by Kent Berg
Like many people in the restoration industry considering expanding into crime and trauma scene bio-recovery, you may want to know about the trends in the marketplace and who your potential competitors are. However, before I tell you where the industry is and where it is going, let’s look at from where it came… In the mid-to-late 1990s, the crime and trauma bio-recovery industry was in its infancy. There were only a handful of companies providing service as full-time dedicated businesses. As these companies began to market themselves and the media began running articles and interviews, budding entrepreneurs took notice, and a small but steady stream of novices entered the industry. The insurance industry also began to recognize the capabilities of trained and certified companies. There were fewer complaints and callbacks from their insureds, and the frequency of “rip and tear” remediation dropped in favor of proper decontamination and disinfection practices.
Today, roughly 12 years into the life of this business, we are seeing families, businesses and industrial customers getting their scenes cleaned up without having to ask untrained and psychologically unprepared employees or family members to undertake these gruesome tasks. But with this influx of new companies has come problems. Since1996 the industry has watched as an incredible influx of new companies try their hand at this unique and macabre business. What was once an open market is rapidly changing. While many areas of the country are still in need of crime scene cleanup companies, many areas are saturated. States like Florida, California, Ohio and New Jersey, and cities like Phoenix, Atlanta, Seattle and Philadelphia are literally teeming with bio-recovery service providers. As more companies enter these markets, there results a dilution of the supply/demand ratio, and thus the newcomers are either going out of business shortly after start-up or they diminish the incomes of the established companies there before them, in turn forcing them to diversify or die. Why is this happening? As a niche market, there are a limited number of scenes that need to be cleaned. Unlike other industries that entice new potential clients to try their services, the bio-recovery industry has to wait for something horrible to happen and either make themselves available or hope for a referral from public safety officials. When there are more bio-recovery companies than horrible events, company owners have to look for other ways to supplement their income. Many companies have entered the fire/water/smoke remediation market, while others have expanded into the mold/lead/asbestos fields. Just as remediation companies have expanded into the crime scene markets, we are seeing many in the crime scene markets enter the traditional abatement/remediation fields in order to survive.
So what is the big attraction of crime scene bio-recovery? The lure of big money, no formal education and low start-up costs has attracted a broad variety of players. Like most industries, the quality of service varies widely. Although the American Bio-Recovery Association (www.americanbiorecovery.com) has gained significant recognition and credibility for many in the industry, there is still a disturbing number of companies who fail to comply with federal and state regulations, have received no formal training or industry certification, or have failed to embrace ethical business practices. Unlike many business owners who see crime scene cleanup as a moral calling to provide a service very similar to funeral homes, others see an opportunity to plunder the coffers of the dead and bereaved, often charging obscene fees for shoddy work. Unfortunately, the public is painfully unaware of what constitutes a good company and often believes that these services are regulated and certified by the government. The greatest problem we face with this industry is that it is unregulated in most states, counties, and municipalities. With the exception of Louisiana, New York City, Florida and California, there are no industry-specific regulations, nor am I currently aware of any government entities in that intend to propose legislation in the foreseeable future. With a lack of governmental oversight, it is often ABRA that gets phone calls from the public, insurance adjusters, lawyers, and state attorneys wishing to “report” unsatisfactory experiences with poor service providers. Some of the more unnerving complaints include such tales as: “When our family walked across the ‘professionally decontaminated’ vinyl tiled kitchen floor, blood spurted up between the tiles splattering our shoes” or “After the crew left, we went to remove a pot of chili from the stove and found a three-inch skull fragment floating on top.” There are also stories of scare tactics like, “They told us that due to the biological hazards of airborne contaminants, all of the home contents had to be disposed of including the china, silverware, appliances, everything, and then weeks later we found most of our belongings being sold at a flea market.” Training has also been a hot issue in the industry. Like the companies who make up the industry, the training offered varies widely. Although ABRA-approved training centers provide highly competent, in-depth training programs with ABRA certification, and a few independent for-profit entities reportedly have a good curriculum, many more companies have popped up offering less-than-stellar training. Many service providers say they are “certified” on their Web sites, but don’t say by whom. Many say they are “OSHA Certified,” but that is simply not true: OSHA does not certify companies to do this type of work, they only provide training in safety regulation compliance. On the bright side, the industry as a whole has established itself as a legitimate and needed service. More and more businesses, industries, public safety agencies and social assistance organizations are recognizing what scientists and psychologists have been saying for years, that qualified cleanup companies relieve families and the public from being exposed to disease hazards as well as the psychological trauma associated with these horrific scenes. In fact, government agencies are beginning to initiate contingency contracts in case something should happen on city, county, or federal property, and many are begin to recognize ABRA. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recognizes ABRA’s position in the industry and has sought its assistance regarding the distribution of OSHA compliance materials to the industry.
So where do we truly stand as an industry? I like to think we are in our adolescent stage, the rebellious, finding-our-own-way stage. As we mature we will see more professionalism, especially as a more savvy public begin to be more discriminating in seeking out a qualified service provider for their scene cleanup. Even as the economy continues its downturn, we know this is an industry that will not go away, and in all probability a recession will, sadly, generate more cleanups. On the other hand, as the U.S. job market becomes weaker and more people lose their jobs to downsizing, they will look for opportunities that appear lucrative, easy to get into, and don’t require a college education. Many will think that crime and trauma scene bio-recovery is the answer. Where they are geographically, ethically, and educationally will determine if they are right.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Old and new viruses spread by air travel, crowding
By Maggie Fox,
Health and Science Editor Maggie Fox, Health And Science Editor
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Tourists traveling by plane and the growth of cities are combining to help new and old infections spread around the world, experts said on Monday.
Health and Science Editor Maggie Fox, Health And Science Editor
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Tourists traveling by plane and the growth of cities are combining to help new and old infections spread around the world, experts said on Monday.
Viruses such as Chikungunya and dengue fever are finding new homes or returning to places where they were eradicated, the researchers told an infectious diseases meeting.
And new methods of diagnosing infections have led to the discovery of dozens of viruses causing often-serious disease.
"As urbanization spread, so did the mosquito," Duane Gubler of the University of Hawaii told a news conference at a joint meeting of the American Society of Microbiology and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Researchers at the Pan American Health Organization told the meeting that dengue fever, which can cause mild illness or deadly hemorrhagic disease, has come back after decades of eradication successes in Latin America.
They said 1.03 million cases of dengue were reported in the 1980s and 2.7 million in the 1990s, but 4.6 million were reported from 2000 to 2007.
The "re-emergence of epidemic dengue is closely associated with global urbanization and global transportation," Gubler said. "Pathogens of all kinds -- many of them actually move in infected people but they also move in infected animals and mosquitoes."
New infections are a threat, as well.
Dr. Ian Lipkin of Columbia University in New York said his lab, using new genetic sequencing techniques, has identified 75 new pathogens -- including a new rhinovirus that has caused serious disease in "scores of children" around the world.
UNDER OUR NOSES
Rhinoviruses are spread person-to-person only and usually cause common colds but this version appears more like severe influenza, Lipkin told the news conference.
"It was literally under our noses and in our noses for a long time," Lipkin said. "It has been found in Asia, Africa, Oceania, North America and Europe," he added. "It clearly is an important pathogen."
Chikungunya virus, which causes painful and sometimes crippling or deadly symptoms, has spread to several new countries in the past two years. One traveler brought it to Italy last year, Gubler noted.
"The same virus was introduced into India and into Sri Lanka, most likely via infected travelers," Gubler said.
Outbreaks of Chikungunya, which originated in Tanzania in 1952 but did not spread much outside of Africa until 2005, have been helped by mutations that let it travel via the Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus.
In 2005 on tiny Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, it infected more than a third of the population -- 266,000 people -- and killed 260 of them.
The virus has spread to Singapore and people who go to neighboring Malaysia to buy durian fruit may be helping to carry it, said Dr. Harold Townson of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in Britain.
"Aedes albopictus is very common in the United States and Caribbean," Townson said. "There are risks it could be introduced here."
And Gubler noted that another species of mosquito, the dengue-carrying Aedes aegypti, is re-emerging in Latin America.
Aedes aegypti is the original carrier of Chikungunya -- whose name comes from a word in the Makonde language of Tanzania describing the stooped stance of victims.
And new methods of diagnosing infections have led to the discovery of dozens of viruses causing often-serious disease.
"As urbanization spread, so did the mosquito," Duane Gubler of the University of Hawaii told a news conference at a joint meeting of the American Society of Microbiology and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Researchers at the Pan American Health Organization told the meeting that dengue fever, which can cause mild illness or deadly hemorrhagic disease, has come back after decades of eradication successes in Latin America.
They said 1.03 million cases of dengue were reported in the 1980s and 2.7 million in the 1990s, but 4.6 million were reported from 2000 to 2007.
The "re-emergence of epidemic dengue is closely associated with global urbanization and global transportation," Gubler said. "Pathogens of all kinds -- many of them actually move in infected people but they also move in infected animals and mosquitoes."
New infections are a threat, as well.
Dr. Ian Lipkin of Columbia University in New York said his lab, using new genetic sequencing techniques, has identified 75 new pathogens -- including a new rhinovirus that has caused serious disease in "scores of children" around the world.
UNDER OUR NOSES
Rhinoviruses are spread person-to-person only and usually cause common colds but this version appears more like severe influenza, Lipkin told the news conference.
"It was literally under our noses and in our noses for a long time," Lipkin said. "It has been found in Asia, Africa, Oceania, North America and Europe," he added. "It clearly is an important pathogen."
Chikungunya virus, which causes painful and sometimes crippling or deadly symptoms, has spread to several new countries in the past two years. One traveler brought it to Italy last year, Gubler noted.
"The same virus was introduced into India and into Sri Lanka, most likely via infected travelers," Gubler said.
Outbreaks of Chikungunya, which originated in Tanzania in 1952 but did not spread much outside of Africa until 2005, have been helped by mutations that let it travel via the Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus.
In 2005 on tiny Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, it infected more than a third of the population -- 266,000 people -- and killed 260 of them.
The virus has spread to Singapore and people who go to neighboring Malaysia to buy durian fruit may be helping to carry it, said Dr. Harold Townson of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in Britain.
"Aedes albopictus is very common in the United States and Caribbean," Townson said. "There are risks it could be introduced here."
And Gubler noted that another species of mosquito, the dengue-carrying Aedes aegypti, is re-emerging in Latin America.
Aedes aegypti is the original carrier of Chikungunya -- whose name comes from a word in the Makonde language of Tanzania describing the stooped stance of victims.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Climate change seen aiding spread of deadly diseases
Tue Oct 7, 3:23 PM ET
BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) - A "deadly dozen" diseases ranging from avian flu to yellow fever are likely to spread more because of climate change, the Wildlife Conservation Society said on Tuesday.
The society, based in the Bronx Zoo in the United States and which works in 60 nations, urged better monitoring of wildlife health to help give an early warning of how pathogens might spread with global warming.
It listed the "deadly dozen" as avian flu, tick-borne babesia, cholera, ebola, parasites, plague, lyme disease, red tides of algal blooms, Rift Valley fever, sleeping sickness, tuberculosis and yellow fever.
"Even minor disturbances can have far reaching consequences on what diseases (wild animals) might encounter and transmit as climate changes," said Steven Sanderson, head of the society.
"The term 'climate change' conjures images of melting ice caps and rising sea levels that threaten coastal cities and nations, but just as important is how increasing temperatures and fluctuating precipitation levels will change the distribution of dangerous pathogens," he said.
"Monitoring wildlife health will help us predict where those trouble spots will occur and plan how to prepare," he said in a statement.
The U.N. Climate Panel says that greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from human use of fossil fuels, are raising temperatures and will disrupt rainfall patterns and have impacts ranging from heatwaves to melting glaciers.
"For thousands of years people have known of a relationship between health and climate," William Karesh of the society told a news conference in Barcelona to launch the report at an International Union for Conservation of Nature congress.
Among phrases, people said they were "under the weather" when ill, he noted.
He said that the report was not an exhaustive list but an illustration of the range of infectious diseases that may threaten humans and animals.
BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) - A "deadly dozen" diseases ranging from avian flu to yellow fever are likely to spread more because of climate change, the Wildlife Conservation Society said on Tuesday.
The society, based in the Bronx Zoo in the United States and which works in 60 nations, urged better monitoring of wildlife health to help give an early warning of how pathogens might spread with global warming.
It listed the "deadly dozen" as avian flu, tick-borne babesia, cholera, ebola, parasites, plague, lyme disease, red tides of algal blooms, Rift Valley fever, sleeping sickness, tuberculosis and yellow fever.
"Even minor disturbances can have far reaching consequences on what diseases (wild animals) might encounter and transmit as climate changes," said Steven Sanderson, head of the society.
"The term 'climate change' conjures images of melting ice caps and rising sea levels that threaten coastal cities and nations, but just as important is how increasing temperatures and fluctuating precipitation levels will change the distribution of dangerous pathogens," he said.
"Monitoring wildlife health will help us predict where those trouble spots will occur and plan how to prepare," he said in a statement.
The U.N. Climate Panel says that greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from human use of fossil fuels, are raising temperatures and will disrupt rainfall patterns and have impacts ranging from heatwaves to melting glaciers.
"For thousands of years people have known of a relationship between health and climate," William Karesh of the society told a news conference in Barcelona to launch the report at an International Union for Conservation of Nature congress.
Among phrases, people said they were "under the weather" when ill, he noted.
He said that the report was not an exhaustive list but an illustration of the range of infectious diseases that may threaten humans and animals.
2 officers at Union County jail diagnosed with MRSA
by Robert E. Misseck/The Star-Ledger
Monday October 06, 2008
Precautionary measures are being implemented at the Union County jail in Elizabeth after two corrections officers were diagnosed with staph infections, authorities said today.
One corrections officer was diagnosed with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) on Sept. 26. Jail administrators were notified of his illness on Sept. 29. The jail was informed of the second infection on Friday, officials said.
The source of the infection is not known, according to county officials, but Brian P. Riordan, director of the Department of Correctional Services, said steps were taken immediately to prevent anyone else at the jail from being infected.
"We are vigilant as always in ensuring that our jail population and our staff are fully protected," he said.
Measures that were undertaken including the reintroduction of the use of bleach, which had been banned by a previous jail administrator, for general cleaning and laundry.
Custodial staff is also washing down and sanitizing all common areas in the non-secure area of the jail and disinfectants are also being used.
Riordan said all staff is being updated on universal precautionary steps, in addition to prior training provided to staff, which have now been instructed to use protective gloves.
The jail administration is also instituting an operational custodial policy to address living area issues and decrease the spread of infections if an inmate is diagnosed with an infectious ailment.
Efforts will also be made to provide "universal precaution education" to all inmates, Riordan said.
He said general operations at the jail are continuing normally while these precautions are undertaken.
According to the New Jersey Department of Health, many staph infections, including MRSA, are mild and do not require treatment with an antibiotic, but some do, jail officials said.
Monday October 06, 2008
Precautionary measures are being implemented at the Union County jail in Elizabeth after two corrections officers were diagnosed with staph infections, authorities said today.
One corrections officer was diagnosed with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) on Sept. 26. Jail administrators were notified of his illness on Sept. 29. The jail was informed of the second infection on Friday, officials said.
The source of the infection is not known, according to county officials, but Brian P. Riordan, director of the Department of Correctional Services, said steps were taken immediately to prevent anyone else at the jail from being infected.
"We are vigilant as always in ensuring that our jail population and our staff are fully protected," he said.
Measures that were undertaken including the reintroduction of the use of bleach, which had been banned by a previous jail administrator, for general cleaning and laundry.
Custodial staff is also washing down and sanitizing all common areas in the non-secure area of the jail and disinfectants are also being used.
Riordan said all staff is being updated on universal precautionary steps, in addition to prior training provided to staff, which have now been instructed to use protective gloves.
The jail administration is also instituting an operational custodial policy to address living area issues and decrease the spread of infections if an inmate is diagnosed with an infectious ailment.
Efforts will also be made to provide "universal precaution education" to all inmates, Riordan said.
He said general operations at the jail are continuing normally while these precautions are undertaken.
According to the New Jersey Department of Health, many staph infections, including MRSA, are mild and do not require treatment with an antibiotic, but some do, jail officials said.
Disinfectants Can Make Bacteria Resistant To Treatment
ScienceDaily (2008-10-06) -- Chemicals used in the environment to kill bacteria could be making them stronger, according to a paper published in the journal Microbiology. Low levels of these chemicals, called biocides, can make the potentially lethal bacterium Staphylococcus aureus remove toxic chemicals from the cell even more efficiently, potentially making it resistant to being killed by some antibiotics.
To read the entire article go to http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081005203059.htm
To read the entire article go to http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081005203059.htm
Saturday, September 6, 2008
New Needle Disposal Law
New law may jeopardize used needle and syringe drop boxes
By Ellie Oleson CORRESPONDENT
Trash hauling can be hazardous, particularly for those at risk of being stuck with a used hypodermic needle. To try to prevent such incidents, the Massachusetts Public Health Council approved regulations banning needles from the residential trash stream as of 2010, but related laws already in effect have some health officials concerned. Several communities have established medical “sharps” collection programs for safe disposal, but one state law could undermine these programs and lead to more carelessly disposed of needles in parks and playgrounds, according to Dr. Leonard E. Morse, health commissioner in Worcester.
