{"id":30704,"date":"2021-06-21T11:32:01","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T11:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christeyns.com\/washing-workwear-at-home-a-risky-business\/"},"modified":"2021-12-08T13:59:22","modified_gmt":"2021-12-08T13:59:22","slug":"washing-workwear-at-home-a-risky-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christeyns.com\/uk-en\/washing-workwear-at-home-a-risky-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Washing workwear at home, a risky business"},"content":{"rendered":"

Washing professional clothing at home may seem like a simple and obvious solution. Whether for workwear, chefswear, hospital uniforms\u2026 In reality, however, scientific publications indicate that textiles can be a carrier of infections, especially in times of Corona. That is why it is important to understand why workwear should be washed in a professional laundry instead of at home.<\/p>\n

Legal standards<\/h2>\n

Europe regulates the use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) in Directive 89\/656. This EEC 89\/656 directive answers the question \u2018How do I protect my employees?\u2019 and focuses mainly on the risks that employees may run. It also includes the maintenance of PPE and work clothing. The consequence of such a directive is that each European country transposes it into its own national legislation. Belgium, the Netherlands and France have slightly different legislation, based on the same European directive. For the UK, it is the HSE that imposes strict guidelines when it comes to protecting the safety of employees.<\/p>\n

However, there are some loopholes as some collective agreements stipulate that employees are entitled to compensation so that they can take care of purchase, maintenance and repair themselves. For example, the Belgian Royal Decree of 13 June 2005 provides for this possibility for workers who are employed in places distant from the company premises and who obviously do not return regularly after their working day, provided that the contaminated clothing does not pose a health risk.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, national regulations of authorities such as the recommendations of Robert Koch Institute, Certex, Care4Quality etc. also need to be considered, where a certain level of hygiene and disinfecting washing procedures are defined as \u201cstate-of-the-art\u201d.<\/p>\n

RABC<\/h4>\n

The European standard EN 14065 provides as a risk analysis and biocontamination control system (RABC) for washing processes of textile, from the point of view of microbiological quality. This standard is a useful application in the field of professional laundries that handle textiles used in hygiene-sensitive environments, where the elimination of the bacterial load is essential. Hans De Block, Corporate Application Manager at Christeyns confirms: \u201claundries meeting the strict RABC requirements can easily fulfil the needs of these hygiene-sensitive environments\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHygiene-sensitive\u201d environments are:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Kitchens and food-processing
\n\u2022 Healthcare
\n\u2022 Elderly care
\n\u2022 Pharmaceutical area
\n\u2022 Cleanrooms<\/p>\n

Risks of washing at home<\/h2>\n

Cross-contamination<\/h4>\n

One of the major risks in processing laundry is cross-contamination. To avoid cross-contamination of the workwear during handling, drying, folding, transport and storage and in compliance with RABC requirements, professional laundries strictly separate dirty and clean areas from each other. The removal or limitation of manual activities after the washing process also guarantees the protection of the cleaned workwear. In a few cases where employees should come into contact with the linen, hygiene is guaranteed through hand washing protocol. Washing at home, on the contrary, is not without risks as employees simply cannot meet these strict RABC requirements. A study by GFK even showed that 98% of the respondents washed their work clothes and personal laundry in the same washing machine. In addition, there is no physical separation between clean and dirty laundry areas temperature controls are often unreliable and there is also no fixed hand washing protocol. In this context, microbes or bacteria can contaminate all the personal laundry and can even end up in a working environment, where it can have an enormous impact on the health safety.<\/p>\n

A recent study by the De Montfort University showed that synthetic textiles such as polyester could potentially act as fomites of human coronaviruses, indicating the importance of infection control procedures during handling of contaminated textiles prior to laundering. This study provides new evidence that human coronaviruses can persist on textiles for up to 3 days and are readily transferred from polyester textile to other surfaces after 72 h of incubation. This is of particular importance for the domestic laundering of contaminated textiles such as health care uniforms in the United Kingdom and United States, where there may be a risk of cross-contaminating the domestic environment.<\/p>\n

In reality, hand hygiene, surface and textile disinfection are key factors to avoid cross-contamination. In this context, ETSA published on its website the general recommendations of hygiene chemical and disinfection specialist Christeyns on how to minimise the risks of contamination.<\/p>\n

Disinfection<\/h4>\n

Disinfection of textiles can be carried out thermally, chemically and chemo-thermally. Thermal disinfection is carried out at higher temperatures, the effect achieved depends on the temperature and time of action. Chemical and chemo-thermally procedures include inorganic and organic disinfectants, peroxyacids, alkali, oxidants, halides, alcohols, organic and inorganic compounds with metal ions, phenols, aldehydes, quaternary ammonium compounds, etc. The combination of chemical and thermal disinfection procedure is particularly desirable for textiles which cannot be washed at higher temperatures. In theory, domestic washing machines could disinfect textiles. In practice, however, this is difficult as the wash performance is not guaranteed.<\/p>\n

Theoretically, the following actions could be taken to kill or inactivate bacteria, yeasts, fungi and viruses:<\/p>\n