Germs are everywhere in this world, and they’re just about impossible to truly avoid – if you don’t want to live in a bubble, that is, as the majority of us certainly do not. In some ways, germs are important, strengthening our immune systems and giving us the immunity that we need to live safely in this world, where coming in contact with other people is unavoidable. But not all germs are good for us, and some can lead to quite severe illnesses, not to mention inconvenient ones. Therefore, cleanliness is hugely important, from your place of work to your home to every place that you frequent.
In most places of work, janitor services will operate on what is often a nightly basis, the janitor services providing their commercial office cleaning services after everyone else has gone home for the night. And while you might not think that the janitor services cleaning an office will need go all that in depth too far past cleaning the bathrooms and taking out the trash, this is actually not the case. The average office, even a well organized and well kept one, is likely far dirtier than you realize, even if you spend every work day in such a place.
In fact, the data that has been gathered on the subject more than backs this up, showing that a typical office desk will contain up to ten million bacteria at any given point and time, likely more if it is not regularly cleaned. This means that such a desk will have up to 400 times more the germs than your average toilet, which certainly says a lot about the need for a janitor service in any given office location. In addition to this, keyboards, chairs, and computer mouses are also quite germ, as these are objects that are frequently touched, with germs from other places transmitted to them with ease. In fact, a cumulative more than 20,000 germs will be found on these objects alone – not in total, but per every square inch of space that they provide.
Even elevator buttons are breeding grounds for germs, touched by so many different people all throughout the day. In any given office building, it’s like that the elevator button will harbor at least a million germs. Most elevator buttons, when tested, were found to have even more than that, an impressive amount by any standards, as well as quite a frightening one, all things considered.
During winter months, janitor services will be even more important, as this is the season where illnesses flourish and bloom from one person to the next. The flu virus, for instance, is particularly common, infecting as much as 20% of the country’s population throughout the course of any given flu season. The flu virus is longer lasting than many – living for up to 48 hours on any hard surface – and the flu itself can be dangerous once contracted.
Many people think of the flu as a minor ailment, only just slightly more serious than the common cold. However, this is far from the case, as even in healthy people the flu, especially particularly nasty strains of it, can land people in the hospital with serious complications like sepsis and pneumonia. In addition to this, the flu can often lead to death, primarily in at risk populations of the very young, the very old, and the immunocompromised.
For office places throughout the country, diseases like the flu can spread like wildfire, as up to one third of employees will come into work even if they are sick. For this very reason, the presence of janitor services to provide janitorial cleaning are particularly important, as these janitor services can help to wipe out viruses like the flu before even more people are infected and sickened. As the flu has been found to lead to up to 200 million days of diminished productivity and more than 70 million days of work missed entirely, the work of janitor services in the typical office building is more important than many people realize, a crucial part of keeping offices running as they should be here and all throughout the United States.