So many confuse what the three terms – cleaning, disinfection and sterilization – really mean. People often use them interchangeably, but those that are in the business of rendering crime scene cleaning services know better.
While no one really wishes for it, you might one day find yourself in a position where you need crime scene cleaning services. Just so you understand clearly what they would be doing for you, pay attention to the rest of the article.
Cleaning
Cleaning basically takes care of the visible unwanted materials that are found on the scene. It can be considered as a step taken before the real remediation begins but nonetheless an important step.
The sort of cleaning that is carried out is based on the content of the crime scene at any given time. Cleaning takes care of visible materials such as dirt, dust, food particles, blood, bodily fluids and the likes.
While some scenes would require the use of soaps or some sort of industry power cleaning agent, others would require just water. Some of the recurring equipment that are used in the cleaning process includes towels, vacuum cleaners, mop etc.
Disinfection
The cleaning process aforementioned focuses on eliminating visible unwanted materials. While doing so, some unwanted invisible materials might also be taken care of. Since that isn’t the main objective of cleaning however, it only does so to an extent. Disinfection however, does a more thorough job of that.
Disinfection entails the use of disinfectants or antimicrobial agents to eliminate disease-causing pathogens that can’t be seen by the ordinary eye. These pathogens could be staphylococcus, Hepatitis B and C or fungi among others. In other words, the disinfection process is just the cleaning process again, but this time focused on invisible unwanted materials.
Those who render crime scene cleaning services understand that every scene that contains blood or some other sort of body fluid poses a threat to human health and possibly human life. To this end, the professionals take their job as serious as they can.
Sterilization
While cleaning and disinfecting are recommended for the remediation process, it still doesn’t guarantee the complete elimination of all disease-causing organisms that might have contaminated the scene. The sterilization process applies to any biohazard scene that needs remediation.
Those who render crime scene cleaning services carry out sterilization through a number of way. These include: irradiation, high pressure equipment, filtration or via chemicals. The sort of method employed in sterilizing a scene depends on it contaminants.
Sterilization if efficiently carried out is guaranteed to destroy all pathogens ranging from viruses, bacteria, fungi to spore.
Cleaning a Crime Scene: The Deodorization Process
While the above three mentioned aspects of rendering crime scene cleaning services are considered to be very important, they are not all that cleaning a crime scene entails.
After the processes of cleaning, disinfecting and sterilizing have been carried out, then the process of deodorization begins. This process uses specialized chemicals to remove or mask the offensive odor that blood, bodily fluids and other sorts of biohazards would have generated in the contaminated area.