Question:
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I am working on a project involving preschools and day care centers and I was wondering what chemical-free products you would recommend for these type of facilities? I see so many child care centers still using chlorine-bleach and it's terrible.
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Steve’s Answer:
Nice to hear from you.
I sincerely appreciate your concerns. Sometimes the “cure” can be worse that the “disease” --- and some old-fashioned cleaning products place children, staff and the environment at unnecessary risk since modern alternatives are just as effective (if not more so), cost effective and readily available.
But I also have to tell you that cleaning a daycare center is NOT the same as cleaning a home. Day care centers are “regulated” in most communities by the local health department, and before I would tell the daycare operator to switch products I would make sure what the regulations are because you could be getting them into trouble. Unfortunately, in some jurisdictions, bleach is “required”. If this is the case in your community, the process of improvement begins by working with the health department.
Sometimes changing the sanitizer is very hard, but they often will allow other US EPA “registered” products to be used, which typically are like Lysol and use an active ingredient called a Quaternary Ammonium Compound. These are actually preferable compared to chlorine bleach.
As to other home cleaning products or home recipes, I frankly do NOT believe they are appropriate for a daycare center. Daycare centers are licensed as institutions/businesses and thus are regulated by OSHA (Occupational Safety & Health Administration) which has very clear requirements for cleaning products, primarily dealing with labeling and the availability of “Right to Know” information on the hazards associated with a cleaning products --- this as you know is the MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet).
Home/consumer products are regulated by the Consumer Products Safety Commission on are designed for homes, but don’t have the same labeling and information associated with them that are required for a Daycare.
One of the things are recommend you do is get a copy of the Healthy Schools Campaign’s Quick & Easy Guide to Green Cleaning in Schools. While this is for schools and not specifically for daycare, but the issues are similar. In their Guide they provide lots of good information on cleaning, selecting products, training, etc. And its free! Their website is www.HealthySchoolsCampaign.org.
Hope this helps,
Steve
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