Biohazard Cleanup

Biohazards We Can Handle

FLEET Response’s local companies can handle a wide variety of biohazards, including:

• Blood
• Body fluids
• Feces
• Sewage
• Animal waste and remains

Our local companies can respond to many situations where biohazards might occur, including:

• Floods with sewage and remains
• Backed up sewers
• Suicide or unattended death
• Crime scenes
• Hoarding situations
• Homeless encampments

In addition to cleaning up the biohazards, our local companies can effectively restore any damage to your property caused by the event or required by cleanup.

Why You Shouldn’t Let Your Employees Clean Up Biohazards

While you might trust your employees or your normal janitorial staff to handle most types of spills and messes at your property, when biohazards are involved, it makes more sense to bring in specialty cleaning experts with the training and equipment to safely handle the problem. You shouldn’t let your employees clean up biohazards because:

• It’s unfair to them
• It might violate OSHA standards
• It might expose you to liability
• They might not clean effectively

It’s Unfair to Employees

Unless you included biohazard removal in your employees’ job description, they probably never imagined that they would have to do it. While you might often ask employees to do a little bit more than their normal job duties, some requests can make your employees feel put upon. When employees feel that you don’t respect or value them, they can quit, either leave their jobs or practice “quiet quitting” – letting their productivity diminish to the point where they are no longer good workers.

They might feel justified in talking about the imposition, too, with coworkers and possibly with customers, which can impact the reputation of your business. Disgruntled employees might even report you to OSHA.

It Might Violate OSHA Standards

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) protects workers from numerous workplace hazards, including biohazard exposure. OSHA regulations state that employees should receive proper training and protective equipment for dealing with biohazards. If you don’t provide these resources to your employees before expecting them to clean up biohazards, you might be cited.

It Might Expose You to Liability

Whenever you violate safety codes and knowingly put your employees at risk, you might expose yourself to a potentially catastrophic lawsuit. While worker’s compensation laws generally protect you from getting sued by your employees, some enterprising lawyers work hard to find ways to get around worker’s compensation laws. They might do this by roping in third parties, such as your landlord.

Think of what it would do to your landlord-tenant relationship if your landlord gets sued by your employee. In addition, if an employee gets sick, then passes the contagion on to others, they may sue you, as well as any customers who might get sick because your employee didn’t properly handle the biohazards.

They Might Not Clean Effectively

Finally, employees who aren’t properly trained to deal with biohazards might not clean them properly. This means that the biohazard presence will persist in your business, which might include unpleasant odors or stains. Or the hazard might be silent until your customers start to get sick. It’s best to just make sure that biohazards are properly handled the first time.

Why You Should Trust FLEET Response with Your Biohazard Cleanup

FLEET Response has a network of local companies that are ready to help with your biohazard cleanup. Here’s why you should work with a FLEET Response local company:

• We respond quickly
• We are discreet
• We understand your feelings
• We can handle the entire cleanup
• We can help with your insurance claims

Rapid Response

Every hour a biohazard remains on your property, it is a danger to your employees, customers, and your business. Once you discover a biohazard, you want to work with a specialty cleaning company that can respond very quickly to your call. Our local companies provide 24/7 emergency response services, and they’re prepared to get to your location any time of day or night to start the cleaning process.

Discreet Handling of Your Situation

It’s an unfortunate truth that even a casual linking of your company name with biohazards can have a significant impact on your business. Even after the most thorough cleanup, it can sometimes take years for your business to shed its reputation as “the moldy store” or worse. Having a van with a big biohazard sign on the side show up doesn’t help.

Because our local restoration companies handle many different situations, there’s no need for anyone to associate your business with biohazards. Our local companies will handle the situation as quickly as possible, and, of course, we won’t talk about it, reducing the spread of damaging rumors.

We Approach Your Cleanup with Empathy

We understand that many of these biohazard situations may come with significant emotional impact, and we respect this. Teams from our local companies will be professional and respectful when they arrive. They will avoid language that might be unnecessarily troubling.

Expertise to Handle the Whole Job

Our local companies are full-service restoration companies. They have the expertise to do more than just clean up a biohazard site; they can completely restore your business to its pre-damaged condition. Not only can our local companies clean up the hazardous materials, disinfect, and deodorize, but they can also repair drywall and flooring as well. When they are finished with the job, it will be as if nothing happened.

Easier Insurance Claims

Knowing how to file an insurance claim for these types of biohazard cleanups can be hard. You might not know what type of documentation you need or even how to describe the incident. FLEET Response’s local companies can help you with this. They work with insurance every day, and they understand how to approach these claims.

Our local companies can help you understand what coverage you might have, then properly document the damage and cleanup to the insurance company’s satisfaction so you can get the full compensation you’re due under your policy and get it on time.

The Biohazard Cleanup Process

Biohazard cleanup is generally not a simple task, but FLEET Response’s local companies follow a thorough process to ensure that they always eliminate hazards correctly and completely. Here’s an idea of that sequence, although the process doesn’t always follow all the steps.

1. Inspection and Assessment

The first step in any biohazard cleanup is a thorough inspection of the site. This will allow the experts at our local companies to determine the nature of the biohazard, and the extent of cleanup required. At this point, the inspector will be able to give you an accurate estimate of the cost and the time required to complete the cleanup.

2. Isolation and Safety

Next, the experts at our local companies will work to ensure the safety of your employees and customers. This may mean isolating the area with its own airflow system to keep others from breathing pathogens that may be released. This is important because the cleanup may disturb the area, leading to greater exposure risks. Note that if biohazards have compromised your HVAC system, the experts may have to isolate the entire building.

In addition, our local companies’ teams will always wear proper personal protective equipment (PPE) for dealing with the particular hazard.

3. Biohazard Cleanup

Our local teams know the industry standards for cleaning up each type of biohazard. They will remove dangerous materials and thoroughly clean impermeable surfaces. In areas where biohazards penetrated soft materials, they will evaluate the materials to determine what might be restored and what will have to be disposed of.

During this part of the process, they can reclaim and set aside any valuables you identify as being present at the scene.

4. Removal of Materials That Can’t Be Cleaned

Although many hard and impermeable objects such as metals and plastics may be challenging to clean, there are some objects that simply can’t be cleaned effectively to eliminate health risks. These materials will have to be removed, and may include drywall, carpet, and many furnishings. Our local companies will remove these materials and items to facilitate proper cleaning.

5. Disinfection

Although the biohazard area may look clean at this point, the area isn’t fully ready for reoccupation unless it’s fully disinfected. Disinfection will remove all remaining living microorganisms and viruses that can lead to illness. After disinfection, your team may be able to move back into the area, though there may still be some work to complete.

6. Deodorization

Often, a thorough cleaning is all an area needs to eliminate odors. However, in some cases scent molecules from the biohazard can drift through the air to settle on other surfaces or saturate areas inside the wall, allowing a smell to linger. In these cases, FLEET Response’s local companies have the ability to tackle the source of lingering odors to make sure there is no smell in the air at all.

7. Restoration

If we had to remove materials from the contaminated area, such as drywall, carpet, flooring, studs, joists, or ceiling tiles, our local companies will provide complete restoration. This includes replacing all the removed materials as well as performing any finishing work, such as adding trim and painting.

8. Disposal of Contaminants

Biohazard cleanup isn’t complete until all contaminated materials are disposed of according to professional standards. Typically, this means disposal at a licensed medical incinerator. In addition, laws often require complete documentation of the materials, and some of it may need to be tested first. The experts at our local companies know how to handle each specific type of biohazard.