The city launched Operation Yellow Box on May 12. Four U.S. Postal Service-grade, heavy metal, securely locked drop boxes painted glossy yellow and funded through the Hoche-Scofield Foundation, are scattered throughout the city: at AIDS Project Worcester on Green Street, the Family Health Center on Queen Street, the Senior Center on Providence Street and Great Brook Valley Health Center on Tacoma Street. Each is identified in English, Spanish and Vietnamese as a needle and syringe drop box. The boxes are emptied weekly by licensed medical waste disposal specialists. “There has been no vandalism or abuse. They are pristine,” said Dr. Morse, after checking the boxes recently. “Since May, we have collected 80 gallons of used syringes that are not on our streets and in our parks in the city,” Dr. Morse said. But the program is in jeopardy, he said. “Unbeknownst to me, the state Legislature issued new laws that require that sharps users put their needles in leak-proof, rigid, puncture-resistant and shatterproof containers. One-third of the 3 billion sharps used outside medical facilities in the United States are used by injection drug abusers. They are not going to put their needles in containers. The Worcester Department of Public Health is concerned about careless disposal of needles in our parks, playgrounds and streets.” Dr. Morse said that “many loose syringes and needles have been deposited” in the yellow boxes. “This law defeats the purpose of our collection. If that law is upheld, the program will be a complete failure. We will continue to collect used needles and will seek an amendment to the law. The next generation should not see hypodermic needles on the streets and parks as part of their normal habitat.” “If used syringes and needles were packaged as the new law requires, it would be perfectly safe to dispose of them in the municipal waste stream,” he said. Massachusetts Department of Public Health spokeswoman Donna E. Rheaume said no comment was received at the public hearing or during the comment period on the law or regulations placing restrictions on the types of containers that may be used for sharps. “We are aware of concerns expressed subsequent to the public hearing by Project Yellow Box,” she said. “Millions of needles end up in the trash every week” in Massachusetts, said Ms. Rheaume. Hopefully, soon most sharps will end up in safety kiosks instead of household trash, she said. The Massachusetts Public Health Council approved regulations in June 2008 which ban the disposal of sharps in household waste as of July 1, 2010, said Ms. Rheaume. The DPH encourages communities to set up sharps collection programs and has purchased 30 kiosks for placement in HIV-AIDS prevention, education and treatment centers to help encourage safe disposal of sharps in cities. DPH has offered three of its funded syringe disposal kiosks to Worcester and is waiting to hear from the city, Ms. Rheaume said. Dr. Morse said the first of the new kiosks just arrived in the city and will be used. He said he would like to place additional yellow boxes at the Willis Center on Chandler Street, the Division of Public Health office on Meade Street and at two retail pharmacies. Auburn just launched its sharps collection program last week, when it opened a sharps kiosk in Town Hall. The kiosk was to move to its permanent location in the CVS pharmacy at 676 Southbridge St. on Aug. 26. Andrew R. Pelletier, director of public health in Auburn, said he “fully supported Dr. Morse’s beneficial service to Worcester,” but that in Auburn, the problem is more with legally used medical sharps than with drug abusers’ needles. “I don’t want to take anything away from the Worcester program, and I would stand with Dr. Morse in his attempts to protect the citizens of Worcester. In Auburn, we have the ability to tell everyone to put the needles in the individual containers we will supply before disposing of them in our kiosk,” Mr. Pelletier said. Amy M. Urevich, health inspector in Auburn, said that as more medical procedures require at-home injections and tests, the number of syringes, lancets and hypodermic needles in the trash “can be alarming.” She said that those living with diabetes, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, fertility problems or other health issues might require several injections or blood tests per day, each time with a new needle or lancet. “We don’t want people putting their sharps in coffee cans or laundry detergent bottles that can end up in the recycling. We have free individual one-quart or one-gallon sharps containers people can take home, use, then dispose of in the kiosk when full and take home a new container,” Ms. Urevich said. “The containers are not childproof and should be kept out of reach of children. They are not for knives or razor blades.” The cost of the Auburn program is being funded by the Auburn trash and recycling company Casella Waste Services, which hired Aftermath Cleaning Co., a licensed crime-scene cleaner, to empty the kiosk. The Auburn Chamber of Commerce, Lions Club of Auburn and Harmon Home Health of Worcester donated 600 individual sharps containers for the program. “Instead of telling people what they can’t do, we want to tell them what they can do, safely and legally,” Mr. Pelletier said. Nancy E. Allen, director of public health in Shrewsbury, said her community has had a sharps disposal program in place for several years. The large sharps container is in the Health Department’s Town Hall office. Medical Waste Disposal Co. regularly removes the sharps from the container. All sharps must be in individual containers, which the health department will provide, if necessary. “The program costs the town about $400 per year. It’s worth it to protect people on the trash trucks from hazardous exposure,” Ms. Allen said. Robert M. Stodolski, municipal account manager for Central Mass Disposal Inc. in Auburn, said his trash haulers are told to “be aware” while working. “People are stuck on rare occasions. I worked on the back of a truck and I have the scars to prove it. It’s like driving down the road in a car. It can be hazardous.” Dr. Morse said one custodian in the city was clearing a trash chute in a multistory housing complex when he was stuck by a needle. “He was treated against HIV-AIDS for six months and was very frightened.” If a trash hauler, custodian or anyone is stuck, the source of the needle is found and the person responsible for putting it in the trash or the municipality responsible for the trash is contacted, if possible. There can be serious consequences. According to state law, “improper disposal of infectious or physically dangerous medical or biological waste may result in penalties of up to $25,000 or two years in a correction facility.”
By Ellie Oleson CORRESPONDENT
Trash hauling can be hazardous, particularly for those at risk of being stuck with a used hypodermic needle. To try to prevent such incidents, the Massachusetts Public Health Council approved regulations banning needles from the residential trash stream as of 2010, but related laws already in effect have some health officials concerned. Several communities have established medical “sharps” collection programs for safe disposal, but one state law could undermine these programs and lead to more carelessly disposed of needles in parks and playgrounds, according to Dr. Leonard E. Morse, health commissioner in Worcester.
The city launched Operation Yellow Box on May 12. Four U.S. Postal Service-grade, heavy metal, securely locked drop boxes painted glossy yellow and funded through the Hoche-Scofield Foundation, are scattered throughout the city: at AIDS Project Worcester on Green Street, the Family Health Center on Queen Street, the Senior Center on Providence Street and Great Brook Valley Health Center on Tacoma Street. Each is identified in English, Spanish and Vietnamese as a needle and syringe drop box. The boxes are emptied weekly by licensed medical waste disposal specialists. “There has been no vandalism or abuse. They are pristine,” said Dr. Morse, after checking the boxes recently. “Since May, we have collected 80 gallons of used syringes that are not on our streets and in our parks in the city,” Dr. Morse said. But the program is in jeopardy, he said. “Unbeknownst to me, the state Legislature issued new laws that require that sharps users put their needles in leak-proof, rigid, puncture-resistant and shatterproof containers. One-third of the 3 billion sharps used outside medical facilities in the United States are used by injection drug abusers. They are not going to put their needles in containers. The Worcester Department of Public Health is concerned about careless disposal of needles in our parks, playgrounds and streets.” Dr. Morse said that “many loose syringes and needles have been deposited” in the yellow boxes. “This law defeats the purpose of our collection. If that law is upheld, the program will be a complete failure. We will continue to collect used needles and will seek an amendment to the law. The next generation should not see hypodermic needles on the streets and parks as part of their normal habitat.” “If used syringes and needles were packaged as the new law requires, it would be perfectly safe to dispose of them in the municipal waste stream,” he said. Massachusetts Department of Public Health spokeswoman Donna E. Rheaume said no comment was received at the public hearing or during the comment period on the law or regulations placing restrictions on the types of containers that may be used for sharps. “We are aware of concerns expressed subsequent to the public hearing by Project Yellow Box,” she said. “Millions of needles end up in the trash every week” in Massachusetts, said Ms. Rheaume. Hopefully, soon most sharps will end up in safety kiosks instead of household trash, she said. The Massachusetts Public Health Council approved regulations in June 2008 which ban the disposal of sharps in household waste as of July 1, 2010, said Ms. Rheaume. The DPH encourages communities to set up sharps collection programs and has purchased 30 kiosks for placement in HIV-AIDS prevention, education and treatment centers to help encourage safe disposal of sharps in cities. DPH has offered three of its funded syringe disposal kiosks to Worcester and is waiting to hear from the city, Ms. Rheaume said. Dr. Morse said the first of the new kiosks just arrived in the city and will be used. He said he would like to place additional yellow boxes at the Willis Center on Chandler Street, the Division of Public Health office on Meade Street and at two retail pharmacies. Auburn just launched its sharps collection program last week, when it opened a sharps kiosk in Town Hall. The kiosk was to move to its permanent location in the CVS pharmacy at 676 Southbridge St. on Aug. 26. Andrew R. Pelletier, director of public health in Auburn, said he “fully supported Dr. Morse’s beneficial service to Worcester,” but that in Auburn, the problem is more with legally used medical sharps than with drug abusers’ needles. “I don’t want to take anything away from the Worcester program, and I would stand with Dr. Morse in his attempts to protect the citizens of Worcester. In Auburn, we have the ability to tell everyone to put the needles in the individual containers we will supply before disposing of them in our kiosk,” Mr. Pelletier said. Amy M. Urevich, health inspector in Auburn, said that as more medical procedures require at-home injections and tests, the number of syringes, lancets and hypodermic needles in the trash “can be alarming.” She said that those living with diabetes, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, fertility problems or other health issues might require several injections or blood tests per day, each time with a new needle or lancet. “We don’t want people putting their sharps in coffee cans or laundry detergent bottles that can end up in the recycling. We have free individual one-quart or one-gallon sharps containers people can take home, use, then dispose of in the kiosk when full and take home a new container,” Ms. Urevich said. “The containers are not childproof and should be kept out of reach of children. They are not for knives or razor blades.” The cost of the Auburn program is being funded by the Auburn trash and recycling company Casella Waste Services, which hired Aftermath Cleaning Co., a licensed crime-scene cleaner, to empty the kiosk. The Auburn Chamber of Commerce, Lions Club of Auburn and Harmon Home Health of Worcester donated 600 individual sharps containers for the program. “Instead of telling people what they can’t do, we want to tell them what they can do, safely and legally,” Mr. Pelletier said. Nancy E. Allen, director of public health in Shrewsbury, said her community has had a sharps disposal program in place for several years. The large sharps container is in the Health Department’s Town Hall office. Medical Waste Disposal Co. regularly removes the sharps from the container. All sharps must be in individual containers, which the health department will provide, if necessary. “The program costs the town about $400 per year. It’s worth it to protect people on the trash trucks from hazardous exposure,” Ms. Allen said. Robert M. Stodolski, municipal account manager for Central Mass Disposal Inc. in Auburn, said his trash haulers are told to “be aware” while working. “People are stuck on rare occasions. I worked on the back of a truck and I have the scars to prove it. It’s like driving down the road in a car. It can be hazardous.” Dr. Morse said one custodian in the city was clearing a trash chute in a multistory housing complex when he was stuck by a needle. “He was treated against HIV-AIDS for six months and was very frightened.” If a trash hauler, custodian or anyone is stuck, the source of the needle is found and the person responsible for putting it in the trash or the municipality responsible for the trash is contacted, if possible. There can be serious consequences. According to state law, “improper disposal of infectious or physically dangerous medical or biological waste may result in penalties of up to $25,000 or two years in a correction facility.”
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Cleaning Up After Violent Deaths in Florida
By JILL SHATZEN Special to The Sun
BRANDON KRUSE/The Gainesville Sun
BRANDON KRUSE/The Gainesville Sun
Crystal Pinkston and her husband Dan Pinkston own Accident Cleaners Inc., a business that specializes in cleaning up after a death — the blood, fluids, etc. — so that grieving families don’t have to.
Dan and Crystal Pinkston say they lead as normal a life as they can, given their occupation. But when their business gets the call to clean up a mess, we’re not talking an ordinary mess.
Their business is Accident Cleaners Inc., a trauma and crime scene cleanup service that Dan, 37, has owned and operated since 2001 and now shares with his wife, Crystal, 25.
Their business is Accident Cleaners Inc., a trauma and crime scene cleanup service that Dan, 37, has owned and operated since 2001 and now shares with his wife, Crystal, 25.
Their job is to clean up the aftermath of a death — the blood, fluids, etc. — so that grieving family members don’t have to. The glossy brochure they place into the hands of their heartbroken clients displays photos of sad faces and words like, “Compassion in Crisis” and “You repair your heart, let us repair your home.” And that’s what they do.
“You’ve got to be careful,” Dan said. “You don’t want to use the word ‘understand’ because you don’t understand. So we try to be as polite as we can be and get the job done fast and quick so they can get on with their healing.”
The unusual business idea was the brainchild of Dan Pinkston, who, after working as a firefighter with the Ocala Fire Department for more than a decade, said he began to see a trend. He said many times he would be on a job where casualties occurred and the family members would look to the firemen to clean up the mess.
“The thing is, the fire department doesn’t do it, the police department doesn’t do it, so the family members were left to clean it up,” he said, before Crystal added, “They really had no choice.”
That’s when Dan Pinkston said he realized that there was a demand for a business that would do the job that no one wanted to do, and do it in a sensitive, compassionate way. He traveled to Boston in 2001 to take a week-long class to become certified by the American Bio-Recovery Association but found he had already fulfilled many of the requirements through the fire department.
That’s when Dan Pinkston said he realized that there was a demand for a business that would do the job that no one wanted to do, and do it in a sensitive, compassionate way. He traveled to Boston in 2001 to take a week-long class to become certified by the American Bio-Recovery Association but found he had already fulfilled many of the requirements through the fire department.
After being in business for about four years, Dan met Crystal through a set-up by a mutual friend, and the two were married in October 2007. For Crystal Pinkston, taking on the business wasn’t as big of a shock as it could have been.
“I was in the janitorial services business before we met,” she said. “I started my own business and had it for about five years or so, and he was in this business already, so it was just kind of transferring over to a different kind of cleaning.”
The Pinkstons said that while business has steadily increased since they began in 2001, there are limits to the number of calls they receive. On average, they said they receive about two calls per month, and added that several have been high-profile crimes.
“We’re not living in Miami or New York,” Dan said. “We don’t have the crime that those areas have. We stay busy, but it’s not going off the charts and we’re happy about that.” Crystal agreed, saying, “You don’t just sit around and pray for business by any means. Business is good, but we don’t want to encourage anyone.”
Both said that sometimes it’s hard not to take the job home with them. Dan said the hardest job he has ever had to do was clean up after the suicide of a 12-year-old boy. For Crystal, it’s the homicides that hit her the hardest.
“In a homicide you have to think about the fact that someone was murdered,” she said. “They were taken by surprise; it was not their free will to come in and have this happen to them. It’s difficult for me just seeing how someone struggled trying to stay alive in these cases.”
Still, they maintain that being in it together is what helps them through.
Still, they maintain that being in it together is what helps them through.
“It just all goes back to helping people,” Dan said. “That’s why you do it.”
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Experts say anthrax buildings can be cleaned, but will people go back?
Though anthrax has turned American Media Inc.'s Florida headquarters into a 70,000-square-foot white elephant and workers are reluctant to return, experts in decontamination say there are new products that can make such buildings safe again.
"I, personally, would go into the building," says general counsel Mike Kahane, whose office was located in the three-story Boca Raton center that housed six of the nation's largest tabloids. "But I know many people don't feel the same way I do."
American Media is looking for new quarters while company officials consider putting the building up for sale. But experts say they can deal with anthrax-contaminated buildings, noting that no one would dream of abandoning such landmarks as the U.S. Senate office building and NBC headquarters at New York's 30 Rockefeller Plaza just because traces of the deadly bacteria were found there.
"You can't walk away from these buildings all over the United States," says Joan Dougherty, president of AA Trauma Cleanup in Pompano, Fla., an environmental cleanup company.
If the old reliable bleach and water method were the only thing available, it would be nearly impossible to clean up all the anthrax without gutting the affected areas. But people in the decontamination business are pinning their hopes on a new product developed at a government laboratory with congressional backing.
Officials are conducting tests on a bacteria-killing agent developed by Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., which is run by Lockheed Martin Corp. for the Department of Energy. The product, known in the industry as the "SNL formulation," can be used as a liquid, gel, foam, aerosol or fog.
Anthrax spores are 1-5 microns in size and act like a hard shell for the bacteria. They are resistant to heat, cold, drought and radiation exposure, and can persist for decades or longer in soil.
The Sandia product is designed to break down the protective coating and attack the DNA. Ron Gospodarski, president of Bio-Recovery Corp. in New York City, says anthrax spores tend to clump and settle on surfaces, where this decontamination agent can reach them.
"These spores can't burrow themselves into walls and can't burrow themselves into the flooring or the ceiling or anything like that," he says. "So when we come in and fog or we come in and foam or we come in and put topical applications of the SNL formulation, it's going to kill everything that's there."
AMI employees are worried about anthrax in the air ducts and on computer keyboards, like the one used by deceased photo editor Robert Stevens. Gospodarski says the fog particles are smaller than the spores and can go anyplace anthrax can.
"We're pushing that into all the little crevices that even the micron spores of anthrax couldn't fit," he says.
EnviroFoam Technologies Inc. of Huntsville, Ala., one of two companies licensed to market the product, is consulting with officials in New York, Washington and Florida. Kevin Irvine, the company's manager of technical sales, says the product is being tested on the anthrax strain recovered from Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office.
Irvine says he's seen the product work in laboratories, and he's confident it can make workplaces safe. "I'd stake my life on it -- and I may have to," says Irvine, an Army chemical corps veteran.
The trouble is, there is no government protocol for certifying a building, once decontaminated, as 100 percent safe.
"You would actually have to almost verify every centimeter of that office, and that's virtually impossible," says Brian Kalamanka, president and CEO of Modec Inc., a Denver company also licensed by Sandia. "It's identifying it, treating it and then verifying. And there is nothing available today on a widescale basis."
Kalamanka says it could be costly to treat these buildings. But not reoccupying them would be like letting the perpetrators "accomplish their goal."
