The Forgotten Item
Are you forgetting something in your cleaning regime?
One positive that has emerged from the pandemic over the last 12 months is a renewed focus on cleaning and official cleaning processes. Across all industries, we’re seeing a huge amount of press coverage about how organisations are adapting to more thorough cleaning procedures, to ensure their staff and customers are kept safe for when we return to “normal” life.
The rail industry is no exception, with operators employing large teams of cleaners and advanced decontamination and fogging procedures between operating times, and in turn this has been highly publicised to give confidence to the public that trains are not only clean and pleasant but also safe.
But there is one thing that has been left behind. At TBM we refer to it as “The Forgotten Item”, because it is something that operators tend to omit or not give much focus to in their cleaning procedures. And it is something every single passenger comes into contact with on every single train journey.
The seat covers. Not something that necessarily springs to mind as needing thorough cleaning, right? Sure, if there’s a spillage a quick scrub will remove the stain. But to put it into context, seats and seat rails are the most frequently contaminated surfaces in trains after floors.
Studies of surface contamination in public transport have historically focused on bacterial counts of MRSA, but we can still draw from this the general levels of surface contamination - be it bacteria or viruses.
Yeh et al carried out a study in 2011, swabbing 8 cm2 areas and found the mean bacterial colony counts were 97.1 on bus and train floors, 80.1 in cloth seats, 9.5 on handrails and 2.2 on windows.
Since the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, studies have also been carried out in relation to transport as a transmission source. Zhao et al (2020) explored evidence for transmission of SARS-CoV-2 by examining the association between passengers travelling from Wuhan and the number of 2019-nCoV cases confirmed in different cities. They found strong and significant association between travel by train and the number of Covid-19 cases versus flying and travelling by car - the latter two had little statistical significance.
So, from both these studies we can determine that trains are a significant source of disease transmission. Plus, the surfaces likely to be highly contaminated with bacteria and viruses are the floors and seat covers primarily.
Yet the rail industry does not clean seat covers enough or well-enough. Seat covers are either missed off official cleaning procedures, possibly due to the deep pile that hide the “invisible” contaminants that lurk beneath.
It’s also the hassle of tackling something that’s not visible - but hasn’t this been the very hard lesson we’ve all had to learn over the last 12 months?
If seat covers are cleaned, many operators choose to steam clean them in-situ. But all this does is break down the fire-protection coating, along with the fibres in the seat cover fabric, leading to a shorter life span of the seat covers, and very costly replacement. Even more crucially, steam cleaning is not able to eliminate bacteria or deactivate viruses.
At TBM we offer a dry cleaning & fibre protection service for seat covers. To date we have dry cleaned 400,000 seat covers. Although this number seems large, in context it’s actually just the tip of the iceberg and we are passionate about changing the industry’s mindset.
Dry cleaning seat covers properly is not a hassle and it can easily be carried out once every 12 months, with a whole train being serviced over a couple of days. We send our teams in to remove covers and take them away during the train’s down time - overnight, when it’s being refuelled or receiving an examination. Our team then hygienically dry clean and launder the covers, placing them in sealed bags before returning them to the train to be refitted. Job done.
We also offer a fibre protection service - FiberProtector - as part of the cleaning service. FiberProtector can be applied to seat covers and carpets and it works to protect the fabrics from water-based and oil-protection spills, UV sun-fading and makes for easier removal of stubborn stains. Along with prolonging the life of seat covers, FiberProtector supports decarbonisation plans with less chemicals used or water required.
Since using FiberProtector, one of our customers has reduced the time spent by cleaners cleaning seat covers in situ without removing them by 70-80%.
As one of the most highly contaminated surfaces in a train after floors, seat covers should be hygienically cleaned as part of an ongoing maintenance programme. Not only to ensure trains are maintained an attractive and pleasant environment for passengers, but also as part of an advanced cleaning plan to tackle the transmission of infections. An important consideration as we return to a new kind of normal.
Are you giving seat covers enough focus in your cleaning procedures?