Almost everyone in America has been at least briefly acquainted with an airport. Whether it’s to pick up a loved one, go on a business trip, or fly to a remote island for vacation, airports are packed with many people every hour of every day. This can make it very difficult to keep them clean. However, commercial cleaners work hard to keep these airport areas clean and sanitary for the public. Many airports only hire commercial cleaners once or twice a week, however, and recent findings are showing that that is not enough.
According to a study recently performed, “The presence of microbes in the environment of an airport hasn’t been investigated previously. The new findings support preparedness planning for controlling the spread of serious infectious diseases in airports. The results also provide new ideas for technical improvement in airport design and refurbishment. Airports should improve indoor air quality management and practice more frequent disinfection of the surfaces identified in the study.” Clearly, airports need to be hiring more commercial cleaners and hiring them more often. In the study, they found that many airports not only contained a lot of bacteria, they also contained a lot of pathogens as well. Influenza was one of the most commonly found pathogens in the airport. The only way for these pathogens to be eradicated is for commercial cleaners to do more than just a weekly cleaning.
One of the most infected places in the airport was actually somewhat surprising to researchers. While many people assume that the bathroom would be the dirtiest area in the airport, it was actually the security bins that were the dirtiest. While many airports will pay commercial cleaners to regularly clean bathrooms, these security bins go through a thorough cleaning a lot less often. This could be one of the reasons why a security bin is so much dirtier than a bathroom in the airport.
As you can see, it is time for airports to start hiring more commercial cleaners so that the clients of the airport can stay happy and healthy.