In the end, it's going to take a cost/benefit analysis to determine which buildings are reoccupied, and which are torn down, says Dr. Arnold Schecter, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Dallas.
Schecter was commissioner of public health for Broome County, N.Y., in 1981, when a transformer fire contaminated an 18-story state office building with deadly dioxin and PCBs. The state decided it would be cheaper to clean up than tear down; it took 13 years and $53 million, and trace amounts of the chemicals still turn up in tests.
While dioxins are a chemical contaminant and anthrax is a biological one, Schecter says the same principles apply.
"They can be cleaned up sufficiently for reuse," he says. "There's also the economic and the emotional side of the equation. ... I mean, the $53 million for one 18-story building in Binghamton, N.Y., many years ago is a rather staggering amount of money."
Cleanup at AMI in Florida is a moot point for now; the building is still an active crime scene.
Even if the $4.6 million structure could be fogged, Kahane says a "significant number of employees don't want to go back."
Others may soon be facing these same questions. Three Florida post offices have shown traces of anthrax, and there have been several other exposures -- including the 7-month-old son of an ABC News producer in New York.
Gospodarski and a team were planning to enter the ABC News offices at Central Park West to do some precautionary cleanup. They were armed with the old standard -- 10 percent bleach solution.
Despite his confidence in the emerging technology, Gospodarski says he can understand why people would be afraid.
"That's like saying, 'OK, let's rebuild the World Trade Center towers,'" he says.
"But does anybody want to have that office on the 102nd floor? I don't think many hands would go up."
"I, personally, would go into the building," says general counsel Mike Kahane, whose office was located in the three-story Boca Raton center that housed six of the nation's largest tabloids. "But I know many people don't feel the same way I do."
American Media is looking for new quarters while company officials consider putting the building up for sale. But experts say they can deal with anthrax-contaminated buildings, noting that no one would dream of abandoning such landmarks as the U.S. Senate office building and NBC headquarters at New York's 30 Rockefeller Plaza just because traces of the deadly bacteria were found there.
"You can't walk away from these buildings all over the United States," says Joan Dougherty, president of AA Trauma Cleanup in Pompano, Fla., an environmental cleanup company.
If the old reliable bleach and water method were the only thing available, it would be nearly impossible to clean up all the anthrax without gutting the affected areas. But people in the decontamination business are pinning their hopes on a new product developed at a government laboratory with congressional backing.
Officials are conducting tests on a bacteria-killing agent developed by Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., which is run by Lockheed Martin Corp. for the Department of Energy. The product, known in the industry as the "SNL formulation," can be used as a liquid, gel, foam, aerosol or fog.
Anthrax spores are 1-5 microns in size and act like a hard shell for the bacteria. They are resistant to heat, cold, drought and radiation exposure, and can persist for decades or longer in soil.
The Sandia product is designed to break down the protective coating and attack the DNA. Ron Gospodarski, president of Bio-Recovery Corp. in New York City, says anthrax spores tend to clump and settle on surfaces, where this decontamination agent can reach them.
"These spores can't burrow themselves into walls and can't burrow themselves into the flooring or the ceiling or anything like that," he says. "So when we come in and fog or we come in and foam or we come in and put topical applications of the SNL formulation, it's going to kill everything that's there."
AMI employees are worried about anthrax in the air ducts and on computer keyboards, like the one used by deceased photo editor Robert Stevens. Gospodarski says the fog particles are smaller than the spores and can go anyplace anthrax can.
"We're pushing that into all the little crevices that even the micron spores of anthrax couldn't fit," he says.
EnviroFoam Technologies Inc. of Huntsville, Ala., one of two companies licensed to market the product, is consulting with officials in New York, Washington and Florida. Kevin Irvine, the company's manager of technical sales, says the product is being tested on the anthrax strain recovered from Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office.
Irvine says he's seen the product work in laboratories, and he's confident it can make workplaces safe. "I'd stake my life on it -- and I may have to," says Irvine, an Army chemical corps veteran.
The trouble is, there is no government protocol for certifying a building, once decontaminated, as 100 percent safe.
"You would actually have to almost verify every centimeter of that office, and that's virtually impossible," says Brian Kalamanka, president and CEO of Modec Inc., a Denver company also licensed by Sandia. "It's identifying it, treating it and then verifying. And there is nothing available today on a widescale basis."
Kalamanka says it could be costly to treat these buildings. But not reoccupying them would be like letting the perpetrators "accomplish their goal."
In the end, it's going to take a cost/benefit analysis to determine which buildings are reoccupied, and which are torn down, says Dr. Arnold Schecter, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Dallas.
Schecter was commissioner of public health for Broome County, N.Y., in 1981, when a transformer fire contaminated an 18-story state office building with deadly dioxin and PCBs. The state decided it would be cheaper to clean up than tear down; it took 13 years and $53 million, and trace amounts of the chemicals still turn up in tests.
While dioxins are a chemical contaminant and anthrax is a biological one, Schecter says the same principles apply.
"They can be cleaned up sufficiently for reuse," he says. "There's also the economic and the emotional side of the equation. ... I mean, the $53 million for one 18-story building in Binghamton, N.Y., many years ago is a rather staggering amount of money."
Cleanup at AMI in Florida is a moot point for now; the building is still an active crime scene.
Even if the $4.6 million structure could be fogged, Kahane says a "significant number of employees don't want to go back."
Others may soon be facing these same questions. Three Florida post offices have shown traces of anthrax, and there have been several other exposures -- including the 7-month-old son of an ABC News producer in New York.
Gospodarski and a team were planning to enter the ABC News offices at Central Park West to do some precautionary cleanup. They were armed with the old standard -- 10 percent bleach solution.
Despite his confidence in the emerging technology, Gospodarski says he can understand why people would be afraid.
"That's like saying, 'OK, let's rebuild the World Trade Center towers,'" he says.
"But does anybody want to have that office on the 102nd floor? I don't think many hands would go up."
The Corpse Is Gone; Enter Quietly the Cleaners
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
Published: November 23, 1999
Once cadavers and evidence are removed from a typical crime scene, the police and paramedics drive away, leaving a traumatized family and an opportunity for a delicate enterprise now quietly evident across the land.
''The family just went through this horrific event and now they have to clean up, too?'' Becky Della-Rodolfa said, describing the rationale of her private Philadelphia business that specializes in the cleaning and repairing of the aftermath of homicides, suicides and other mayhem.
More than 200 such companies have been started in urban areas in recent years, according to a Washington lobbying association that is seeking government standards for an industry that practitioners find fraught with public health and professional concerns.
''We need standard ethics and procedural rules for a business that is growing by leaps and bounds,'' said Ron Gospodarski, president of the lobbying group, the American Bio-Recovery Association. The three-year-old association serves an industry that is thriving on the fact that government agencies generally make no provision to clean up the scenes of traumatic deaths.
An exception is Phoenix, where the municipal government has contracted with Dale Cillian, an industry pioneer with 15 years' experience, to clean up after biohazardous crimes and accidents, from homicides to car crashes.
''We should be under the same standards as the funeral industry,'' Mr. Cillian said, warning that fly-by-night operators have been appearing more frequently.
His business, Biopro LLC, has cleaned more than 5,000 crime and accident scenes using high-tech equipment and medical-waste-disposal techniques that the national association wants established as a government requirement.
''I was a paramedic for 18 years,'' Mr. Gospodarski said. He runs a cleanup company in the New York City area that routinely deals with blood-borne and airborne contaminants at scenes of violent deaths or deaths that are not immediately discovered. His workers, wearing protective gear, move in after the police and rip out floorboards and wall panels in tracking the flow of wastes.
''A lot of us got into it from public safety jobs because we got tired of seeing families shocked in the midst of tragedy as they watched cops and medics just strip off their gloves and walk away,'' Mr. Gospodarski said.
He noted the premium on speed in his business, citing one overnight cleanup at a New York restaurant where four people were shot to death. ''An eight-hour job, very messy, blood trails on the walls through the place, and the manager was very, very grateful we could be there within 30 minutes,'' Mr. Gospodarski said of his company, the Bio-Recovery Corporation.
Ms. Della-Rodolfa started her business, Trauma Scene Restoration, when she heard a friend who was a police officer talk of the frustration of leaving shocked families behind after a death. ''I don't think society knows this type of industry exists,'' she said, describing the largely unadvertised manner of the business in which a funeral director, medical examiner or sympathetic ambulance driver might inform a family of a local specialist.
''Restoring the scene and peace of mind'' is the motto of Ms. Della-Rodolfa's small company, as printed in an advertisement in the local yellow pages under House Cleaning. It is embossed as well on packets of golf tees that she distributes at police and medical examiners' conventions. ''They love golf,'' she said.
''We can't call up troubled families -- that would be unethical ambulance chasing,'' Ms. Della-Rodolfa declared as she dealt with a new job. It involved cleaning the home of an elderly recluse who had died alone in a house knee-deep in trash, with 12 cats left unattended for six weeks.
This job will cost $30 an hour and require some messy labor, she estimated. Other jobs at scenes of violence or extended decomposition, with potentially infectious blood and other waste, cost $100 an hour.
She has a staff of three full-time workers with others on call. They use an array of disposable clothing and respirators, and subcontract with a medical-waste company to burn all corpse-related residue.
This precaution is something that Mr. Gospodarski would like to see made a government regulation.
He described a job in the Bronx involving a man whose body was found two weeks after death and who turned out to have had hepatitis and been H.I.V.-positive. Effluvia had seeped into the apartment below, creating a potentially nightmarish situation that local health officials knew nothing about, Mr. Gospodarski said.
Beyond violent deaths, decomposition cases involving people who died alone and neglected make up half of his business, Mr. Gospodarski said.
In Phoenix, Mr. Cillian, who is a firefighter, obtained a general contractor's license to qualify for the dismantling and repairing that can be required at a noisome crime scene. Jobs average about $350, but chaotic crime scenes can cost thousands, he said, noting that he does pro bono work in cases of hardship.
''There's a lot of shootings out here, and the scene at one of them looked like a war zone,'' he said of a recent shootout between a police officer and his killer. ''A hundred rounds were fired; the place was pocked like a movie set.'' When he heard that the police officer's grieving family members wanted to see the scene, Mr. Cillian said, he had all the bullet-torn doors and blood-stained surfaces removed or covered to spare them extra trauma.
Some states, including New York, offer crime victims up to $2,500 for their expenses, and lately trauma cleanup costs have been accepted, Mr. Gospodarski said. But home insurance claims are more open to dispute, as in instances of suicide, Ms. Della-Rodolfa said.
''That can mean the second trauma,'' she said. ''This is when a family must relive the first one all over again by cleaning it up.''
Published: November 23, 1999
Once cadavers and evidence are removed from a typical crime scene, the police and paramedics drive away, leaving a traumatized family and an opportunity for a delicate enterprise now quietly evident across the land.
''The family just went through this horrific event and now they have to clean up, too?'' Becky Della-Rodolfa said, describing the rationale of her private Philadelphia business that specializes in the cleaning and repairing of the aftermath of homicides, suicides and other mayhem.
More than 200 such companies have been started in urban areas in recent years, according to a Washington lobbying association that is seeking government standards for an industry that practitioners find fraught with public health and professional concerns.
''We need standard ethics and procedural rules for a business that is growing by leaps and bounds,'' said Ron Gospodarski, president of the lobbying group, the American Bio-Recovery Association. The three-year-old association serves an industry that is thriving on the fact that government agencies generally make no provision to clean up the scenes of traumatic deaths.
An exception is Phoenix, where the municipal government has contracted with Dale Cillian, an industry pioneer with 15 years' experience, to clean up after biohazardous crimes and accidents, from homicides to car crashes.
''We should be under the same standards as the funeral industry,'' Mr. Cillian said, warning that fly-by-night operators have been appearing more frequently.
His business, Biopro LLC, has cleaned more than 5,000 crime and accident scenes using high-tech equipment and medical-waste-disposal techniques that the national association wants established as a government requirement.
''I was a paramedic for 18 years,'' Mr. Gospodarski said. He runs a cleanup company in the New York City area that routinely deals with blood-borne and airborne contaminants at scenes of violent deaths or deaths that are not immediately discovered. His workers, wearing protective gear, move in after the police and rip out floorboards and wall panels in tracking the flow of wastes.
''A lot of us got into it from public safety jobs because we got tired of seeing families shocked in the midst of tragedy as they watched cops and medics just strip off their gloves and walk away,'' Mr. Gospodarski said.
He noted the premium on speed in his business, citing one overnight cleanup at a New York restaurant where four people were shot to death. ''An eight-hour job, very messy, blood trails on the walls through the place, and the manager was very, very grateful we could be there within 30 minutes,'' Mr. Gospodarski said of his company, the Bio-Recovery Corporation.
Ms. Della-Rodolfa started her business, Trauma Scene Restoration, when she heard a friend who was a police officer talk of the frustration of leaving shocked families behind after a death. ''I don't think society knows this type of industry exists,'' she said, describing the largely unadvertised manner of the business in which a funeral director, medical examiner or sympathetic ambulance driver might inform a family of a local specialist.
''Restoring the scene and peace of mind'' is the motto of Ms. Della-Rodolfa's small company, as printed in an advertisement in the local yellow pages under House Cleaning. It is embossed as well on packets of golf tees that she distributes at police and medical examiners' conventions. ''They love golf,'' she said.
''We can't call up troubled families -- that would be unethical ambulance chasing,'' Ms. Della-Rodolfa declared as she dealt with a new job. It involved cleaning the home of an elderly recluse who had died alone in a house knee-deep in trash, with 12 cats left unattended for six weeks.
This job will cost $30 an hour and require some messy labor, she estimated. Other jobs at scenes of violence or extended decomposition, with potentially infectious blood and other waste, cost $100 an hour.
She has a staff of three full-time workers with others on call. They use an array of disposable clothing and respirators, and subcontract with a medical-waste company to burn all corpse-related residue.
This precaution is something that Mr. Gospodarski would like to see made a government regulation.
He described a job in the Bronx involving a man whose body was found two weeks after death and who turned out to have had hepatitis and been H.I.V.-positive. Effluvia had seeped into the apartment below, creating a potentially nightmarish situation that local health officials knew nothing about, Mr. Gospodarski said.
Beyond violent deaths, decomposition cases involving people who died alone and neglected make up half of his business, Mr. Gospodarski said.
In Phoenix, Mr. Cillian, who is a firefighter, obtained a general contractor's license to qualify for the dismantling and repairing that can be required at a noisome crime scene. Jobs average about $350, but chaotic crime scenes can cost thousands, he said, noting that he does pro bono work in cases of hardship.
''There's a lot of shootings out here, and the scene at one of them looked like a war zone,'' he said of a recent shootout between a police officer and his killer. ''A hundred rounds were fired; the place was pocked like a movie set.'' When he heard that the police officer's grieving family members wanted to see the scene, Mr. Cillian said, he had all the bullet-torn doors and blood-stained surfaces removed or covered to spare them extra trauma.
Some states, including New York, offer crime victims up to $2,500 for their expenses, and lately trauma cleanup costs have been accepted, Mr. Gospodarski said. But home insurance claims are more open to dispute, as in instances of suicide, Ms. Della-Rodolfa said.
''That can mean the second trauma,'' she said. ''This is when a family must relive the first one all over again by cleaning it up.''
Local Bio-Recovery Firm Cleans Up Anthrax In Manhattan
Toledo, OH.
November 8, 2001:
It started with crime and trauma scene remediation, bird and rodent droppings, uninhabitable dwellings and toxic mold abatement. Now you can add anthrax to the list. Bio-Recovery Services' owner, Fred Schutt, returned from Manhattan last Monday after a grueling three-day and night stretch of decontaminating anthrax spores. The building, in midtown Manhattan, is part of Rockefeller Center on the Avenue of Americas. It is home to the New York Post and Fox News, among others. Bio-Recovery Services provided labor and additional equipment, such as HEPA filtered negative pressure air scrubbers, HEPA vacuums, respirators, cyclone foggers, and decontamination foam licensed by the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.
Mr. Schutt worked closely with Ron Gospodarski of Bio-Recovery Corporation of Woodside, NY, who also performed the decontamination work for ABC Studios in Manhattan. Both are members of the American Bio-Recovery Association. Gospodarski is a Past President and Schutt holds a chair on the Board of Directors. Mr. Schutt also received a Proclamation for Citizen of the Month from the City of Toledo's Mayor, Carty Finkbeiner and gratitude from New York City Mayor, Rudy Gulliani.
November 8, 2001:
It started with crime and trauma scene remediation, bird and rodent droppings, uninhabitable dwellings and toxic mold abatement. Now you can add anthrax to the list. Bio-Recovery Services' owner, Fred Schutt, returned from Manhattan last Monday after a grueling three-day and night stretch of decontaminating anthrax spores. The building, in midtown Manhattan, is part of Rockefeller Center on the Avenue of Americas. It is home to the New York Post and Fox News, among others. Bio-Recovery Services provided labor and additional equipment, such as HEPA filtered negative pressure air scrubbers, HEPA vacuums, respirators, cyclone foggers, and decontamination foam licensed by the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.
Mr. Schutt worked closely with Ron Gospodarski of Bio-Recovery Corporation of Woodside, NY, who also performed the decontamination work for ABC Studios in Manhattan. Both are members of the American Bio-Recovery Association. Gospodarski is a Past President and Schutt holds a chair on the Board of Directors. Mr. Schutt also received a Proclamation for Citizen of the Month from the City of Toledo's Mayor, Carty Finkbeiner and gratitude from New York City Mayor, Rudy Gulliani.
