The Infection Control Today® environmental services (EVS) page recognizes the team responsible for sanitation and cleaning within the health care system. EVS personnel are an integral component of infection prevention in the hospital, working closely together with the health care staff to ensure patient safety and hygiene standards. ICT® keeps a close eye on developments in the environmental services industry and reports on any peer-reviewed literature. This page also features video interviews with EVS and the professionals who interact with them.
September 13th 2024
Sean Brown’s 2024 Disease Prevention Summit presentation emphasized leveraging technology, prioritizing high-risk patients, and environmental surveillance to enhance infection prevention and control strategies.
ActiveGuard Mattress Liners Reduce Bed Bugs' Ability to Lay Eggs, Study Finds
April 2nd 2015Products that claim to control bed bugs have been on the market for years. Some work, and some don't. Dr. Susan Jones, a professor of entomology at Ohio State University, knows this as well as anyone, after having tested many such products for years. While there have been some flops in the past, she and her colleagues have found one that looks promising as a new tool for bed bug control programs. The results of their research are published in an article in the Journal of Medical Entomology.
Environmental Hygiene Issues in the Hospital: The Operating Room and the ICU
March 26th 2015Patients can be at their most vulnerable when they are in a critical care environment of the operating room (OR) or the intensive care unit (ICU). That's why it's essential that these two areas of the hospital receive scrupulous environmental cleaning and disinfection per recommended practices. This Pulse explores environmental cleaning and disinfection issues pertaining to the OR and the ICU.
Chlorine Use in Sewage Treatment Could Promote Antibiotic Resistance
March 23rd 2015Chlorine, a disinfectant commonly used in most wastewater treatment plants, may be failing to completely eliminate pharmaceuticals from wastes. As a result, trace levels of these substances get discharged from the plants to the nation’s waterways. And now, scientists are reporting preliminary studies that show chlorine treatment may encourage the formation of new, unknown antibiotics that could also enter the environment, potentially contributing to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.
Exploring a New Paradigm for Cleaning Efficacy
February 19th 2015Just how efficacious are the cleaning and disinfection interventions performed in healthcare institutions? And what standard are hospitals using to evaluate cleaning efforts? While it has been suggested that the food industry cleanliness standard (surface bioburden level of <2.5 cfu/cm²) be adopted in healthcare as an indication of relative cleanliness, there is still a lack of conclusive evidence that these levels of contamination relate to the prevention of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs).