The Northville Public School District has seen five cases of MRSA since the start of the school year with three this month.

This is one too many for local businessman Gary Martin, who wants to help the district prevent any more issues.

Martin’s company, the Martin Midwest Group, LLC, is a manufacturer’s representative with specialties in healthcare, industrial, janitorial and safety products. It’s located in downtown Northville.

He went before the Northville Board of Education on Nov. 12 to voice his concerns and offer some help.

“MRSA is more easily transferred than the common cold and is more violent,” he said to the school board. “This handicaps people and kills people…this is something that is going to grow worse in our society.”

The most recent case was reported to NPS on Nov. 19 and it involves another high school student. The district said this case is not related to previously reported cases.

More at source: Hometown Life

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HOUSTON – Soji Services Inc., doing business as Metro Clean Commercial Building Services, has agreed to pay $273,132 in minimum wage and overtime back wages to 266 janitors after an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division found violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act’s minimum wage, overtime and record-keeping provisions.

“This employer took advantage of workers for its own monetary gain,” said Cynthia Watson, the Wage and Hour Division’s regional administrator for the Southwest. “The resolution of this case should send a clear message to other employers who may be tempted to skirt the lawundefinedthe department will continue to pursue violations in this industry vigorously. Companies contracting for these types of services should be aware of a contractor’s labor compliance history when selecting their service providers. Whether it’s the people landscaping your property, providing security services or cleaning your building, we all have a responsibility to ensure that an honest day’s work receives an honest day’s pay.”

More at source: Your Houston News

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November 11, 2013) Tampa, Florida --

Each disaster has its own level of trauma whether it be Katrina, the Asian tsunami of 2004, or Haiti, they all have the commonality of extremely high winds and water.  As structural devastation forces buildings and homes to be virtually uninhabitable, it is the onslaught of water that brings on the worst aftermath.  Bacteria and mold set in immediately which seeps into every nook and cranny that exists and here festers the mold and germs that grow and expand throughout this environment.  Wet, dark, and stillness,  creates the ripe scenario for dangerous living conditions as the air quality becomes infested with live bacterial growth that finds its way into the human lungs. 

 

If there was to be a magical apparatus that could be most beneficial, a gigantic “dry vac” that could immediately remove the water damage and humid atmosphere, would probably be most helpful.  Without electricity and a power sources, which are generally the first to get wiped out, lives and immediate safety become the priority as water damage sets in, planting its bacterial roots.

More at source: NewsWire

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Who’s the big global manufacturer of floor-cleaning equipment located in the western suburbs?

Golden Valley-based Tennant Co., right? The cornerstone Minnesota company is headed toward sales of $755 million this year, according to analysts.

Then there’s low-profile neighbor Nilfisk-Advance in Plymouth, the U.S. headquarters of the Danish manufacturer that’s expected to post sales of about $1.2 billion this year.

Nilfisk-Advance concedes that it controls only about 9 percent of the U.S. cleaning-equipment market compared with an estimated 13 percent for Tennant undefined the U.S. market leader. But Nilfisk-Advance says it has started to grow market share in the United States, its single largest market.

More at source: Star Tribune

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A Cincinnati, Ohio, man owes the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) more than $100,000 in workers’ compensation benefits he received while employed as a janitor, a job he got using a fake ID.  John Monday, aka John Turner, pleaded guilty to fraud in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Nov. 5.

“Mr. Monday clearly took deliberate steps to conceal his employment, and worse, he claimed to be permanently disabled, a designation reserved for only the most severely injured,” said BWC Administrator/CEO Steve Buehrer. “Our investigators did an outstanding job, and we are especially grateful to the Spine Institute for turning over information that allowed us to put an end to Mr. Monday’s deception.”

More at source: ClaimsJournal.com

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It seems like every discipline in facility management (FM) is “going green” these days, and for good reason. Green solutions and practices deliver occupational and environmental safety benefits while at the same time often creating operational efficiencies. Commercial cleaning and sanitizing is no exception to this trend. Green cleaning can generate cost savings, provide greater convenience in obtaining solutions, and eliminate the use of harsh chemicals at a facility (which often have negative environmental and safety impacts). One emerging green cleaning and sanitizing option is the use of electrolyzed water.

What Is Electrolyzed Water?

Electrolyzed water describes two solutionsundefineda grease cutting cleaner and a sanitizerundefinedwhich an electrolyzed water system creates through the process of electrolysis. In electrolysis, salt containing water is subjected to an electrical current. The current, along with ion-selective membranes in electrolytic cells, produces two types of solutions: a high pH, non-corrosive dirt and grease cutting cleaner (sodium hydroxide), and a low pH, high dissolved oxygen, chlorine containing sanitizer and disinfectant (hypochlorous acid). The hypochlorous acid acts as a high efficacy sanitizer, while the sodium hydroxide is a broad spectrum cleaning solution.

More at source: Today`s Facility Manager

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There's no need to drag out your full-sized upright or canister vacuum for every little cleanup job. Our labs are just finishing up tests of two sweeper/vacs, the Dyson Hard DC56 ($330) and the Swiffer Sweeper/Vac ($40), which combine a wet or dry sweeping cloth with a light-duty cordless vacuum. But once you’ve used even the standard Swiffer Sweeper, one thing hits youundefinedthe cost of replacement pads, which run 30 to 60 cents each. Some consumers have found creative ways to save on the cost of the Swiffer pads.

As our sibling website the Consumerist reports, there are plenty of other items you can use instead of the actual Swiffer pads, including pads you can knit or sew together, microfiber cloth, paper towels, old socks, cloth diapers, worn washcloths, and old clothesundefinedin other words, any washable fabric. Someone even passed along the suggestion to try washing Swiffer pads.

With the temperature finally dropping, it’s time for residents of Interior Alaska who burn wood to clean their chimneys and check the condition of their pipes.

Every fall, this newspaper writes about homes destroyed by chimney fires. Cleaning and inspecting a chimney can eliminate the problem, but people often put off the chore until it’s too late.

Slow burning fires produce a lot of smoke, especially if the wood is wet. As the smoke cools, material in it condenses into creosote on the inside of chimneys. Since smoldering fires often are all that is needed to keep a home warm in the spring and fall, those seasons typically see above-normal creosote deposition.

When the temperature falls, hotter fires are needed to keep a home warm. If those fires are hot enough to ignite the creosote that has built up in the chimney during the past spring and fall, a dangerous fire can result.

More at source: News Miner

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The beautiful fall foliage is nice to look at -- but a pain in the neck for many homeowners like Jeremy Mitchell.

"It's a pretty wooded lot so basically we have a lot of leaves, stuff falls off the trees, limbs that fall off," Mitchell said. "So that over time has damaged the gutters to the point where they actually started to sag."

Mitchell's home suffered water damage as a result of overflowing gutters.

"We get large branches falling on the house all the time," he said. "I think a combination of that and irregular maintenance to the gutters as far as cleaning them out. I mean cleaning is probably the biggest thing we don't, we 

More at source: WaayTV

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Dozens of protesters swirled outside of PNC Bank Downtown during the lunch hour today, banging pots and waving signs as the battle swells between local janitors and national janitorial contractor ABM. 

Inside the bank, Columbus police calmly arrested 12 protesters who sat on the lobby floor and chanted: “ABM, you’re no good. Treat your workers like you should.”

Ten people were arrested during a similar protest earlier this month in in the Fifth Third Center Downtown.

More at source:  Dispatch

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