CLEAN SWEEP
Clean Sweep
09/ 27/ 2005
by Jodie Davis
Most entrepreneurs don’t think it’s good for business to hear reports of anthrax, terrorism and rising crime. Unless, that is, you’re Ron Gospodarski, a licensed paramedic and owner of Bio-Recovery Corporation, a professional crime-scene cleaner in Woodside, N.Y.While working as the operations manager for the New York City district attorney’s office, Gospodarski started researching potential businesses. "I remembered going to these crime scenes and seeing the paramedics throw their dirty gloves on the street after responding to an accident, and I thought, 'Somebody has to clean this up."Working out of an office in his bedroom, Gospodarski started Bio-Recovery Corp. in 1996 with less than a $10,000 investment. Today, he owns several cleaning trucks and has six full-time employees and a slew of part-time and on-call workers.So what’s a day in the life of a professional cleaner like? "We deal with a lot of gory stuff, from blood and body fluids to anthrax, bio-virus cleanups and mold remediation," says Gospodarski, whose revenues have risen by 450% since starting nine years ago.But cleaning isn’t limited to crime scenes anymore. Bio-Recovery Corp. also performs routine clean-room sanitation for surgical centers and does structural drying and mold remediation for flood-damaged buildings. He even cleans cruise ships contaminated with the Norwalk virus, a foodborne disease that can spread quickly on ships."We’ve expanded into markets we never thought we’d get involved in," Gospodarski says. “Our customers know we have the best knowledge base to handle almost any hazardous clean-up--so they use us instead of traditional remediation companies.“The best thing about this business is that it’s sort of recession proof,” Gospodarski says. “Whether the economy is up or down, there are always situations that involve dangerous bodily fluids, viruses and biohazards. And, there’s a sense of fulfillment that comes from the work. Someone’s got to snuff out nasty organisms that threaten the public.”
09/ 27/ 2005
by Jodie Davis
Most entrepreneurs don’t think it’s good for business to hear reports of anthrax, terrorism and rising crime. Unless, that is, you’re Ron Gospodarski, a licensed paramedic and owner of Bio-Recovery Corporation, a professional crime-scene cleaner in Woodside, N.Y.While working as the operations manager for the New York City district attorney’s office, Gospodarski started researching potential businesses. "I remembered going to these crime scenes and seeing the paramedics throw their dirty gloves on the street after responding to an accident, and I thought, 'Somebody has to clean this up."Working out of an office in his bedroom, Gospodarski started Bio-Recovery Corp. in 1996 with less than a $10,000 investment. Today, he owns several cleaning trucks and has six full-time employees and a slew of part-time and on-call workers.So what’s a day in the life of a professional cleaner like? "We deal with a lot of gory stuff, from blood and body fluids to anthrax, bio-virus cleanups and mold remediation," says Gospodarski, whose revenues have risen by 450% since starting nine years ago.But cleaning isn’t limited to crime scenes anymore. Bio-Recovery Corp. also performs routine clean-room sanitation for surgical centers and does structural drying and mold remediation for flood-damaged buildings. He even cleans cruise ships contaminated with the Norwalk virus, a foodborne disease that can spread quickly on ships."We’ve expanded into markets we never thought we’d get involved in," Gospodarski says. “Our customers know we have the best knowledge base to handle almost any hazardous clean-up--so they use us instead of traditional remediation companies.“The best thing about this business is that it’s sort of recession proof,” Gospodarski says. “Whether the economy is up or down, there are always situations that involve dangerous bodily fluids, viruses and biohazards. And, there’s a sense of fulfillment that comes from the work. Someone’s got to snuff out nasty organisms that threaten the public.”
Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
ANDERSON COOPER 360 DEGREES
Aired December 9, 2005 - 22:00 ET
KING: Lots of cleaning companies make house calls. But you don't want these guys showing up at your door. These cleaners make a living from the dead. Their specialty, crime scenes. Gruesome but never dull. CNN's Randi Kaye has more but first, we must warn you, some of the images you are about to see are quite graphic.(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the dead of night, Neal Smither arrives at a California hotel. Then quietly slips inside this hotel room. Unsure what he'll find inside. But he knows it won't be good. Neal is a crime scene cleaner.
NEAL SMITHER, OWNER, CRIME SCENE CLEANERS: This is pretty typical.
KAYE: Typical and gruesome. This hotel room bathroom streaked with blood. The bathtub full of bloody water. Someone died here just hours earlier. And it's Neal's job to clean it up. Quickly and quietly to preserve the hotel's reputation.(on camera): So now having surveyed the scene here ...
SMITHER: It's not bad. This is a fairly typical, you know, knife suicide. Razor blade situation. Generally there is more in the main room and around the door because they freak out and go, what have I done and try to call for help. And in this case it doesn't look like that happened.
KAYE (voice-over): Neal got the idea to start Crime Scene Cleaners from the movie "Pulp Fiction."
SMITHER: I watched "Pulp Fiction" and they killed the guy in the car and brought the Wolf in and cleaned it.
HARVEY KEITEL, ACTOR: You're Jimmy, right? This is your house?
QUENTIN TARANTINO, ACTOR AND DIRECTOR: Sure is.
KEITEL: I'm Mr. Wolf. I solve problems.
SMITHER: Did some research and here we are.
KAYE: Ten years later, Crime Scene Cleaners has offices in 18 cities and grosses more than $7 million a year. In the San Francisco area alone, Neal's company cleans up as many as 350 trauma scenes a month. Suicides, murders, natural deaths, drug overdoses, you name it. The work has hardened Neal.
SMITHER: You know? You have to be able to deal with it somehow, I guess. With me, I couldn't care less. You want to blow your brains out? It's fine with me. Just make sure you have my number.
KAYE: Neal gets to work. First suiting up and then cleaning up.
SMITHER: So I'm going to bag the stuff in the way initially. Probably going to hit the plunger on the tub.
KAYE: While he cleans, Neal recounts past jobs like a best of sports wrap.Tell us some of the worst things you have encountered.
SMITHER: Well, it -- it kind of doesn't work that way. You know? It is kind of you have a like a world series of 10 in your head. Probably for me, was a guy that broke into his wife's house while she was away on business in Japan. And proceeded to kill himself in her bed. By time I got there, the bed was the Shroud of Turin and it was walking across the floor and it was black with flies. It was like stepping on Wheaties. That was radical. That was a good one.
KAYE: Memories like that have taken their toll. Neil is getting burnt out. But not so much from the dead. As from the living.
SMITHER: What bothers me most in my dealing with day-to-day stuff, the deaths that are involved the next of kin. Without a doubt. They disgust me in most cases. We get there, we're cleaning grandma's puddle and cousins and extended family who are there fighting over the belongings.
KAYE: In the motel room, the person died alone. No family, just the remains of a tragedy. In the tub, Neal finds the razor blade the victim used to cut the wrists.
SMITHER: That's our honey.
KAYE: For the average job, Neal Charges $100 to $1,000. Making him a very well paid janitor.(on camera): Which may explain why more companies like Crime Scene Cleaners are starting up. The American Bio-Recovery Association, a non-profit organization that certifies clean scene cleaning technicians says there are about 500 crime scene cleaning companies in the United States. Almost a decade ago, there were less than 12.
(voice-over): Ron Gospodarski was a paramedic in New York City for 23 years before starting the Bio-Recovery Corporation. So bothered by what was left behind at crime scenes after bodies removed, syringes, flesh, fingerprint dust, he decided to do something about it.
RON GOSPODARSKI, OWNER, BIO-RECOVERY CORPORATION: This is the hardest part.
KAYE: We tagged along with Ron to this Queens apartment where a man had collapsed. He'd been here for days before police found him. Ron was called in to clean up after the man was taken to the hospital.
GOSPODARSKI: The smell is pretty -- pretty grotesque, honestly. Because it's a lot of - it's mixture of trash, dirty trash and padded down and mixed with human feces and urine and food stuffs and things of that nature. And you can tell just by the bugs and stuff crawling around and it's pretty nasty. They've been -- the bugs and stuff have been eating pretty well.
KAYE: Ron and his team clean for eight hours. By the time it's all over, they fill this giant dumpster with trash. For this cleanup, Ron will charge $7,000. It's good money.
GOSPODARKSI: But the worst it is, the better off we like it. The better we are because we can charge more and more people don't want to do it. So there are not a lot of people out there that do this.
KAYE: But for Ron, it's about more than just cash. For is survivors, Ron is a shoulder to cry on.
GOSPODARSKI: You're the saviors. You're the guys coming in. You're going in where nobody else wants to and it's pretty amazing.
KAYE: Back in California, Neal has the hotel bathroom sparkling in about an hour. Thanks to a special enzyme cleaner that eats away the blood.(on camera): I can check into the hotel room tomorrow, you cleaned the bathroom. I have no idea what's gone on in here.
SMITHER: That's the whole idea. The client doesn't want you to know. Yet they need it done safely. Liability dictates they must get it done safely. So it's ideal. We come. Get it done quickly, quietly. Safely.
KAYE: And nobody ever knows.
SMITHER: No one ever knows.
KAYE (voice-over): And if he does it right, what we don't know won't hurt us. Randi Kaye, CNN, San Francisco
Aired December 9, 2005 - 22:00 ET
KING: Lots of cleaning companies make house calls. But you don't want these guys showing up at your door. These cleaners make a living from the dead. Their specialty, crime scenes. Gruesome but never dull. CNN's Randi Kaye has more but first, we must warn you, some of the images you are about to see are quite graphic.(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the dead of night, Neal Smither arrives at a California hotel. Then quietly slips inside this hotel room. Unsure what he'll find inside. But he knows it won't be good. Neal is a crime scene cleaner.
NEAL SMITHER, OWNER, CRIME SCENE CLEANERS: This is pretty typical.
KAYE: Typical and gruesome. This hotel room bathroom streaked with blood. The bathtub full of bloody water. Someone died here just hours earlier. And it's Neal's job to clean it up. Quickly and quietly to preserve the hotel's reputation.(on camera): So now having surveyed the scene here ...
SMITHER: It's not bad. This is a fairly typical, you know, knife suicide. Razor blade situation. Generally there is more in the main room and around the door because they freak out and go, what have I done and try to call for help. And in this case it doesn't look like that happened.
KAYE (voice-over): Neal got the idea to start Crime Scene Cleaners from the movie "Pulp Fiction."
SMITHER: I watched "Pulp Fiction" and they killed the guy in the car and brought the Wolf in and cleaned it.
HARVEY KEITEL, ACTOR: You're Jimmy, right? This is your house?
QUENTIN TARANTINO, ACTOR AND DIRECTOR: Sure is.
KEITEL: I'm Mr. Wolf. I solve problems.
SMITHER: Did some research and here we are.
KAYE: Ten years later, Crime Scene Cleaners has offices in 18 cities and grosses more than $7 million a year. In the San Francisco area alone, Neal's company cleans up as many as 350 trauma scenes a month. Suicides, murders, natural deaths, drug overdoses, you name it. The work has hardened Neal.
SMITHER: You know? You have to be able to deal with it somehow, I guess. With me, I couldn't care less. You want to blow your brains out? It's fine with me. Just make sure you have my number.
KAYE: Neal gets to work. First suiting up and then cleaning up.
SMITHER: So I'm going to bag the stuff in the way initially. Probably going to hit the plunger on the tub.
KAYE: While he cleans, Neal recounts past jobs like a best of sports wrap.Tell us some of the worst things you have encountered.
SMITHER: Well, it -- it kind of doesn't work that way. You know? It is kind of you have a like a world series of 10 in your head. Probably for me, was a guy that broke into his wife's house while she was away on business in Japan. And proceeded to kill himself in her bed. By time I got there, the bed was the Shroud of Turin and it was walking across the floor and it was black with flies. It was like stepping on Wheaties. That was radical. That was a good one.
KAYE: Memories like that have taken their toll. Neil is getting burnt out. But not so much from the dead. As from the living.
SMITHER: What bothers me most in my dealing with day-to-day stuff, the deaths that are involved the next of kin. Without a doubt. They disgust me in most cases. We get there, we're cleaning grandma's puddle and cousins and extended family who are there fighting over the belongings.
KAYE: In the motel room, the person died alone. No family, just the remains of a tragedy. In the tub, Neal finds the razor blade the victim used to cut the wrists.
SMITHER: That's our honey.
KAYE: For the average job, Neal Charges $100 to $1,000. Making him a very well paid janitor.(on camera): Which may explain why more companies like Crime Scene Cleaners are starting up. The American Bio-Recovery Association, a non-profit organization that certifies clean scene cleaning technicians says there are about 500 crime scene cleaning companies in the United States. Almost a decade ago, there were less than 12.
(voice-over): Ron Gospodarski was a paramedic in New York City for 23 years before starting the Bio-Recovery Corporation. So bothered by what was left behind at crime scenes after bodies removed, syringes, flesh, fingerprint dust, he decided to do something about it.
RON GOSPODARSKI, OWNER, BIO-RECOVERY CORPORATION: This is the hardest part.
KAYE: We tagged along with Ron to this Queens apartment where a man had collapsed. He'd been here for days before police found him. Ron was called in to clean up after the man was taken to the hospital.
GOSPODARSKI: The smell is pretty -- pretty grotesque, honestly. Because it's a lot of - it's mixture of trash, dirty trash and padded down and mixed with human feces and urine and food stuffs and things of that nature. And you can tell just by the bugs and stuff crawling around and it's pretty nasty. They've been -- the bugs and stuff have been eating pretty well.
KAYE: Ron and his team clean for eight hours. By the time it's all over, they fill this giant dumpster with trash. For this cleanup, Ron will charge $7,000. It's good money.
GOSPODARKSI: But the worst it is, the better off we like it. The better we are because we can charge more and more people don't want to do it. So there are not a lot of people out there that do this.
KAYE: But for Ron, it's about more than just cash. For is survivors, Ron is a shoulder to cry on.
GOSPODARSKI: You're the saviors. You're the guys coming in. You're going in where nobody else wants to and it's pretty amazing.
KAYE: Back in California, Neal has the hotel bathroom sparkling in about an hour. Thanks to a special enzyme cleaner that eats away the blood.(on camera): I can check into the hotel room tomorrow, you cleaned the bathroom. I have no idea what's gone on in here.
SMITHER: That's the whole idea. The client doesn't want you to know. Yet they need it done safely. Liability dictates they must get it done safely. So it's ideal. We come. Get it done quickly, quietly. Safely.
KAYE: And nobody ever knows.
SMITHER: No one ever knows.
KAYE (voice-over): And if he does it right, what we don't know won't hurt us. Randi Kaye, CNN, San Francisco
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Virus outbreak traced to restaurant worker
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
LEXINGTON, NC — A norovirus outbreak that sickened at least 31 people who ate at the Bar-B-Q Center recently has been traced to a restaurant employee who had been caring for a sick family member, according to WGHP-TV.
Cleaners thoroughly disinfected the restaurant after the illnesses were first reported, the story stated.
The owner of the restaurant told the station he will work extra hard to ensure there is no repeat outbreak at his restaurant, the story noted.
LEXINGTON, NC — A norovirus outbreak that sickened at least 31 people who ate at the Bar-B-Q Center recently has been traced to a restaurant employee who had been caring for a sick family member, according to WGHP-TV.
Cleaners thoroughly disinfected the restaurant after the illnesses were first reported, the story stated.
The owner of the restaurant told the station he will work extra hard to ensure there is no repeat outbreak at his restaurant, the story noted.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
NYC Has New Crime Scene Cleanup Legislation
CRIME-SCENE CLEANUP HELP
By FRANKIE EDOZIEN
December 12, 2007
It took six years, but the City Council finally passed a bill that established guidelines for the cleanup of grisly crimes scenes.
City Councilman Mike Nelson was stunned some years ago when a shootout on a south Brooklyn street left blood and guts spattered on a sidewalk and the stairs of a constituent's home.
The owner simply hosed it down but the stain remained.
"There were no rules. It was biohazardous and I was surprised to find out it just could stay there forever," said Nelson (D-Brooklyn).
Once Mayor Bloomberg signs the bill, homeowners in that situation will be able to call 311 to get information on how to clean up their property or recommendations on which companies can do it.
By FRANKIE EDOZIEN
December 12, 2007
It took six years, but the City Council finally passed a bill that established guidelines for the cleanup of grisly crimes scenes.
City Councilman Mike Nelson was stunned some years ago when a shootout on a south Brooklyn street left blood and guts spattered on a sidewalk and the stairs of a constituent's home.
The owner simply hosed it down but the stain remained.
"There were no rules. It was biohazardous and I was surprised to find out it just could stay there forever," said Nelson (D-Brooklyn).
Once Mayor Bloomberg signs the bill, homeowners in that situation will be able to call 311 to get information on how to clean up their property or recommendations on which companies can do it.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Hantavirus Deaths Rare
By CHELSEA KROTZER
The hantavirus that is believed to have killed Ellensburg Police Sgt. Nelson Ng is deadly but fairly rare, according to an epidemiologist with the state Department of Health. Humans get the disease from contact with infected rodents, particularly deer mice. The hantavirus is usually transmitted through droppings and urine of rodents and can get into the air.“Most people don’t realize cleaning up rodent droppings is a threat to health,” said Rebecca Baer, an epidemiologist with the state Department of Health. There is no cure, vaccine or treatment for hantavirus and one third to half the people who get the disease die, according to the federal Center for Disease Control.There have been 35 cases of hantavirus infection in Washington, with 11 resulting in death, since 1993, said Baer. The last death occurred in 2006 in Okanagon County, she said. There have been no other Kittitas County hantavirus infections or deaths, she said.
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The figures don’t include Ng’s case, which hasn’t been confirmed by the state Department of Health as being caused by hantavirus. Yakima County coroner Maurice Rice performed an autopsy and found that Ng died of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. The state will conduct its own antibody tests to determine if Ng died of hantavirus. Hantavirus was discovered in the United States in 1993 in the Four Corners area of the Southwest. According to the CDC, early symptoms include fatigue, fever and muscle aches, especially in the large muscle groups-thighs, hips, back, and sometimes shoulders. These symptoms are universal. There may also be headaches, dizziness, chills, and abdominal problems, such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. About half of all HPS patients experience these symptoms.
