Geerpres® is proud to introduce Brian Morabito as Executive Vice President, Sales & Marketing. In this role, Morabito will focus on company growth through our distribution partners in all Janitorial/Sanitation verticals.
About Brian Morabito
Morabito has more than two decades of experience working in leadership roles where he has built high-performing sales teams and national accounts. He joins Geerpres® from Novalent, Ltd., where he served as Vice President of Sales. In his new role with Geerpres®, Morabito will focus on building a strong sales team to support our developing national business accounts and expanding the product portfolio to continue exceeding our customers’ expectations.
“I am genuinely excited to have Brian join our team. He brings significant distribution and manufacturing selling experience and expertise in the healthcare market to Geerpres®. His leadership presence will help continue our tradition of quality products and solutions in all market verticals.”
The Association for the Health Care Environment (AHE) recently released the COVID-19 EVS Cleaning Essentials Refresher Training Toolkit to help front-line EVS staff combat SARS-CoV-2. If you are a member of AHE, please click on the button below to view information on the following topics.
Training topics include:
The Chain of Infection, including Mode of Pathogen Transmission, Preventing Infection, Cause of Infection, Common Significant Pathogens
Disinfectants
COVID-19 Overview
Required PPE
Cleaning Protocols, including Isolation Boxes, High Touch Surfaces, Emergency Department Cleaning Protocols
Eight laundered microfiber flat mops and one single-use microfiber flat mop were photographed at 20X’s, 40X’s using a 3D stereo microscope and 1,000X’s using a Scanning Electronic Microscope, SEM.
The laundered mops demonstrated significant contamination and microfiber degradation. In some instances, the microfiber in no longer effective since it is shown to be completely melted and containing foreign material. The melted microfiber indicates that the drying process utilized by the laundries is too harsh and irreversibly damaging the microfiber. The process also isn’t able to remove the obvious foreign material in addition to the chemical particulate accumulation.
These photographs support recent findings that the special laundry processes adopted for microfiber are not adequately removing gross soils and chemical build-up that have the potential to harbor microbiological pathogens.
New single-use microfiber provides the only assurance for a microfiber mop and wipe that can assure the elimination of any gross particulate and chemical accumulation the could come off the substrate and/or result in potential cross-contamination.
Geerpres® researchers, Jack McGurk and Dave Harry, contribute their Adventex® Single-use mop findings in the recent CMM article Single-Use Microfiber Mops Usher In Third Wave of Change in Floor Care .
Thomas W. Stewart sparked the first wave of change in floor cleaning when he patented the string mop in 1893. His invention allowed floor cleaners to rise from their hands and knees to a standing position.
The string mop was so successful it became the paradigm for floor care for the next 100 years. Adjunct equipment such as a rolling bucket with mop wringer, a deep sink for emptying the mop bucket, and a custodian’s closet on every facility floor soon followed to assist the new moping process.
The microfiber flat mop ushered in the second wave of change a century later, at the end of the 1990s. The microfiber flat mop was easier to use, utilized 98.6% less water and chemicals, and sped up the cleaning process, as cited in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s paper, “Using Microfiber Mops in Hospitals: Environmental Best Practices for Health Care Facilities.”
The Cleaning Industry Research Institute (CIRI) will hold its 2019 CIRI Science Symposium on July 15-17 at Miami University in Oxford, OH. The theme for the 2019 symposium is “Connecting Research to Practice.”
David Harry will present research on the Microbiological Findings of Laundered Microfiber Mops as documented his case study – From the Floor Up – The Battle to Control HAIs.
David Harry President, Sustainable Scientific Solutions
David Harry of Sustainable Scientific Solutions has 40 years R&D experience formulating cleaning and disinfection products, including personal care, I&I and most recently healthcare as it pertains to tool solutions designed to eliminate Healthcare Acquired Infections (HAI’s). The first 20 years was R&D for surfactant and disinfectant suppliers. Harry retired from Ecolab in 2009 as a senior corporate scientist with six patents. He was responsible for innovation and received two national innovation awards. In addition, he developed a global sustainable cleaning program for Ecolab’s largest customer. The past ten years he has focused on providing smaller companies with targeted R&D projects on chemical product development, international production transfers and/or tool development pertaining to sustainability, health and human safety. His recent microfiber work resulted in two patents, with a third patent pending pertaining to designing disinfectant-compatible microfiber structures.
Presentation Abstract
Prior to 2002, one cotton string mop was used to clean three hospital rooms with three gallons of water and then replenished. The single microfiber flat mop per room concept was introduced in 2002 at UC Davis with EPA research; the goal was to reduce cross-contamination. It became the global standard. Recent research has uncovered that the properties that make microfiber so effective also prevent pathogens from being effectively removed from them.
Microbiological
and scanning electron microscopic (SEM) documentation will be presented that
show current laundry processes which are designed not to damage the microfiber
are allowing pathogens to remain in the microfiber. The situation is compounded
by microfiber’s neutralization of healthcare disinfectants.
