If you find yourself facing the need to cleanup urine and feces, you have a situation at hand that can be both challenging and risky. You need to understand the safe pathway to thorough urine and feces cleanup. As a result, you’re provided information about:
- Situations that give rise to the need for comprehensive urine and feces cleanup
- Hazards in urine
- Hazards in feces
- Urine and feces cleanup in your home
- Urine and feces cleanup at your business
- Urine and feces cleanup in your rental property
- Professional assistance from a urine and feces cleanup company
Situations That Give Rise to the Need for Comprehensive Urine and Feces Cleanup
A variety of situations can give rise to the need for comprehensive urine and feces cleanup in your home, business, or rental property. With that in mind, the most commonplace reasons why you might need to undertake urine and feces cleanup include:
- Flooding
- Sewage malfunction or sewage backup
- Hoarding
- Person on premises with a health issue
- Homeless encampment
- Unattended death
Hazards in Urine
There are some prevalent, persistent misconceptions about the safety of human urine. A large segment of the population believes that urine is sterile. An important fact you need to understand clearly is:
Even before urine flows from your body, it is not sterile. The urban legend that urine is sterile is understandable. The misconception that urine is sterile can be traced by to the 1950s. It was during this time period that a concerted effort was made to screen people for urinary tract infections before surgery.
In the 1950s, an epidemiologist named Edward Kass developed a urine test that is still used today. This test established a specific numerical cutoff point for the amount of bacteria that is considered a normal level in human urine. Specifically, this test established a normal level of bacteria in human urine to be not more than 100,000 colony-forming units per milliliter of urine. A colony-forming unit is a cell cluster on a culture dish. With the advent of this test, “normal” inaccurately became interpreted as “sterile.”
If a person has some type of urinary tract infection, urine is more contaminated with bacteria. In addition, the moment urine passes from a person’s body, it nearly always becomes more contaminated with skin cells and other debris, including matter that can contain bacteria.
Hazards in Feces
Although urine is not sterile, it is notably less hazardous than feces. The reality is that human feces likely contains different types of pathogens than can endanger a person’s health, according to the World Health Organization. Examples of the types of pathogens that can be found in feces include what technically can known as pathogenic bacteria, bacteria that is harmful to health. These include:
- Salmonella
- Shigella
- E. coli
- Streptococcus
- Pseudomonas aeruginosa
- Mycobacterium
- Giardia Lamblia
Some of the bacteria found in human feces are capable of causing severe and even fatal illnesses.
Feces can also contain certain types of viruses capable of causing serious illnesses. These include polio and hepatitis.
In addition, feces can also contain parasites of different types. These organisms are also capable of damaging an individual’s health.
Urine and Feces Cleanup in Your Home
Urine and feces contaminating your home present a significant and immediate health risk. You absolutely cannot delay in beginning the process of urine and feces cleanup in your home. Unless the issue with urine and feces only involves a toilet that overflowed to some degree, you should seriously consider engaging the services of a professional urine and feces cleanup company, as will be discussed more in a moment.
If you delay in commencing urine and feces cleanup, your household is unnecessarily exposed to the danger of disease. In addition, the failure to promptly remediate a situation in your home involving urine and feces can result in what can amount to significant damage to the structure of your residence itself.
Urine and Feces Cleanup at Your Business
If you’re a business owner, you have a legal responsibility to keep the premises of your enterprise in a reasonably safe condition. As a consequence, if you have an issue with urine and feces at your business, you must take prompt action to eradicate the situation in all ways to protect the welfare of your patrons, employees, and other people. If a business fails to take prompt action, such an enterprise can be held legally responsible for any illness, injuries, damages, or losses sustained by an employee, patron, or some other person invited to the premises.
Urine and Feces Cleanup in Your Rental Property
If you’re the owner of rental property, whether commercial or residential, you’ve certain legal and contractual obligations to a tenant. Depending on the circumstances through which rental property became contaminated with urine and feces, you very well may have an obligation to address the situation in a timely manner. The failure to do so can prove to be a violation of a lease as well as of applicable law.
The necessity to address a situation involving urine and feces in rental property cannot be overstated. In addition, you must be absolutely certain that urine and feces cleanup is completely and safely executed. The legal and other obligations associated with this type of remediation calls for the involvement of a professional urine and feces cleanup company.
Professional Assistance From a Urine and Feces Cleanup Company
If a situation exists in your home, business, or rental property involving the presence of urine or feces, you should consider seriously obtaining the services of a professional urine and feces cleanup company. An experienced, reputable urine and feces cleanup company will provide comprehensive services to ensure that a home, business, or rental property is fully restored to a livable or usable condition.
In most cases, professional urine and feces cleanup essentially is a three-phase process:
- Removal of biological waste (urine and feces)
- Sanitization of the contaminated area
- Deodorization of the premises
A reputable, experienced urine and feces cleanup company will come to the scene and provide a reliable estimate for the work that needs to be undertaken to safely and fully clean up everything associated with urine and feces contaminating a home, business, or rental property.