying to pinch pennies when buying an ozone machine. Without an industrial size ozone machine, large areas cannot be properly disinfected in any reasonable amount of time.
If ozone is needed for a large contaminated area, then it should run 18 to 24 hours. The same applies to using ozone for altering odors. Miasma will either be reduced or vanish to the senses when an industrial ozone machine runs long enough. I like to run my ozone machine for 24 hours. Ozone machines are self-cannibalizing because the ozone circulates bach through the ozone machine’s insides. Ozone’s beauty is that it destroy, oxidizes, bacteria. The irony is that it does the same to is own insides, but only after a long time.
Ozone machines have “elements” for creating lightning-like ozone particles which are blown out of the machine by fans. At least 12 elements should be available in an industrial ozone machine. Be advised that once an element goes, it will cost about $90 to replace it. All elements eventually need to be replaced. I change a minimum $200 to use my machine to “deodorize” vehicles and houses.
Regarding vehicles, an ozone machine can be left outside of a vehicle while ozone is blown into it via 2 inch hoses. In this way the machine is spared its own ozone while creating ozone from fresh air. Of course, security for the machine is an issue. About six hours of ozone will often reduce cigaret smoke quite a bit, if not totally. Never make promises about ozone’s power, and charge a minimum of $200. Many people will baulk at this price, but your machine will cost you about $3000. You cannot afford to give it away.
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