People who have been around rodents and have symptoms of fever, deep muscle aches, and severe shortness of breath, are advised to see a doctor immediately. They should be sure to tell the doctor that they have been around rodents, which will alert the physician to look closely for any rodent-carried disease, such as HPS.
What should I do if I think I have been exposed to mouse droppings?
The hantavirus that is believed to have killed Ellensburg Police Sgt. Nelson Ng is deadly but fairly rare, according to an epidemiologist with the state Department of Health. Humans get the disease from contact with infected rodents, particularly deer mice. The hantavirus is usually transmitted through droppings and urine of rodents and can get into the air.“Most people don’t realize cleaning up rodent droppings is a threat to health,” said Rebecca Baer, an epidemiologist with the state Department of Health. There is no cure, vaccine or treatment for hantavirus and one third to half the people who get the disease die, according to the federal Center for Disease Control.There have been 35 cases of hantavirus infection in Washington, with 11 resulting in death, since 1993, said Baer. The last death occurred in 2006 in Okanagon County, she said. There have been no other Kittitas County hantavirus infections or deaths, she said.
advertisement
The figures don’t include Ng’s case, which hasn’t been confirmed by the state Department of Health as being caused by hantavirus. Yakima County coroner Maurice Rice performed an autopsy and found that Ng died of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. The state will conduct its own antibody tests to determine if Ng died of hantavirus. Hantavirus was discovered in the United States in 1993 in the Four Corners area of the Southwest. According to the CDC, early symptoms include fatigue, fever and muscle aches, especially in the large muscle groups-thighs, hips, back, and sometimes shoulders. These symptoms are universal. There may also be headaches, dizziness, chills, and abdominal problems, such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. About half of all HPS patients experience these symptoms.
People who have been around rodents and have symptoms of fever, deep muscle aches, and severe shortness of breath, are advised to see a doctor immediately. They should be sure to tell the doctor that they have been around rodents, which will alert the physician to look closely for any rodent-carried disease, such as HPS.
Precautions to use when working, hiking, or camping outdoors
· Avoid coming into contact with rodents and rodent burrows or disturbing dens (such as pack rat nests).
· Air out cabins and shelters, then check for signs of rodent infestation. Do not sweep, use the guidelines for disinfecting cabins or shelters before sleeping in them.
· Do not pitch tents or place sleeping bags near rodent droppings or burrows.
· If possible, do not sleep on the bare ground. Use tents with floors or a ground cloth.
· Keep food in rodent-proof containers.
· Handle trash according to site restrictions and keep it in rodent-proof containers until disposed of.
· Do not handle or feed wild rodents.
· Avoid coming into contact with rodents and rodent burrows or disturbing dens (such as pack rat nests).
· Air out cabins and shelters, then check for signs of rodent infestation. Do not sweep, use the guidelines for disinfecting cabins or shelters before sleeping in them.
· Do not pitch tents or place sleeping bags near rodent droppings or burrows.
· If possible, do not sleep on the bare ground. Use tents with floors or a ground cloth.
· Keep food in rodent-proof containers.
· Handle trash according to site restrictions and keep it in rodent-proof containers until disposed of.
· Do not handle or feed wild rodents.
What should I do if I think I have been exposed to mouse droppings?
If you have been exposed to rodents or rodent infested buildings and have symptoms of fever, muscle aches and severe shortness of breath, see your health care provider immediately. Inform your health care provider of possible rodent exposure so that he/she is alerted to the possibility of rodent-borne diseases, such as HPS.— Source: Washington State Department of Health
How do I prevent Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome?
· Keep rodents out of your home and workplace. Always take precautions when cleaning, sealing and trapping rodent-infested areas.
· Seal up cracks and gaps in buildings that are larger than 1/4 inch including window and doorsills, under sinks around the pipes, in foundations, attics and any rodent entry hole.
· Trap indoor rats and mice with snap traps.
· Remove rodent food sources. Keep food (including pet food) in rodent proof containers.
Clean up rodent infested areas:
· Wear rubber, latex, vinyl or nitrile gloves.
· Do not stir up dust by vacuuming, sweeping, or any other means.
· Thoroughly wet contaminated areas, including trapped mice, droppings, nests with a bleach solution or household disinfectant. Hypochlorite (bleach) solution: Mix 1 and 1/2 cups of household bleach in 1 gallon of water.
· Once everything is soaked for 10 minutes, remove all of the nest material, mice or droppings with damp towel and then mop or sponge the area with bleach solution or household disinfectant.
· Spray dead rodents with disinfectant and then double-bag along with all cleaning materials. Bury, burn, or throw out the rodent in appropriate waste disposal system.
· Disinfect gloves with disinfectant or soap and water before taking them off.
· After taking off the clean gloves, thoroughly wash hands with soap and water (or use a waterless alcohol-based hand rub when soap is not available).
· Keep rodents out of your home and workplace. Always take precautions when cleaning, sealing and trapping rodent-infested areas.
· Seal up cracks and gaps in buildings that are larger than 1/4 inch including window and doorsills, under sinks around the pipes, in foundations, attics and any rodent entry hole.
· Trap indoor rats and mice with snap traps.
· Remove rodent food sources. Keep food (including pet food) in rodent proof containers.
Clean up rodent infested areas:
· Wear rubber, latex, vinyl or nitrile gloves.
· Do not stir up dust by vacuuming, sweeping, or any other means.
· Thoroughly wet contaminated areas, including trapped mice, droppings, nests with a bleach solution or household disinfectant. Hypochlorite (bleach) solution: Mix 1 and 1/2 cups of household bleach in 1 gallon of water.
· Once everything is soaked for 10 minutes, remove all of the nest material, mice or droppings with damp towel and then mop or sponge the area with bleach solution or household disinfectant.
· Spray dead rodents with disinfectant and then double-bag along with all cleaning materials. Bury, burn, or throw out the rodent in appropriate waste disposal system.
· Disinfect gloves with disinfectant or soap and water before taking them off.
· After taking off the clean gloves, thoroughly wash hands with soap and water (or use a waterless alcohol-based hand rub when soap is not available).
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
The Economy of Death Cleaning
May 6th, 2008
By Don M. McNulty
Where do cleaning and the death industry meet?
Mainly in BIO CLEANING; Bio cleaning is also known as Trauma and Crime Scene Cleanup. Many people now know there are companies in the Untied States and Canada performing this work. Until these companies appeared in the marketplace, the work mainly fell to the individual families. Friends, extended family, acquaintances, and an occasional church has handled the cleanup for the most part.
There were those rare companies’ from time to time who would sporadically help out, but their focus was mainly on fire and water restoration or carpet cleaning, and the occasional bio clean was something they did once in a while when the opportunity presented itself. These brave souls felt they had the stomach to get in and do the work and were willing to help if they could.
But, with the advent of more education towards AIDS and Hepatitis and other Bloodborne Diseases, and the OSHA regulations known as the Bloodborne Pathogen Rule in the mid 80’s, less and less of these individuals were willing to risk their lives in these scenes.The Birth of a Whole New Industry Thus the birth of a whole new industry known as “bio cleaning” came about.
I have long told my students that we’ve been cleaning up after our dead since Cane and Able and there have always been people individually help with the clean up of these aftermaths, and some companies would do help from time to time. I officially started Bio Cleaning Services of America, Inc. in early 1993 and we were the first company dedicated to helping our communities and in just a few short years several other companies started by 1995. By 1998 various individuals have come on board and have built fairly successful companies performing bio cleaning work along with other services such as fire and water damage remediation , mold remediation, etc. Of course, many have come looking for riches and are already gone - broke and disappointed.
In just the last couple of years, fire and water restoration, and carpet cleaning contractors, have now found that this can be a very lucrative niche as an add-on service to what they are already providing. Bio Cleaning Services of America, Inc. has been the catalyst in this movement by providing a seminar format that trains and certifies technicians within this industry.
Pricing has Grown. Although the invoices were much lower at the very beginning, the national average for an invoice is now $2800 to $3500 for just a few hours work with a net profit of 65%, which at first glance may seem excessive. Although these companies now understand that without the proper training and equipment they would be entering into a very dangerous field of work and exposing themselves or their employees to things that can kill them and in order to have the ability to make this offer the personal risk, liabilities, higher wages, training and disposal cost dictate the charges.
A savvy provider can enter this work for less than $5000 in basic startup equipment cost less the cost of a vehicle; of course, more can be spent with added equipment and materials. However, in order to be successful, they will need to spend a minimum of $8000 a year for their marketing.The Industry has taken off like a RocketIn the later half of the 1990’s this industry has taken off like a rocket. I estimate that there were only 30 or so companies by the end of 1998, but now there are over 250 companies operational within the United States and Canada today. Now the U.K. and Australia have companies performing the work as well.
Most of the companies offering bio-cleaning services are less than five years old. So very few areas have no real established companies and the road for competition is very broad. We see a heating up of competition mainly in the larger metropolitan areas. I estimate that currently this industry generates about one half billion dollars per year and see it growing to reach an annual amount of more than 1 billion dollars within the next three to five years. There is only one company annualizing over the million dollar mark, and that is Aftermath, Inc. based in Chicago, IL. Information is Hard to Come By for Marketing.
Currently numbers for marketing research are still hard to come by. Various entities such as Coroners, Society of Sociology, Departments of Health, and the F.B.I. are tracking numbers of suicide, and homicide, but other numbers need to be tracked as well. Such as, unattended death, these are people who die, (usually of natural causes), but are not found for three or more days. These numbers can be found from the individual county coroner’s offices, but they usually do not make a distinction as to where the decedent was found, indoors or out. Automobile incidents are another area where the numbers are totally unknown. Automobiles with blood are still being cleaned or remediated of the blood for the most part, by unqualified body or trim shop personnel, and then the disposal is illegal as well. Medical incidents or altercations where no one dies, but significant blood loss occurs are totally unknown too. So you can see, as these people become more educated as to the dangers lurking in blood and bodily fluids or OSHA becomes more alert to these areas where business and employee safety is a concern, the task of the bio technician will continue to grow.Other Work is AvailableOther areas of remediation the bio cleaning company performs are large deposits of bird, bat, or rodent droppings. Since bird droppings can cause Histoplasmosis and rodent droppings have the potential for Hanta Virus these present quit a significant health risk to those in and around the infested structure and need trained technicians to cleanup the area properly. Many bio-cleaning companies run into other areas for work, such as “Unsanitary Dwellings” otherwise known as “Hording Syndrome” and “Pack Rat Houses.” These are usually homes that are covered in trash inside and out and many times a city is condemning the property until the owners get it cleaned up. The number of these properties is significant, and can be found in almost every community.The danger of bacteria growing from human waste, fungus from fecal material from rodents, and other animals, and dangers from the brown recluse spider are always present. It amazes me how much money people are willing to spend to have someone else clean up these messes
By Don M. McNulty
Where do cleaning and the death industry meet?
Mainly in BIO CLEANING; Bio cleaning is also known as Trauma and Crime Scene Cleanup. Many people now know there are companies in the Untied States and Canada performing this work. Until these companies appeared in the marketplace, the work mainly fell to the individual families. Friends, extended family, acquaintances, and an occasional church has handled the cleanup for the most part.
There were those rare companies’ from time to time who would sporadically help out, but their focus was mainly on fire and water restoration or carpet cleaning, and the occasional bio clean was something they did once in a while when the opportunity presented itself. These brave souls felt they had the stomach to get in and do the work and were willing to help if they could.
But, with the advent of more education towards AIDS and Hepatitis and other Bloodborne Diseases, and the OSHA regulations known as the Bloodborne Pathogen Rule in the mid 80’s, less and less of these individuals were willing to risk their lives in these scenes.The Birth of a Whole New Industry Thus the birth of a whole new industry known as “bio cleaning” came about.
I have long told my students that we’ve been cleaning up after our dead since Cane and Able and there have always been people individually help with the clean up of these aftermaths, and some companies would do help from time to time. I officially started Bio Cleaning Services of America, Inc. in early 1993 and we were the first company dedicated to helping our communities and in just a few short years several other companies started by 1995. By 1998 various individuals have come on board and have built fairly successful companies performing bio cleaning work along with other services such as fire and water damage remediation , mold remediation, etc. Of course, many have come looking for riches and are already gone - broke and disappointed.
In just the last couple of years, fire and water restoration, and carpet cleaning contractors, have now found that this can be a very lucrative niche as an add-on service to what they are already providing. Bio Cleaning Services of America, Inc. has been the catalyst in this movement by providing a seminar format that trains and certifies technicians within this industry.
Pricing has Grown. Although the invoices were much lower at the very beginning, the national average for an invoice is now $2800 to $3500 for just a few hours work with a net profit of 65%, which at first glance may seem excessive. Although these companies now understand that without the proper training and equipment they would be entering into a very dangerous field of work and exposing themselves or their employees to things that can kill them and in order to have the ability to make this offer the personal risk, liabilities, higher wages, training and disposal cost dictate the charges.
A savvy provider can enter this work for less than $5000 in basic startup equipment cost less the cost of a vehicle; of course, more can be spent with added equipment and materials. However, in order to be successful, they will need to spend a minimum of $8000 a year for their marketing.The Industry has taken off like a RocketIn the later half of the 1990’s this industry has taken off like a rocket. I estimate that there were only 30 or so companies by the end of 1998, but now there are over 250 companies operational within the United States and Canada today. Now the U.K. and Australia have companies performing the work as well.
Most of the companies offering bio-cleaning services are less than five years old. So very few areas have no real established companies and the road for competition is very broad. We see a heating up of competition mainly in the larger metropolitan areas. I estimate that currently this industry generates about one half billion dollars per year and see it growing to reach an annual amount of more than 1 billion dollars within the next three to five years. There is only one company annualizing over the million dollar mark, and that is Aftermath, Inc. based in Chicago, IL. Information is Hard to Come By for Marketing.
Currently numbers for marketing research are still hard to come by. Various entities such as Coroners, Society of Sociology, Departments of Health, and the F.B.I. are tracking numbers of suicide, and homicide, but other numbers need to be tracked as well. Such as, unattended death, these are people who die, (usually of natural causes), but are not found for three or more days. These numbers can be found from the individual county coroner’s offices, but they usually do not make a distinction as to where the decedent was found, indoors or out. Automobile incidents are another area where the numbers are totally unknown. Automobiles with blood are still being cleaned or remediated of the blood for the most part, by unqualified body or trim shop personnel, and then the disposal is illegal as well. Medical incidents or altercations where no one dies, but significant blood loss occurs are totally unknown too. So you can see, as these people become more educated as to the dangers lurking in blood and bodily fluids or OSHA becomes more alert to these areas where business and employee safety is a concern, the task of the bio technician will continue to grow.Other Work is AvailableOther areas of remediation the bio cleaning company performs are large deposits of bird, bat, or rodent droppings. Since bird droppings can cause Histoplasmosis and rodent droppings have the potential for Hanta Virus these present quit a significant health risk to those in and around the infested structure and need trained technicians to cleanup the area properly. Many bio-cleaning companies run into other areas for work, such as “Unsanitary Dwellings” otherwise known as “Hording Syndrome” and “Pack Rat Houses.” These are usually homes that are covered in trash inside and out and many times a city is condemning the property until the owners get it cleaned up. The number of these properties is significant, and can be found in almost every community.The danger of bacteria growing from human waste, fungus from fecal material from rodents, and other animals, and dangers from the brown recluse spider are always present. It amazes me how much money people are willing to spend to have someone else clean up these messes
Can Mr. Joe Carpet Cleaner Just Start Doing Bio Cleaning or Crime Scene Cleanup?
Can Mr. Joe Carpet Cleaner Just Start Doing Bio Cleaning or Crime Scene Cleanup?
May 6th, 2008
By Don M. McNulty
Not long ago I was asked the above stated question. I would like to share my answer with you.In most states in the U.S. just about anyone can get into bio cleaning or crime scene clean up with little or no training should they want to.
But, before your Joe Carpet Cleaner gets into this service he needs to consider a few things first. He needs to know that the federal government through OSHA regulates the bio cleaning industry by means of the Bloodborne Pathogen Rule 1910.1030.
This regulation states that each company engaging in such a service as to where the employees have a “reasonable anticipation” of coming into contact with blood or other potentially infectious material (OPIM), they must have a written “exposure control plan”, that plan will set the perimeters of conduct through certain engineering controls, and training in every aspect with a thorough understanding of this plan needs to be accomplished, and documented before the technician goes into the field.
Since there are things lurking in blood that can literally kill him, or his employees, and with a slow death, he and/or his employees need to receive a Hepatitis B vaccine at company expense. This vaccine is a series of three shots and each individual needs to have the first shot at least 10 days before entering a scene. If the employee refuses to have this vaccine, that employee needs to sign a declination form and have it further explained, through this form, that the offer for a vaccination is open to him at anytime in the future, should he change his mind. He really should have training in a certain amount of epidemiology, specifically disease transference. He needs to know the different kinds of pathogens and bacteria that can be lying in wait for the right opportunity to set up shop in a host, namely Joe or his employee.
By the way Joe shouldn’t be trying to suck up this blood into his truck mount. Every state does have regulations as to how medical waste needs to be disposed of, and everyone should be familiar with and follow such state regulations. Also, he would contaminate his carpet cleaning equipment and the next customer wouldn’t appreciate cross contamination into their space.
