Released this month

• How to com­plete a JSEA
• How to com­plete SWMS
• Train­ing Reg­is­ter Check­list
• Intro­duc­tion to ATP Meters
• How to opti­mise your Face­book Busi­ness Page
• Train­ing Process
• How to com­plete a Stan­dard Oper­at­ing Pro­ce­dure
• Intro­duc­tion to Mois­ture Meters — Train­ing Video

What is ATP?

ATP = Adeno­sine Triphosphate​

Uni­ver­sal ener­gy mol­e­cule found in all organ­ic mat­ter. ​

This includes blood, skin, and sali­va residues as well as microbes and ATP sys­tems do not dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the dif­fer­ent sam­ples. ​

How ATP Bio­lu­mi­nes­cence works?

It is a reac­tion that occurs when a nat­ur­al fire­fly enzyme reacts with ATP to cre­ate light.​

​Light is gen­er­at­ed in sec­onds and mea­sured by a lumi­nome­ter.​

​Quan­ti­ty of light emit­ted is in direct pro­por­tion to the amount of ATP present in the sam­ple.​

​The more light pro­duced, the greater the lev­el of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion.

60-sec­ond self-check cal­i­bra­tion every time the instru­ment is ini­tial­ly pow­ered on

The Ensure has a PD sen­sor allow­ing it to stay cal­i­brat­ed for up to 10+ years

ATP Bio­lu­mi­nes­cence Tech­nol­o­gy

ATP bio­lu­mi­nes­cence detects the amount of ATP, which is an indi­rect mea­sure­ment of the amount of organic/food residue on a sur­face that has the poten­tial to sup­port micro­bial growth and also micro­bial bio- mass. In sim­ple terms, it mea­sures the dirt or filth on a sur­face indi­cat­ing the need for clean­ing and san­i­tiz­ing.

1. That means that ATP tests alone can­not con­firm the pres­ence or absence of all virus­es and oth­er microor­gan­isms. How­ev­er, ATP test­ing is a fast, reli­able way to con­firm the pres­ence or absence of bio­log­i­cal mat­ter in a sam­ple area, which is a good indi­ca­tor of gen­er­al clean­li­ness and hygiene lev­els.
2. The detec­tion of adeno­sine triphos­phate (ATP), the uni­ver­sal unit of ener­gy in all liv­ing cells, imme­di­ate­ly deter­mines if sur­faces and water sources are clean. ATP clean­ing ver­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem offers reme­di­a­tion oper­a­tors a hand­held sys­tem that is easy to use and can be imple­ment­ed in any size facil­i­ty.
3. New test kits have become avail­able with detec­tion and enu­mer­a­tion of E. coli bac­te­ria.  Using a nov­el bio­lu­mino­genic test reac­tion that gen­er­ates light when enzymes that are char­ac­ter­is­tic of E. coli bac­te­ria react with spe­cial­ized sub­strates to pro­duce light using spe­cif­ic hand­held sys­tems called lumi­nome­ter.

A gen­er­al under­stand­ing of the build­ing mate­ri­als, build­ing sci­ence, grasp of the con­di­tions and prac­ti­cal knowl­edge the IICRC S500 stan­dards for “Water Dam­age” essen­tial for valid and cor­rect test­ing pro­to­cols:

Iden­ti­fy­ing and gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion rel­a­tive to the build­ing, cur­rent envi­ron­men­tal migra­tions, past water intru­sions inci­dents and the cur­rent occu­pants may all be part of your syn­op­sis.

3 meth­ods include; but not lim­it­ed to:

1. Swab test­ing for the presence/absence of indi­ca­tor sewage organ­isms or groups of organ­isms.
2. Test­ing for adeno­sine triphos­phate (ATP) con­cen­tra­tions using a lumi­nome­ter (light meter).
3. Air sam­pling using aerosol par­ti­cle coun­ters.

