Taking The Risk By: Doug Berjer Cleaning For approximately 2.5 million workers in the United States, cleaning is a dangerous profession. Cleaning can be hazardous to the health of clean-ing workers — an undeniable fact that should not be ignored. Unfortunately, placing emphasis on cleaning worker safety seems to go in and out of style. Although the industry is deeply involved at the moment in discussions about “cleaning for health,” these conversations tend to address the needs of everyone except the cleaning workers actually performing these tasks. The bottom line is that for the 2.5 million or more cleaning workers in the United States, cleaning work is a risky, dangerous profession.* Cleaning workers are regularly exposed to risks and hazards including walking on wet and slip-pery floors; climbing ladders or stretching to reach high and low areas; frequent bending and lifting; repetitive movements and motions and awkward physical positions; and carrying tools and equip-ment that can vary significantly in size, weight and balance. For many cleaning workers, these risk factors often lead to musculoskeletal dis-orders (MSDs) and other work-related injuries. This is likely why, according to the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Out Of C Doug Berjer has written extensively on cleaning, carpet cleaning and water conservation issues. He worked previously for a large JanSan distributorship in St. Louis, Missouri, as an equipment specialist and as the operations manager for a large building service contractor that specialized in servicing shopping malls and anchor store retailers. Doug is now brand manager for CFR, Continuous Flow Recycling Extractors, and Tornado Industries. He may be reached via their websites at www.TornadoVac.com or www.CFRCorp.com. Labor Statistics, “Janitors and building cleaners have one of the highest work-related injury rates. Workers may suffer cuts, bruises and burns from machines, tools and chemicals . . . when working.” for more info Visit www.cmmonline.com and type in search keyword: Ergonomics . For more information on related products, visit www.cmmonline.com , select DIRECTORY from the main navigation bar, and enter keyword: Safety . Risk factors that clean-ing workers are routinely exposed to can often lead to musculoskeletal disor-ders (MSDs) and other work-related injuries. 20 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • January 2014 Image courtesy of kadmy/iStock/Thinkstock
CMM – Archives January 2014: 20