Liabilities loom great in the bio cleaning business, mainly because you’re ultimately dealing in someone’s health. At least Joe Carpet Cleaner has knowledge about cleaning processes. However, you’d be surprised how many people within the medical field or first responders (police, fireman, etc.) wanting to get into the bio cleaning industry and don’t have a clue as to basic cleaning techniques, which is essential. But, then again, Joe also needs to acquire basic knowledge of construction. He needs to know that if a portion of a wall or ceiling needs to be removed, what may be on the interior of that wall or what could be above that ceiling. Cutting into a live electrical wire or cutting into a water pipe can have disastrous results. Deodorization techniques should be in his knowledge base, knowing how to deodorize from decomp is paramount.
There are other regulations our would-be carpet cleaner will have to know. Such as, the Hazard Communications Standard 1910.1200, and certainly the Respiratory Protection Standard 1910.134, and still others like, the Confined Space, and Fall Protection Standards. Joe shouldn’t be the type of person that says to himself, “I can see that stuff and never get sick.” Joe is only thinking about the visual. However, he needs to know that he’s going to feel it, (it feels slick and fatty), he’s going to smell it, (has an strong menstruation blood odor), and it won’t be some animal he’s killed while hunting, it’s human.
Every tech I’ve had including myself has suffered from “stress dreams”. These dreams have weird story lines and usually deal with blood and gore. This comes from “Critical Incident Stress Syndrome,” (CISS), or what some call “Secondary Post Traumatic Syndrome.” These dreams and the stress that comes from doing this work can lead to grave psychological disorders for people who can’t handle these stresses. Joe will have to learn how to defuse or debrief this stress in him and in his employees. This stress doesn’t just come from seeing and handling the physical, it comes while dealing with grief stricken individuals. Joe should develop the coping, emotional, and social skills necessary to help these individuals in dealing with his work while not allowing himself to be caught up in the fray. He’ll need to learn when just to listen while various stories are recounted, and what to say and not say in response. He’ll need to be able to explain his work order and obtain the proper signatures while people are struggling with grief, and disbelief often times bursting into tears when they feel overwhelmed. “Compassion” is the watchword.
There is other work within the bio cleaning field Joe may have to respond to. One would be “unsanitary dwellings.” This is what some people call “pack rats”. The dwelling gets so stuffed of garbage and trash you usually have to walk through the house or apartment through paths. Many times buckets and jars of human waste accumulate, sometimes drug paraphernalia, and if they die in this mess, well it can lead to quite the job. Bio cleaning is more than death and trauma.
I’m sure Joe would enjoy the revenue from bio cleaning. Most bio cleans bring in an 85% gross profit margin, and it is possible to earn up to $200 per man hour when you get the work.After all this, to really answer your question, I don’t believe bio cleaning is the type of business Joe can just walk into and start one day. Like any other business it takes planning, and as you can see it will take a certain amount of training. There’s no law preventing Joe from doing this work or taking the risk involved, but as you can see that’s not the only consideration.
Don McNulty of Bio Cleaning Services of America, Inc. based in the Kansas City area wrote this article.
May 6th, 2008
By Don M. McNulty
Not long ago I was asked the above stated question. I would like to share my answer with you.In most states in the U.S. just about anyone can get into bio cleaning or crime scene clean up with little or no training should they want to.
But, before your Joe Carpet Cleaner gets into this service he needs to consider a few things first. He needs to know that the federal government through OSHA regulates the bio cleaning industry by means of the Bloodborne Pathogen Rule 1910.1030.
This regulation states that each company engaging in such a service as to where the employees have a “reasonable anticipation” of coming into contact with blood or other potentially infectious material (OPIM), they must have a written “exposure control plan”, that plan will set the perimeters of conduct through certain engineering controls, and training in every aspect with a thorough understanding of this plan needs to be accomplished, and documented before the technician goes into the field.
Since there are things lurking in blood that can literally kill him, or his employees, and with a slow death, he and/or his employees need to receive a Hepatitis B vaccine at company expense. This vaccine is a series of three shots and each individual needs to have the first shot at least 10 days before entering a scene. If the employee refuses to have this vaccine, that employee needs to sign a declination form and have it further explained, through this form, that the offer for a vaccination is open to him at anytime in the future, should he change his mind. He really should have training in a certain amount of epidemiology, specifically disease transference. He needs to know the different kinds of pathogens and bacteria that can be lying in wait for the right opportunity to set up shop in a host, namely Joe or his employee.
By the way Joe shouldn’t be trying to suck up this blood into his truck mount. Every state does have regulations as to how medical waste needs to be disposed of, and everyone should be familiar with and follow such state regulations. Also, he would contaminate his carpet cleaning equipment and the next customer wouldn’t appreciate cross contamination into their space.
Liabilities loom great in the bio cleaning business, mainly because you’re ultimately dealing in someone’s health. At least Joe Carpet Cleaner has knowledge about cleaning processes. However, you’d be surprised how many people within the medical field or first responders (police, fireman, etc.) wanting to get into the bio cleaning industry and don’t have a clue as to basic cleaning techniques, which is essential. But, then again, Joe also needs to acquire basic knowledge of construction. He needs to know that if a portion of a wall or ceiling needs to be removed, what may be on the interior of that wall or what could be above that ceiling. Cutting into a live electrical wire or cutting into a water pipe can have disastrous results. Deodorization techniques should be in his knowledge base, knowing how to deodorize from decomp is paramount.
There are other regulations our would-be carpet cleaner will have to know. Such as, the Hazard Communications Standard 1910.1200, and certainly the Respiratory Protection Standard 1910.134, and still others like, the Confined Space, and Fall Protection Standards. Joe shouldn’t be the type of person that says to himself, “I can see that stuff and never get sick.” Joe is only thinking about the visual. However, he needs to know that he’s going to feel it, (it feels slick and fatty), he’s going to smell it, (has an strong menstruation blood odor), and it won’t be some animal he’s killed while hunting, it’s human.
Every tech I’ve had including myself has suffered from “stress dreams”. These dreams have weird story lines and usually deal with blood and gore. This comes from “Critical Incident Stress Syndrome,” (CISS), or what some call “Secondary Post Traumatic Syndrome.” These dreams and the stress that comes from doing this work can lead to grave psychological disorders for people who can’t handle these stresses. Joe will have to learn how to defuse or debrief this stress in him and in his employees. This stress doesn’t just come from seeing and handling the physical, it comes while dealing with grief stricken individuals. Joe should develop the coping, emotional, and social skills necessary to help these individuals in dealing with his work while not allowing himself to be caught up in the fray. He’ll need to learn when just to listen while various stories are recounted, and what to say and not say in response. He’ll need to be able to explain his work order and obtain the proper signatures while people are struggling with grief, and disbelief often times bursting into tears when they feel overwhelmed. “Compassion” is the watchword.
There is other work within the bio cleaning field Joe may have to respond to. One would be “unsanitary dwellings.” This is what some people call “pack rats”. The dwelling gets so stuffed of garbage and trash you usually have to walk through the house or apartment through paths. Many times buckets and jars of human waste accumulate, sometimes drug paraphernalia, and if they die in this mess, well it can lead to quite the job. Bio cleaning is more than death and trauma.
I’m sure Joe would enjoy the revenue from bio cleaning. Most bio cleans bring in an 85% gross profit margin, and it is possible to earn up to $200 per man hour when you get the work.After all this, to really answer your question, I don’t believe bio cleaning is the type of business Joe can just walk into and start one day. Like any other business it takes planning, and as you can see it will take a certain amount of training. There’s no law preventing Joe from doing this work or taking the risk involved, but as you can see that’s not the only consideration.
Don McNulty of Bio Cleaning Services of America, Inc. based in the Kansas City area wrote this article.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Restoring Buildings After Emergencies
Mastering Disaster
By Greg Olear
Apartment buildings, whether cooperatives or condos, are inherently fragile. When that many units share the same plot of land, and the same walls, the same floors, the same elevators and stairways, standpipes and boilers, lobbies and roofs, disasters—whether broken water pipes or the tragic in the case of decomposing bodies, fatal fires or building explosions—have the potential to spread quickly. Thus, when something nasty befalls a building, the first order of business is to contain the problem.
Once the situation has been contained, however, then the hard part begins: the cleanup. How do buildings get back on their proverbial feet after a major maintenance meltdown? What should a board or property manager know about dealing with disasters? And is there a way to prevent bad things from happening in the first place? Let's take a look.
Water, Water Everywhere
When contemplating disasters, the first example that comes to mind is usually fire. Fire, after all, can spread quickly and devastate an entire city, and do so in spectacular fashion. Much of Lower Manhattan was burned to the ground by the British in the War of 1812, and, while our ability to prevent and combat fires is far superior to what it was two hundred years ago, fire remains a big fear.
But it's not fire, but the element that puts it out, that causes most of the damage to New York residential buildings. "Look around, and see how many buildings are burning right now," says Ron Alford, the founder and president of Disaster Masters Inc. in Queens. "None. On the other hand, water damage is going on right now, as we're talking," or as you're reading this.
Water damage can happen in many ways. In the winter, Alford says, if it's nine degrees outside for a few days, and the right combination of doors are left open accidentally, the standpipe—the central conduit for water in the building—can break. In the summer, condensation from air conditioning units can wreak havoc on hardwood floors, especially in apartments that have been vacated for the season.
Leaky pipes can drip into the apartment downstairs, and then the apartment two floors down, and then the one floor below that. And busted standpipes can do much more extensive damage. Remedying this kind of problem can escalate to the total replacement cost of the entire building, says Alford, if the damage is extensive. Floods of this nature are seldom the result of negligence, Alford says. "These are not caused by shoddy maintenance," he explains. "Because of the local laws, the buildings are all well-maintained. The things we do tend to be sudden and insured."
Insurance can be its own headache. Insurance companies can send the wrong personnel to handle a problem, or, worse, deny a claim. Getting money from insurance companies can be such a tricky process, in fact, that Alford has a side business that deals solely with getting claims paid by insurance companies, and has authored a book on the subject. Handling the Unexpected
Property managers have to be adept at dealing with acts of God or natural disasters that you have no preparation or training for. One such scenario involved Donna Ross, the director of management at Andrea Bunis Management Inc. in Manhattan. Ross, a 30-year veteran in property management, has been with Andrea Bunis for the past 15 years. Back in August 1989, she was called to the scene of a Con Edison steam pipe explosion reminiscent of the one that recently shut down blocks around Lexington Avenue and Grand Central Terminal this summer.
The 1989 pipe explosion killed three people, injured 24, and caused evacuation of about 200 residents of the 185-unit cooperative at 32 Gramercy Park South. What the managers and residents did not know then was that the pipe contained asbestos and it would be months before the cleanup and restoration brought things back to normal.
"Saturday night was the explosion and Sunday morning I and other agents were at the site to see what we could do to help the residents of the building," says Ross. "Since we did not know at that time that the building was contaminated with asbestos, we were helping people clean up sweeping the asbestos in the air and our lungs.
"Days after the cleanup started, it was determined that there was asbestos found throughout the building and the DEP [Department of Environmental Protection] evacuated the building. Residents were given very little time to take some belongings and leave. Police were stationed on each of the floors to guard the apartments until the decontamination started. Residents were put up in nearby hotels at first and as time went on, it was determined that this was not going to take a few days. They were then moved to apartment efficiencies or given money to go elsewhere. Management set up trailers near the building so that residents would have access to management to help in their daily needs," Ross explains. Some people were allowed back inside to retrieve belongings or medication, she says, and others to pack things for a much-needed vacation away from the city. "We had no idea that it would be eight months later before all was said and done."
Ross was enlisted to serve as a liaison and coordinate management tasks between different city agencies, including Con Ed, the NYPD, the FDNY, asbestos removal specialists and various contractors. The building had to be decontaminated and completely cleaned, blown-out windows had to be replaced, the water tower had to be cleaned and repaired, and day-to-day questions and concerns taken care of, she adds.
"Residents still needed information about what was happening with their homes. I was answering their questions as to reimbursement for their food, and housing and clothes. The explosion happened in August, and a few seasons had passed, so residents needed different seasons of clothes. Remember most of them left that day in August with what was on their back. Basically, the building was completely cleaned inside and out before residents would be allowed to move back in."
Remains of the Day
Then there is the other potential disaster—the decomposing body. Sometimes there is violence involved—suicides or homicides, for example—but usually, the decomposing body problem occurs when a single, typically elderly person dies, and no one realizes it until the smell trails into the hallway.
"Let's say an elderly person dies of natural causes," says Ron Gospodarski, president of Bio-Recovery Corp. in Long Island City. "New York being transient as it is, usually the kids are elsewhere. It goes undetected for days or weeks until someone smells it and calls 911."
The police then come and seal off the area while they conduct an investigation. "Nobody can go in there," Gospodarski says. "And you have this nasty odor coming out."
The more the body decomposes, the worse the odor gets. "The odor will infiltrate everywhere," says Ron Vogel, president of Emergi-Clean Inc. in Linden, New Jersey.
Meanwhile, the police yield to the public administrator, who is in charge of locating and contacting the next of kin. Once it is determined that the death was not a homicide, the body is taken away. But some of the remains remain—and those remains reek. Until the police or the public administrator grants access to the apartment, there isn't much the board can do about it.
"Sometimes we'll go with" the public administrator, says Gospodarski. "But most of the time, they don't let us in."
This can be extremely unpleasant—and dangerous.
In one case, Gospodarski says the liquefied remains had eaten through the hardwood floors—it was a brownstone, so there was no concrete between the floors. "Bodily fluids were dripping into the apartment below, where there was a newborn baby," he recalls.
This is, needless to say, not the most healthful situation.
Cleaning up human remains is not generally something that's covered at board meetings. Many property managers are probably at a loss as to what exactly the next step should be. There is no subheading for this kind of thing in the Yellow Pages—and that's not the most effective disaster preparedness anyway.
"The worst thing you can do is use a phone directory for a disaster," Alford says.
Many boards or property managers will ask the super to handle the mess. Not only does this put the health of the super at risk, and subject the building to major liability, it's also illegal.
"Supers are often forced to do it, which is illegal," says Gospodarski. "Who can clean it up legally? Fifty percent are cleaned up by managers or supers. Is that legal? No."
To legally handle human remains, one requires yearly shots for hepatitis B, as well as special training and certification from the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) and the Department of Environmental Protection or Conservation, which is prohibitively expensive for most buildings.
"The cost would be unbelievable," says Vogel. The total cost to meet all of the requirements would be in the thousands of dollars for each individual certified, he says.
Then there's the matter of disposal. Let's say someone dies in bed, and bodily wastes infiltrate the mattress. "Where do they dispose of it? You can't put it in the sanitation system," says Gospodarski. "It has to go by red bag. You have to be licensed to pick it up." This doesn't stop bloody mattresses from finding their way into the regular trash, of course. This is New York, after all. But that is illegal, too.
Finally, there's the bottom line. Who pays for the mess? The estate of the deceased? The co-op, because the liquefied remains oozed between floors? The deceased's insurance company? The co-op's insurance company? Often, the co-op ends up with the tab - and a cleanup of this sort can cost anywhere from $450-$2,000. "They say, 'Let's pay to get it fixed first,' and then they'll worry," Vogel says. "Often, the management company will pay, and then get the money from the board," says Gospodarski.
What should a building do to prepare for such a catastrophe?
"You need to know who to call," says Alford. Managers and boards should have an emergency or restoration company in mind before a disaster strikes.
Some companies even offer "pre-disaster audits," where teams would inspect the premises for potential problems.
What It Teaches You
Surviving an emergency takes patience and understanding, Ross says.
"As a property manager, the job itself teaches you to juggle many things at once so that you are able to accomplish your goal—add a lot of patience and consideration to the mix and you can survive a crisis like this one or this job in general."
Residents need to trust the board, management and the hired professionals to maintain the public safety and health and well-being of the residents they're entrusted to care for.
"In order to be an effective property manager you need to wear many hats," says Ross. "You need to be able to be calm under pressure, caring and considerate, understanding that you're dealing with people's homes, a very sensitive subject. In an agent's day, very few people are calling to thank you for something you may have done, most calls are complaints. You need to take the call, solve the problem and move on," she says, adding that you need to also manage the stress that comes with the job.
Greg Olear is a freelance writer, editor, web designer, astrologer and stay-at-home dad living in Highland, New York.
By Greg Olear
Apartment buildings, whether cooperatives or condos, are inherently fragile. When that many units share the same plot of land, and the same walls, the same floors, the same elevators and stairways, standpipes and boilers, lobbies and roofs, disasters—whether broken water pipes or the tragic in the case of decomposing bodies, fatal fires or building explosions—have the potential to spread quickly. Thus, when something nasty befalls a building, the first order of business is to contain the problem.
Once the situation has been contained, however, then the hard part begins: the cleanup. How do buildings get back on their proverbial feet after a major maintenance meltdown? What should a board or property manager know about dealing with disasters? And is there a way to prevent bad things from happening in the first place? Let's take a look.
Water, Water Everywhere
When contemplating disasters, the first example that comes to mind is usually fire. Fire, after all, can spread quickly and devastate an entire city, and do so in spectacular fashion. Much of Lower Manhattan was burned to the ground by the British in the War of 1812, and, while our ability to prevent and combat fires is far superior to what it was two hundred years ago, fire remains a big fear.
But it's not fire, but the element that puts it out, that causes most of the damage to New York residential buildings. "Look around, and see how many buildings are burning right now," says Ron Alford, the founder and president of Disaster Masters Inc. in Queens. "None. On the other hand, water damage is going on right now, as we're talking," or as you're reading this.
Water damage can happen in many ways. In the winter, Alford says, if it's nine degrees outside for a few days, and the right combination of doors are left open accidentally, the standpipe—the central conduit for water in the building—can break. In the summer, condensation from air conditioning units can wreak havoc on hardwood floors, especially in apartments that have been vacated for the season.
