ProTeam Inc. Eliminating Dust In Carpet Care With advanced Four Level ® Filtration, airborne dust issues are a thing of the past. A A carpet care routine can have a dramat-ic effect on occupant health — either positively or negatively — depending on the effectiveness and consistency of the process in place. Unfortunately, car-pets are often misunderstood by clean-ing professionals and, consequently, their maintenance can be unproductive. On the surface, carpets act as dust sinks, while hard floors retain less dirt. Simple logic says that one must be cleaner and healthier than the other. However, when the dirt on a hard floor interacts with the movement of people and air, fine dust flies back into the breathing zone of building occupants. A carpet, on the other hand, holds the dirt and dust deep within and underneath the fibers until removed. So, how do maintenance crews elimi-nate this sunken dirt? Not usually with beater bars. This constant agitation of the carpet often causes fine dust and allergens to float back into the breathing zone rather than being removed. It also distresses carpet fibers, so they wear more quickly. The key to effective, healthy indoor air quality in carpet care is high-level filtra-tion and high-powered extraction, and science backs up this claim. In 2006, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) conducted a large-scale sci-entific study to measure the results of dif-ferent cleaning methods. To test vacuuming equipment, several indicators were studied. A dust-tracking aerosol monitor was placed at a vacu-um’s exhaust during the initial few min-utes of operation. Additional measure-ments were conducted at five or six feet, around head height, during vacuuming of the carpet. The study found virtually no detectable emission from the ProTeam ® Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI) Green Label backpack vacuum under evaluation, compared to a very high emission from the upright, which came in at 240 parts per unit. A level greater than 100 is consid-ered unsanitary and potentially harmful to a large segment of the population. “We used the studies as a stepping stone,” comments Clifton Webb, UNC-CH’s assistant project manager of facili-ties. “We now use the ManageMen Operating System 1 ® (OS1) [a Team Cleaning system using ProTeam back-pack vacuums] on 25 percent of our buildings. We get good feedback on how clean the buildings are. Allergies have gone away. We have the documentation.” Tina Enos, a custodian at the University of Michigan (UM), has a per-sonal take on the effect of poor indoor air quality and carpet care in schools. An asthmatic, Enos regularly suffered attacks from the dust and allergens that became agitated and airborne during and after cleaning. “I am a severe asthmatic, and dust is the biggest factor that can trigger an asthma attack for me,” says Enos. “Personally, I believe that the standard beater bar vacuum was an ineffective tool and threw more dust into the air than it actually picked up.” Enos jumped at the chance to be a jan-itorial volunteer when UM began to implement the OS1 system. In place of her upright, she received a ProTeam Super CoachVac ® with Four Level Filtration, an exclusive dust-capture process that traps and removes 99.9 per-cent of particulates down to 1 micron in size. High-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filtration models are also avail-able. Since the switch, Enos reports, “Asthma attacks from dust in the air have become almost non-existent. Air quality, in my opinion, has improved.” CM Circle Product Information no. 152 This content was provided by ProTeam Inc. as part of a paid advertisement. For more information, please contact ProTeam directly at 1-866-888-2168 or www.pro-team.com. www.cmmonline.com 27
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