Two presumptive hantavirus cases were reported this week, on the heels of a cruise-ship outbreak this spring. The cleaning trade keeps being the invisible variable in the public-health story. We have a problem with that.
Two Americans are presumptively positive for hantavirus, Cleaning & Maintenance Management reported this week. The news comes after a cruise-ship outbreak earlier in the spring that drew weeks of national coverage. We're going to be straightforward: the angle that interests us here is not the medical one. It's the trade-press angle Gavin Macgregor-Skinner of ISSA has been pressing on for the past two months, and that we think the window-cleaning side of the trade should care about more than it currently does.
Here is the question Macgregor-Skinner has been asking, and that we'd like to ask too: when an indoor-environment infectious-disease outbreak makes the national news, who gets quoted? The CDC. The state health department. The cruise line or the building owner. The cleaning industry — the people who actually carry out the protocol that prevents the next exposure — almost never appears in the coverage. Even on the basic biohazard cleanup of vomit, blood, urine. Routine work. Trained people do it every day. Nobody covering the story knows that.
This may sound like it has nothing to do with window washing. We'd push back on that. Hantavirus is a respiratory-route exposure, and the indoor-air-quality and surface-cleaning conversation it sits inside is the same conversation that includes pollen, mold, and bioaerosols carried in on exterior glass. The pure-water-fed-pole side of our trade is, when honest about itself, partly an allergen-management service. The interior-finish side absolutely is.
The cleaning trade as a whole — janitorial, biohazard, restoration, window cleaning — has the same visibility problem. When a school district announces a respiratory-illness cluster, the press release names the superintendent. When a hospital opens a new wing, the architect gets the cover photo and the EVS director who has to keep it clean for thirty years is in nobody's database. When a cruise ship's HVAC and surface-cleaning protocols prevent a second wave of cases, that's a non-story; only the first wave gets covered.
Macgregor-Skinner's recommendation — close the knowing-doing gap, work with ISSA to tell the cleaning story before the next outbreak — is the right one, and we'd extend it. Window-cleaning operators who do commercial-route work in hospitals, schools, food-service facilities, and multi-tenant residential are already inside the buildings where indoor-air-quality decisions get made. The trade press for our side of the work is smaller than the janitorial press, but it exists, and we'd like to see more crossover coverage when the public-health story breaks.
The smaller thing the trade can do right now: when a property manager asks about pollen, mold, or seasonal allergen complaints, don't only talk about the glass. Talk about the role of exterior surfaces in the indoor-air story. We're going to start doing that more on this site.
Filed by the Window Washing Guide News Desk. This post reflects the editorial view of Window Washing Guide and is informed by ISSA reporting cited below.
Related background: Is the Cleaning Industry Ready for What's Coming? — CMM ↗