Leaky pipes can drip into the apartment downstairs, and then the apartment two floors down, and then the one floor below that. And busted standpipes can do much more extensive damage. Remedying this kind of problem can escalate to the total replacement cost of the entire building, says Alford, if the damage is extensive. Floods of this nature are seldom the result of negligence, Alford says. "These are not caused by shoddy maintenance," he explains. "Because of the local laws, the buildings are all well-maintained. The things we do tend to be sudden and insured."
Insurance can be its own headache. Insurance companies can send the wrong personnel to handle a problem, or, worse, deny a claim. Getting money from insurance companies can be such a tricky process, in fact, that Alford has a side business that deals solely with getting claims paid by insurance companies, and has authored a book on the subject. Handling the Unexpected
Property managers have to be adept at dealing with acts of God or natural disasters that you have no preparation or training for. One such scenario involved Donna Ross, the director of management at Andrea Bunis Management Inc. in Manhattan. Ross, a 30-year veteran in property management, has been with Andrea Bunis for the past 15 years. Back in August 1989, she was called to the scene of a Con Edison steam pipe explosion reminiscent of the one that recently shut down blocks around Lexington Avenue and Grand Central Terminal this summer.
The 1989 pipe explosion killed three people, injured 24, and caused evacuation of about 200 residents of the 185-unit cooperative at 32 Gramercy Park South. What the managers and residents did not know then was that the pipe contained asbestos and it would be months before the cleanup and restoration brought things back to normal.
"Saturday night was the explosion and Sunday morning I and other agents were at the site to see what we could do to help the residents of the building," says Ross. "Since we did not know at that time that the building was contaminated with asbestos, we were helping people clean up sweeping the asbestos in the air and our lungs.
"Days after the cleanup started, it was determined that there was asbestos found throughout the building and the DEP [Department of Environmental Protection] evacuated the building. Residents were given very little time to take some belongings and leave. Police were stationed on each of the floors to guard the apartments until the decontamination started. Residents were put up in nearby hotels at first and as time went on, it was determined that this was not going to take a few days. They were then moved to apartment efficiencies or given money to go elsewhere. Management set up trailers near the building so that residents would have access to management to help in their daily needs," Ross explains. Some people were allowed back inside to retrieve belongings or medication, she says, and others to pack things for a much-needed vacation away from the city. "We had no idea that it would be eight months later before all was said and done."
Ross was enlisted to serve as a liaison and coordinate management tasks between different city agencies, including Con Ed, the NYPD, the FDNY, asbestos removal specialists and various contractors. The building had to be decontaminated and completely cleaned, blown-out windows had to be replaced, the water tower had to be cleaned and repaired, and day-to-day questions and concerns taken care of, she adds.
"Residents still needed information about what was happening with their homes. I was answering their questions as to reimbursement for their food, and housing and clothes. The explosion happened in August, and a few seasons had passed, so residents needed different seasons of clothes. Remember most of them left that day in August with what was on their back. Basically, the building was completely cleaned inside and out before residents would be allowed to move back in."
Remains of the Day
Then there is the other potential disaster—the decomposing body. Sometimes there is violence involved—suicides or homicides, for example—but usually, the decomposing body problem occurs when a single, typically elderly person dies, and no one realizes it until the smell trails into the hallway.
"Let's say an elderly person dies of natural causes," says Ron Gospodarski, president of Bio-Recovery Corp. in Long Island City. "New York being transient as it is, usually the kids are elsewhere. It goes undetected for days or weeks until someone smells it and calls 911."
The police then come and seal off the area while they conduct an investigation. "Nobody can go in there," Gospodarski says. "And you have this nasty odor coming out."
The more the body decomposes, the worse the odor gets. "The odor will infiltrate everywhere," says Ron Vogel, president of Emergi-Clean Inc. in Linden, New Jersey.
Meanwhile, the police yield to the public administrator, who is in charge of locating and contacting the next of kin. Once it is determined that the death was not a homicide, the body is taken away. But some of the remains remain—and those remains reek. Until the police or the public administrator grants access to the apartment, there isn't much the board can do about it.
"Sometimes we'll go with" the public administrator, says Gospodarski. "But most of the time, they don't let us in."
This can be extremely unpleasant—and dangerous.
In one case, Gospodarski says the liquefied remains had eaten through the hardwood floors—it was a brownstone, so there was no concrete between the floors. "Bodily fluids were dripping into the apartment below, where there was a newborn baby," he recalls.
This is, needless to say, not the most healthful situation.
Cleaning up human remains is not generally something that's covered at board meetings. Many property managers are probably at a loss as to what exactly the next step should be. There is no subheading for this kind of thing in the Yellow Pages—and that's not the most effective disaster preparedness anyway.
"The worst thing you can do is use a phone directory for a disaster," Alford says.
Many boards or property managers will ask the super to handle the mess. Not only does this put the health of the super at risk, and subject the building to major liability, it's also illegal.
"Supers are often forced to do it, which is illegal," says Gospodarski. "Who can clean it up legally? Fifty percent are cleaned up by managers or supers. Is that legal? No."
To legally handle human remains, one requires yearly shots for hepatitis B, as well as special training and certification from the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) and the Department of Environmental Protection or Conservation, which is prohibitively expensive for most buildings.
"The cost would be unbelievable," says Vogel. The total cost to meet all of the requirements would be in the thousands of dollars for each individual certified, he says.
Then there's the matter of disposal. Let's say someone dies in bed, and bodily wastes infiltrate the mattress. "Where do they dispose of it? You can't put it in the sanitation system," says Gospodarski. "It has to go by red bag. You have to be licensed to pick it up." This doesn't stop bloody mattresses from finding their way into the regular trash, of course. This is New York, after all. But that is illegal, too.
Finally, there's the bottom line. Who pays for the mess? The estate of the deceased? The co-op, because the liquefied remains oozed between floors? The deceased's insurance company? The co-op's insurance company? Often, the co-op ends up with the tab - and a cleanup of this sort can cost anywhere from $450-$2,000. "They say, 'Let's pay to get it fixed first,' and then they'll worry," Vogel says. "Often, the management company will pay, and then get the money from the board," says Gospodarski.
What should a building do to prepare for such a catastrophe?
"You need to know who to call," says Alford. Managers and boards should have an emergency or restoration company in mind before a disaster strikes.
Some companies even offer "pre-disaster audits," where teams would inspect the premises for potential problems.
What It Teaches You
Surviving an emergency takes patience and understanding, Ross says.
"As a property manager, the job itself teaches you to juggle many things at once so that you are able to accomplish your goal—add a lot of patience and consideration to the mix and you can survive a crisis like this one or this job in general."
Residents need to trust the board, management and the hired professionals to maintain the public safety and health and well-being of the residents they're entrusted to care for.
"In order to be an effective property manager you need to wear many hats," says Ross. "You need to be able to be calm under pressure, caring and considerate, understanding that you're dealing with people's homes, a very sensitive subject. In an agent's day, very few people are calling to thank you for something you may have done, most calls are complaints. You need to take the call, solve the problem and move on," she says, adding that you need to also manage the stress that comes with the job.
Greg Olear is a freelance writer, editor, web designer, astrologer and stay-at-home dad living in Highland, New York.
Six-figure jobs: Crime-Scene cleaner
By Jeanne Sahadi, CNN/Money senior writer
SIX-FIGURE SERIES
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) � It's not just the blood. It's not just the gore. It's not just the stomach-turning stench. It's also the anthrax, the hazardous bodily fluids and the combustible chemicals used to make illegal drugs that make the job of crime-scene cleaner so challenging.
That may be why many folks who go into the field have had careers in public health and safety. They've seen it all, and they know how to protect themselves. Ron Gospodarski, who is president of Bio-Recovery Corp. in New York City, used to be a paramedic. Juan Osteguin, a co-owner of Crime Scene Cleaners in San Antonio, is an emergency-room nurse.
SIX-FIGURE SERIES
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) � It's not just the blood. It's not just the gore. It's not just the stomach-turning stench. It's also the anthrax, the hazardous bodily fluids and the combustible chemicals used to make illegal drugs that make the job of crime-scene cleaner so challenging.
That may be why many folks who go into the field have had careers in public health and safety. They've seen it all, and they know how to protect themselves. Ron Gospodarski, who is president of Bio-Recovery Corp. in New York City, used to be a paramedic. Juan Osteguin, a co-owner of Crime Scene Cleaners in San Antonio, is an emergency-room nurse.
It's not as if advanced degrees are required. In fact, Gospodarski said, a large number of his employees don't even have college diplomas. What they do have is a strong stomach and a willingness to do some pretty thankless work. Among their tasks: Cleaning blood off walls and small family trinkets, ripping out stained carpeting, disposing of furniture, dealing with decomposed bodies or the loose remains of murder victims. (As Gospodarski put it, the medical examiner takes the big pieces, the crime-scene cleaners take the rest.) All this is done, mind you, while wearing a hot and heavy Hazmat suit, complete with double-filter respirators and chemical-spill boots.
It's not all blood-and-guts work, though. Just as often, crime-scene cleaners will be called in to clear out an illegal drug lab after a government bust or to clean up an anthrax site, as Gospodarski's company did many times after the attacks of Sept. 11.
If you're working for a crime-scene cleaning company, you may be required to take certification courses that cover, among other things, hazardous materials, protection against them and the regulations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that govern crime-scene clean-ups.
The official hours aren't bad, you might be scheduled for a 9-to-5 or 8-to-4 shift. But you will be on call regularly, and there's no telling how long a job will take. "The problem is you never know what you're going to face. How do you gear up?" Gospodarski said. Depending on the magnitude of a situation, a clean-up could take anywhere from a couple of hours to three 16-hour days, Osteguin said.
If you want to earn six figures cleaning up serious messes, it helps if you enjoy living near high-crime areas and places that might make a terrorist exclaim, "Sweet!" That is, big cities.
Not that you can't make good money in, say, Fargo, N.D. or Paris, Tex. But you're less likely to break through the six-figure barrier. On the other hand, your dollar is likely to go a lot farther in those places than in Chicago or Los Angeles.
Those starting out in the field might make $35,000 a year full-time. But after a few years that can grow to $75,000 or $80,000 in a big market, Gospodarski said. Coupled with some moonlighting, your earnings can approach six figures. Your best chances of making six figures anywhere is to own your own service. But, Osteguin said, "a lot depends on who you know." In other words, it pays to have good relationships with the local mortuaries, funeral homes, homicide departments and the district attorney's office.
While the money can be good, there are other upsides to the job. Namely, making life a little better for the survivors of violence, accidents, suicides and other traumas.
"I like to make a difference. We spare (the survivors) the hurt and pain of cleaning up those atrocities," Osteguin said.
"I like to make a difference. We spare (the survivors) the hurt and pain of cleaning up those atrocities," Osteguin said.
The crime-scene cleaner also can serve as an empathetic presence for survivors in shock.
Being non-judgmental is key, because you'll see all sorts of things in "places you wouldn't believe," Gospodarski said. "We sort of become counselors," he said. "You're like the priest in the confessional. You take a code of silence."
Being non-judgmental is key, because you'll see all sorts of things in "places you wouldn't believe," Gospodarski said. "We sort of become counselors," he said. "You're like the priest in the confessional. You take a code of silence."
After the Tragedy, the Tidying Up
By JAKE MOONEY
Published: January 27, 2008
THE phones were quiet Wednesday morning at the narrow office of Bio-Recovery Corporation, in a sign-less brick building opposite Calvary Cemetery in Long Island City, Queens. Every so often, a dot-matrix printer with a bad ribbon ticked off a bulletin from somewhere in the region — “*Overturned Auto* Linden Blvd and Kings Highway” — but these weren’t the kind of calls that Ron Gospodarski and Manny Sosa were waiting for.
In the bluntest terms, they were waiting for someone to die. Mr. Gospodarski, the president of Bio-Recovery, and Mr. Sosa, his only full-time employee, spend much of their time cleaning up trauma scenes, places where people have been killed, or killed themselves, or just died in a messy way. After the police have left and the body has been removed — or, as Mr. Gospodarski put it, “the big part is gone” — is when they go to work, cleaning up whatever is left.
On Jan. 1, a new city law took effect that requires first responders to tell the often-shocked people at a home or another trauma scene about clean-up methods, and to refer them to a Web site for information about financial aid and about companies like Mr. Gospodarski’s.
Owing, perhaps, to a certain voyeurism in human nature, Bio-Recovery has had much attention from the news media. Nevertheless, when people need help, they often think they must tackle the grim cleanup themselves, and Mr. Gospodarski hopes the new law will change that.
“All I wanted from our perspective, honestly, was to make the city agencies inform people that there’s people out there who can help them — if they choose,” he said.
His company, which also cleans up mold, human waste and the like, used to advertise in the Yellow Pages. But the work is hard to describe. “We listed ourselves under housecleaning,” he said. “And to this day, we get calls, people saying, ‘Do you do housecleaning?’ And I say, ‘What kind of housecleaning do you mean?’ ”
Mr. Gospodarski has been a paramedic for 26 years, and he was an operations manager in the Queens district attorney’s office for six years. Mr. Sosa worked there too, processing crime scene photographs, and has been with Bio-Recovery for eight years. Which is to say, they have seen just about everything, and gotten used to it. Between the two of them, this comes out as gallows humor that can be unsettling. But sometimes, for distraught families amid the aftermath, they are the perfect people to confide in; they will not be shocked, and they do not judge. Death, Mr. Gospodarski said, is a great equalizer.
Owing, perhaps, to a certain voyeurism in human nature, Bio-Recovery has had much attention from the news media. Nevertheless, when people need help, they often think they must tackle the grim cleanup themselves, and Mr. Gospodarski hopes the new law will change that.
“All I wanted from our perspective, honestly, was to make the city agencies inform people that there’s people out there who can help them — if they choose,” he said.
His company, which also cleans up mold, human waste and the like, used to advertise in the Yellow Pages. But the work is hard to describe. “We listed ourselves under housecleaning,” he said. “And to this day, we get calls, people saying, ‘Do you do housecleaning?’ And I say, ‘What kind of housecleaning do you mean?’ ”
Mr. Gospodarski has been a paramedic for 26 years, and he was an operations manager in the Queens district attorney’s office for six years. Mr. Sosa worked there too, processing crime scene photographs, and has been with Bio-Recovery for eight years. Which is to say, they have seen just about everything, and gotten used to it. Between the two of them, this comes out as gallows humor that can be unsettling. But sometimes, for distraught families amid the aftermath, they are the perfect people to confide in; they will not be shocked, and they do not judge. Death, Mr. Gospodarski said, is a great equalizer.
This all has a way of setting them apart, in an American culture that prefers not to look at such things directly. “I don’t really speak about my job to people,” Mr. Sosa said. “As soon as I leave here, I leave my job here. All my friends know what I do, and they really don’t want to hear that.”
Some days are slow, but not all. Early in January, at the end of the typically busy holiday season, the two men worked 32 hours straight. Late January is usually a busy time for suicides, too. Mr. Gospodarski has heard it is linked to the arrival of credit card bills.
Neither man revels in this. Mr. Sosa still is bothered by talking to the families, or by scenes that involve children. As the two men watch the silent phones, they are not rooting for anyone to die, just accepting that it will happen.
Neither man revels in this. Mr. Sosa still is bothered by talking to the families, or by scenes that involve children. As the two men watch the silent phones, they are not rooting for anyone to die, just accepting that it will happen.
In the afternoon, they took a spin into Manhattan to pick up boxes of sheets, stained with blood and other biological matter, from a Midtown hotel. Work like this, and cleaning up city buses that have been used as toilets, provide a steady income on even the quiet days.
As they entered Manhattan, Mr. Gospodarski tapped his hands impatiently on the steering wheel. “In this big city, nobody’s killing nobody today,” he muttered. “It’s too cold.”
After the hotel job, they headed back to the office. Soon, Mr. Gospodarski’s pager was blinking with an automated bulletin about an out-of-town shooting. “Oh,” he said with a shrug as he set down the pager. “Gunshot wound to the hand.”
After the hotel job, they headed back to the office. Soon, Mr. Gospodarski’s pager was blinking with an automated bulletin about an out-of-town shooting. “Oh,” he said with a shrug as he set down the pager. “Gunshot wound to the hand.”
To Break the Crime Scene Tension, Jokes
Pepe Ortiz, a worker with the Bio-Recovery Corporation, in a Long Island City apartment in 2005 where the resident died a month earlier. (Photo: Robert Stolarik for The New York Times)
On Wednesday, I spent a day with the friendly people at the Bio-Recovery Corporation, a Long Island City-based company specializing in what its business card succinctly describes as “crime and death scene cleanup.”It was an uneventful day, which came as something of a relief, considering what can happen on a busy day.
On Wednesday, I spent a day with the friendly people at the Bio-Recovery Corporation, a Long Island City-based company specializing in what its business card succinctly describes as “crime and death scene cleanup.”It was an uneventful day, which came as something of a relief, considering what can happen on a busy day.
One thing that may not come through in a story like this is how funny the Bio-Recovery president, Ron Gospodarski, and his employee, Manny Sosa, could be as I hung around with them. Mr. Gospodarski is genuinely cheerful, even jovial at times, though it feels a little strange to describe him that way in this context. Part of it is that, as a longtime paramedic, he has been confronting the fragility of life for years, and has long since gotten used to the sight of blood. Part of it, probably, is his outlook on the world, which he described this way: “I’m a realist. We all live, we all die, we all do funky things, we all do things we wish we hadn’t. That’s life.”
All that can lead to some strange and, yes, comical exchanges, like when Mr. Gospodarski spoke, via speaker phone, to a friend who was telling him about a fresh crime scene. Mr. Gospodarski, in the middle of a slow work day, set the tone by asking, “Did you make sure to tell him to bleed all over the place?” Word over the scanner was that the victim was “not likely” –- shorthand meaning not likely to die. “Shot in the neck,” the friend said.