Pro­to­cols and mea­sures can show on a sewage reme­di­a­tion loss, the required need to deter­mine extent of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in a home/building, along with the sewage test­ing ser­vices after reme­di­a­tion to deter­mine clear­ance for safe occu­pan­cy.

The pres­ence or absence (P/A) when test­ing a sewage loss, often for one of three groups of viable (liv­ing) bac­te­ria.

1. Fae­cal col­iform bac­te­ria
2. Ente­ro­coc­cus bac­te­ria
3. Escherichia coli (E. coli) bac­te­ria

Microbiology of water damage

Indoor and out­door envi­ron­ments nat­u­ral­ly har­bour a vari­ety of micro­scop­ic life forms termed

microor­gan­isms or microbes. After a water intru­sion event, the nor­mal indoor ecol­o­gy can quick­ly shift as microor­gan­isms and microbes grow. Restor­ers should have a basic under­stand­ing of the nor­mal and shift­ing ecolo­gies of water dam­age events.

Health Effects from Expo­sure to Micro­bial Con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in Water-Dam­aged Build­ings

Micro­bial con­t­a­m­i­na­tion asso­ci­at­ed with water dam­age in indoor envi­ron­ments is a pub­lic health prob­lem. It presents a health risk to both occu­pants and restora­tion work­ers, poten­tial­ly result­ing in a vari­ety of ill­ness­es of an inflam­ma­to­ry, aller­gic, infec­tious, and tox­ic nature. In light of both the rec­og­nized and poten­tial health effects asso­ci­at­ed with micro­bial con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in water-dam­aged indoor envi­ron­ments, restora­tion pro­fes­sion­als should take appro­pri­ate mea­sures to pro­tect build­ing occu­pants, and max­i­mal­ly reduce expo­sure risks to their work­ers through train­ing, immu­niza­tion, and the use of admin­is­tra­tive and engi­neer­ing con­trols; and per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE).

Bio­log­i­cal haz­ards (bio­haz­ards) present the Occu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty (OHS)

pro­fes­sion­al with com­plex chal­lenges. Many and var­ied bio­haz­ards may result from

work­place expo­sure to organ­isms, or sub­stances pro­duced by organ­isms, that threat­en

human health. Although work­ers in clean­ing and reme­di­a­tion are at par­tic­u­lar risk of expo­sure to haz­ardous bio­log­i­cal agents, all work­places har­bour the poten­tial for var­i­ous forms of bio­haz­ard expo­sure, includ­ing per­son-to-per­son trans­mis­sion of infec­tious dis­ease. While pre­ven­tion and man­age­ment of bio­haz­ards is often the respon­si­bil­i­ty of occu­pa­tion­al or pub­lic health per­son­nel, the

gen­er­al­ist OHS pro­fes­sion­al should under­stand bio­haz­ards and their mech­a­nisms of action, and the impor­tance of vig­i­lance and stan­dard con­trol mea­sures. Armed with this knowl­edge, the gen­er­al­ist OHS pro­fes­sion­al can work with occu­pa­tion­al health per­son­nel to devel­op and imple­ment bio­haz­ard pre­ven­tion and mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies.

Indoor air qual­i­ty is a spe­cialised area of exper­tise that is part of “Indus­tri­al Hygiene”.  Indus­tri­al hygiene is the sci­ence of pro­tect­ing and enhanc­ing the health and safe­ty of peo­ple at work and in their com­mu­ni­ties.

Picked by Phill McGurk

1. Jon Jones                              @Jonnybones
2. Khabib Nur­magome­dov      @TeamKhabib
3. Aman­da Nunas                    @Amanda_Leoa
4. Stipe Mio­cic                          @stipemiocic
5. Kamaru Usman                    @USMAN84kg
6. Valenti­na Shevchenko       @BulletValentina
7. Israel Ade­sanya                   @stylebender
8. Weili Zhang                          zhang­weil­im­ma (Insta­gram)
9. Petr Yan                                @PetrYanUFC
10. Alexan­der Volka­novs­ki       @alexvolkanovski

*Pho­to Cred­it @UFC