“In the neck?” Mr. Gospodarski said. “He’s not likely. How is he shot in the neck?”
“Listen,” the friend deadpanned. “The neck has a lot of different locations.”
“In the neck?” Mr. Gospodarski said. “He’s not likely. How is he shot in the neck?”
“Listen,” the friend deadpanned. “The neck has a lot of different locations.”
This conversation probably loses some of its charm out of context. I had planned to work a few more of these kinds of moments into this week’s Dispatches feature for The City section of the paper, but they just wound up looking flat. Or they made the Bio-Recovery people, who showed plenty of care and sensitivity during the day I spent with them, look like ghouls, which they aren’t.
Thinking about this, what you might call the “you had to be there” effect, led me to contact Dr. Rod Martin , a professor of clinical psychology who teaches at the University of Western Ontario.
Dr. Martin wrote a book called “The Psychology of Humor,” so gallows humor is something he knows a lot about. In general, he said, humor is a form of play, of making serious things nonserious. Jokes centered on aggression or sex, for example, make issues that tend to arouse a lot of anxiety in people feel less threatening, he said.
Dr. Martin wrote a book called “The Psychology of Humor,” so gallows humor is something he knows a lot about. In general, he said, humor is a form of play, of making serious things nonserious. Jokes centered on aggression or sex, for example, make issues that tend to arouse a lot of anxiety in people feel less threatening, he said.
“Some people have referred to it as an emotional anesthesia,” Dr. Martin added. “If you laugh at something, at least for that moment, you’re not feeling the emotional impact of it.”
He actually knows a bit about the topic firsthand, he said. His wife is a nurse, and she has told him that the things she and her colleagues say among themselves would be shocking to outsiders. You always hear similar things about the police, and this kind of thing is common in newsrooms too.
He actually knows a bit about the topic firsthand, he said. His wife is a nurse, and she has told him that the things she and her colleagues say among themselves would be shocking to outsiders. You always hear similar things about the police, and this kind of thing is common in newsrooms too.
Dr. Martin said interviews with men who were prisoners of war in Vietnam indicated that joking about their situation was part of what allowed them to cope.
“In some contexts, the same humor could be seen as inappropriate — aggressive and offensive,” he said. “But in other contexts it could be essential to survive.”
“In some contexts, the same humor could be seen as inappropriate — aggressive and offensive,” he said. “But in other contexts it could be essential to survive.”
None of this, of course, is what anyone in a high-pressure job is thinking as he is cracking a dark joke. “The fact that it is unconscious is what makes it work so well,” Dr. Martin said. “Because people can fool themselves. They’ve convinced themselves that it was all just a joke.”
One last function of all the joking, he said, is as a kind of social lubricant in the most psychologically difficult situations. “You don’t start laughing unless there are other people to laugh with,” he said. “Probably if those guys were at the crime scenes by themselves, they wouldn’t be laughing. It’s with other people, and it’s kind of sharing the discomfort.”
One last thing: On Wednesday afternoon, in the Bio-Recovery van on the way back from picking up a load of dirty sheets from a Midtown hotel, we were stuck in traffic on the Upper East Side. Somebody spotted a lady talking with her doorman on the sidewalk, wearing a full-length fur coat and a fur hat that could only be described as gigantic. There was so much fur on her head that she looked as if she might tip over.
One last function of all the joking, he said, is as a kind of social lubricant in the most psychologically difficult situations. “You don’t start laughing unless there are other people to laugh with,” he said. “Probably if those guys were at the crime scenes by themselves, they wouldn’t be laughing. It’s with other people, and it’s kind of sharing the discomfort.”
One last thing: On Wednesday afternoon, in the Bio-Recovery van on the way back from picking up a load of dirty sheets from a Midtown hotel, we were stuck in traffic on the Upper East Side. Somebody spotted a lady talking with her doorman on the sidewalk, wearing a full-length fur coat and a fur hat that could only be described as gigantic. There was so much fur on her head that she looked as if she might tip over.
We all spotted her at the same time and there was a moment of surprised silence, until Manny Sosa, from the back of the van, grumbled, “I might have to call PETA on this address.”
Everybody cracked up, and for a second, we forgot about the traffic jam.
Everybody cracked up, and for a second, we forgot about the traffic jam.
Cleaning Needed, in the Worst Way
It would be safe to assume that the man in 6-F did not have many friends or relatives, or at least none who called or visited regularly. No one, not even his neighbors, noticed his absence for a number of weeks. That is, not until a putrid odor began filling the hallways of the Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City.
Consuelo Sanchez, 55, whose apartment is adjacent to 6-F, complained about the smell for weeks before housing authority officials unlocked the door to discover the decomposed body on a sofa, the television still burbling away. The occupant, an 86-year-old retired transit worker, had died a month earlier of natural causes. "I kept telling them, 'The man is dead,' " Ms. Sanchez said. "I was hoping I wasn't right."
The medical examiner removed the bulk of the remains, but it was up to Ronald Gospodarski to take care of the rest, most of them viscous and indescribably malodorous. The man in 6-F had largely soaked into the sofa cushions as his body decayed, and his gastric acid had melted through the plastic covering on the upholstery.
"I don't care if you're black, white, rich or poor, whether you live in the projects or a penthouse, everyone smells the same when they die," Mr. Gospodarski said as he scraped a caramel-colored goo off the floor of Apartment 6-F this spring.
Mr. Gospodarski, a paramedic for 23 years, is what is known as a bio-recovery technician, a highly trained, extremely efficient, self-employed house-cleaner of sorts whose specialty is removing the unpleasant aftereffects of suicides, attempted suicides, shotgun murders, accidental impalements and, in the case of lonely, unnoticed passings like that of the man in 6-F, "decomps."
In a city like New York, Mr. Gospodarski and his six employees are rarely idle. In recent months, they have mopped up a mailroom clerk who jumped from the 38th floor of an office building, sterilized a piece of filtration equipment that took the life of a water company employee and cleaned up after a boyfriend put a bullet through the head of a Staten Island mother as she made shrimp gumbo in her kitchen.
His company, Bio-Recovery Corporation, is the only business based in New York that specializes in such matters. There are a couple of similar cleanup companies with offices outside New York, but Bio-Recovery dominates the business in the city, mainly through word of mouth. It operates from a building that sits across the street from a cemetery in Queens.
"Everyone is dying to see us," said Mr. Gospodarski, 43, a jovial, talkative man who requires little prompting to recount some of his more memorable jobs, all of which he records in photographs that he keeps on his computer to show to visitors.
It was Mr. Gospodarski who dealt with the mayhem of the Wendy's restaurant massacre in 2000 that left five people dead in Queens and the triple murder that took place a year later above the Carnegie Deli in Manhattan. Bio-Recovery also tackled the anthrax contamination of The New York Post and ABC News and the sterilization of the Regal Princess, a cruise ship whose passengers were sickened by the Norwalk virus in 2003.
But the meat-and-potatoes of Mr. Gospodarski's business is unheralded deaths, like that of a troubled teenager who shot himself in the basement of his parents' Richmond Hill home in September or the quiet demise of elderly New Yorkers.
In the case of the man in 6-F, his extended period of decay fouled every item in his apartment, requiring that everything, even sections of the floor, be removed and discarded.
"I've had guys left dead for months, where fluid seeped down six floors and everything had to be torn out," Mr. Gospodarski said. "You can't leave one drop of blood or body fluid or the place will stink." In most cases, he said, post-mortem cleanup is quick and simple - wiping down blood-splattered walls, ripping out soiled carpet - but it is a job that would undoubtedly prove burdensome to grieving relatives.
"Most of the time we're simply providing psychological comfort," Mr. Gospodarski said. "People who commit suicide don't think about what they're going to leave behind."
Bio-Recovery's services start at $600 for cases of minimal decomposition and reach into the thousands for more extensive mayhem. The company generally uses industrial-strength cleanser, but its newest service involves superheating an entire apartment, which kills odor-producing microbes and eliminates the need to throw every last painting, book and piece of electronic equipment in the trash. The minimum cost for that procedure is $3,000.
The New York State Crime Victims Board will pay up to $2,500 for cleaning up after a homicide, and many car insurance policies cover the price of restoring the interior of vehicles whose passengers wind up on the wrong end of a gun. Mr. Gospodarski said he never turns anyone away, even if the client cannot pay.
"We never leave anyone hanging," he said without apparent irony. Nearly all of his jobs come from referrals from police officers, prosecutors and paramedics. He does not, he said, call grieving families whose loss he gleans from newspaper accounts.
Bio-Recovery started in Mr. Gospodarski's apartment in 1998. After his years as a paramedic, Mr. Gospodarski said, he was bothered by what he saw on the job.
Ambulance crews would take away a body and leave behind a disturbing pile of latex gloves, syringes and blood-soaked gauze. The detectives who often followed would ring the scene with yellow police tape and spray fingerprint dust around every light switch and door knob.
"I've seen the medical examiner leave behind pieces of brain," he said. "Grieving families shouldn't have to deal with that."
Mr. Gospodarski and his crew are alternately philosophical and vulgar, cracking jokes about the gore in their midst, or about the housekeeping habits of the deceased.
Last week, as they cleaned up the blood of Chantel Curtis, the Staten Island woman who was shot by a boyfriend who then killed himself, Mr. Gospodarski could not help noticing the details of her life: the treadmill in the living room, the vase of roses on the table and the joyful clutter of children's toys. "Why can't these people just kill themselves and leave everyone else alone?" he asked, his eyes pausing on a photograph of the victim and her young son.
It comes as some relief to Bio-Recovery's workers that many cleanups are limited to tiled bathrooms. A fair number of suicides are carried out in bathtubs, and many elderly people, beset by illness, will retreat to a bathroom to die, often on the toilet, the workers said.
Manny Sosa, like many employees, said he had become inured to death. He once retched during a cleanup that required him to handle entrails, but by now he can eat lunch on the job. "Sometimes we play detective and try to figure out what happened," said Mr. Sosa, 26. "I actually look forward to coming to work."
While they may be accustomed to gore, even the hardiest among the crew were unnerved by a recent job that required them to clean out a house in the Bronx that had been used for Santeria, the South American and Caribbean religion that involves the ritual slaughter of animals. The practitioners had defaulted on their mortgage, leaving the bank to deal with whatever mysteries lurked in the dank basement. Mr. Gospodarski's workers, dressed in biohazard suits, sifted through soil and discovered animal hoofs, desiccated snakes, razor blades and bottles of liquid marked with the international symbol for poison. The workers, most of them from Latin America and the West Indies, were clearly scared. At one point, Mr. Sosa unearthed what appeared to be a clump of human hair, and the crew's collective shudder was palpable. "I don't like this one bit," Mr. Sosa said. "I'd rather be dealing with a gunshot victim."
The summer months were unusually slow, and Mr. Gospodarski said he was looking forward to winter, when violence tends to move indoors. Bloodshed is more common in the summer, but there is little money to be made from gunplay that stains the pavement. With winter, however, people end up packed into tiny apartments. Throw boredom, drugs and weapons into the mix, and you have the potential makings for a bio-recovery bonanza.
"When cabin fever sets in, we get a lot of calls," he said. "All you can do is hope for a heavy snowstorm."
Consuelo Sanchez, 55, whose apartment is adjacent to 6-F, complained about the smell for weeks before housing authority officials unlocked the door to discover the decomposed body on a sofa, the television still burbling away. The occupant, an 86-year-old retired transit worker, had died a month earlier of natural causes. "I kept telling them, 'The man is dead,' " Ms. Sanchez said. "I was hoping I wasn't right."
The medical examiner removed the bulk of the remains, but it was up to Ronald Gospodarski to take care of the rest, most of them viscous and indescribably malodorous. The man in 6-F had largely soaked into the sofa cushions as his body decayed, and his gastric acid had melted through the plastic covering on the upholstery.
"I don't care if you're black, white, rich or poor, whether you live in the projects or a penthouse, everyone smells the same when they die," Mr. Gospodarski said as he scraped a caramel-colored goo off the floor of Apartment 6-F this spring.
Mr. Gospodarski, a paramedic for 23 years, is what is known as a bio-recovery technician, a highly trained, extremely efficient, self-employed house-cleaner of sorts whose specialty is removing the unpleasant aftereffects of suicides, attempted suicides, shotgun murders, accidental impalements and, in the case of lonely, unnoticed passings like that of the man in 6-F, "decomps."
In a city like New York, Mr. Gospodarski and his six employees are rarely idle. In recent months, they have mopped up a mailroom clerk who jumped from the 38th floor of an office building, sterilized a piece of filtration equipment that took the life of a water company employee and cleaned up after a boyfriend put a bullet through the head of a Staten Island mother as she made shrimp gumbo in her kitchen.
His company, Bio-Recovery Corporation, is the only business based in New York that specializes in such matters. There are a couple of similar cleanup companies with offices outside New York, but Bio-Recovery dominates the business in the city, mainly through word of mouth. It operates from a building that sits across the street from a cemetery in Queens.
"Everyone is dying to see us," said Mr. Gospodarski, 43, a jovial, talkative man who requires little prompting to recount some of his more memorable jobs, all of which he records in photographs that he keeps on his computer to show to visitors.
It was Mr. Gospodarski who dealt with the mayhem of the Wendy's restaurant massacre in 2000 that left five people dead in Queens and the triple murder that took place a year later above the Carnegie Deli in Manhattan. Bio-Recovery also tackled the anthrax contamination of The New York Post and ABC News and the sterilization of the Regal Princess, a cruise ship whose passengers were sickened by the Norwalk virus in 2003.
But the meat-and-potatoes of Mr. Gospodarski's business is unheralded deaths, like that of a troubled teenager who shot himself in the basement of his parents' Richmond Hill home in September or the quiet demise of elderly New Yorkers.
In the case of the man in 6-F, his extended period of decay fouled every item in his apartment, requiring that everything, even sections of the floor, be removed and discarded.
"I've had guys left dead for months, where fluid seeped down six floors and everything had to be torn out," Mr. Gospodarski said. "You can't leave one drop of blood or body fluid or the place will stink." In most cases, he said, post-mortem cleanup is quick and simple - wiping down blood-splattered walls, ripping out soiled carpet - but it is a job that would undoubtedly prove burdensome to grieving relatives.
"Most of the time we're simply providing psychological comfort," Mr. Gospodarski said. "People who commit suicide don't think about what they're going to leave behind."
Bio-Recovery's services start at $600 for cases of minimal decomposition and reach into the thousands for more extensive mayhem. The company generally uses industrial-strength cleanser, but its newest service involves superheating an entire apartment, which kills odor-producing microbes and eliminates the need to throw every last painting, book and piece of electronic equipment in the trash. The minimum cost for that procedure is $3,000.
The New York State Crime Victims Board will pay up to $2,500 for cleaning up after a homicide, and many car insurance policies cover the price of restoring the interior of vehicles whose passengers wind up on the wrong end of a gun. Mr. Gospodarski said he never turns anyone away, even if the client cannot pay.
"We never leave anyone hanging," he said without apparent irony. Nearly all of his jobs come from referrals from police officers, prosecutors and paramedics. He does not, he said, call grieving families whose loss he gleans from newspaper accounts.
Bio-Recovery started in Mr. Gospodarski's apartment in 1998. After his years as a paramedic, Mr. Gospodarski said, he was bothered by what he saw on the job.
Ambulance crews would take away a body and leave behind a disturbing pile of latex gloves, syringes and blood-soaked gauze. The detectives who often followed would ring the scene with yellow police tape and spray fingerprint dust around every light switch and door knob.
"I've seen the medical examiner leave behind pieces of brain," he said. "Grieving families shouldn't have to deal with that."
Mr. Gospodarski and his crew are alternately philosophical and vulgar, cracking jokes about the gore in their midst, or about the housekeeping habits of the deceased.
Last week, as they cleaned up the blood of Chantel Curtis, the Staten Island woman who was shot by a boyfriend who then killed himself, Mr. Gospodarski could not help noticing the details of her life: the treadmill in the living room, the vase of roses on the table and the joyful clutter of children's toys. "Why can't these people just kill themselves and leave everyone else alone?" he asked, his eyes pausing on a photograph of the victim and her young son.
It comes as some relief to Bio-Recovery's workers that many cleanups are limited to tiled bathrooms. A fair number of suicides are carried out in bathtubs, and many elderly people, beset by illness, will retreat to a bathroom to die, often on the toilet, the workers said.
Manny Sosa, like many employees, said he had become inured to death. He once retched during a cleanup that required him to handle entrails, but by now he can eat lunch on the job. "Sometimes we play detective and try to figure out what happened," said Mr. Sosa, 26. "I actually look forward to coming to work."
While they may be accustomed to gore, even the hardiest among the crew were unnerved by a recent job that required them to clean out a house in the Bronx that had been used for Santeria, the South American and Caribbean religion that involves the ritual slaughter of animals. The practitioners had defaulted on their mortgage, leaving the bank to deal with whatever mysteries lurked in the dank basement. Mr. Gospodarski's workers, dressed in biohazard suits, sifted through soil and discovered animal hoofs, desiccated snakes, razor blades and bottles of liquid marked with the international symbol for poison. The workers, most of them from Latin America and the West Indies, were clearly scared. At one point, Mr. Sosa unearthed what appeared to be a clump of human hair, and the crew's collective shudder was palpable. "I don't like this one bit," Mr. Sosa said. "I'd rather be dealing with a gunshot victim."
The summer months were unusually slow, and Mr. Gospodarski said he was looking forward to winter, when violence tends to move indoors. Bloodshed is more common in the summer, but there is little money to be made from gunplay that stains the pavement. With winter, however, people end up packed into tiny apartments. Throw boredom, drugs and weapons into the mix, and you have the potential makings for a bio-recovery bonanza.
"When cabin fever sets in, we get a lot of calls," he said. "All you can do is hope for a heavy snowstorm."
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