The Details of Cleaning

Cleaning a trauma site, where a violent death or decomposition has occurred, is not something that can be done quickly and requires much more than just water and bleach. It is a time-consuming procedure, which can usually take many hours until everything is properly decontaminated and safe, free of all traces. After the cleaning procedure, the site must also be subjected to “restoration”, returning everything as close as possible to how it was before.

Blood can kill, which is something we should be very careful about. Bloodborne pathogens, such as the Hepatitis virus and HIV, can affect us for the rest of our lives, and some can even lead to death! When someone comes into direct contact with blood, there is always a high risk of contamination.

For these reasons, all of our professionals accredited to intervene in contaminated biological risk sites adopt all necessary preventive safety measures, using a wide range of certified personal protective equipment for biological risk, before starting the cleaning intervention or even before entering a potentially contaminated site, where a death has resulted in biological risk, as all protection must be used without fail.

Full protection suits used in biological risk environments are not very breathable, and the temperature inside them is very high even on cooler days. Imagine how hot your body would get if you covered it completely with a towel followed by a waterproof plastic sheet. Obviously, you would sweat immediately, with little ability to expel this heat to the outside, increasing the temperature inside, causing what is known as thermal stress.

All technicians, without exception, will have to use full protection, which will cause additional wear and tear and terrible fatigue, causing a wear and tear breakdown during an effective work cycle in a place that is already complicated to intervene in.

When it is necessary to take a break to hydrate and rest, all the suits are completely saturated and the gloves look like a “puddle of water” with so much sweat accumulation. All this equipment sometimes has to be replaced, starting a new cycle, again with the risk of exhaustion, and then thermal stress. These cycles are carried out for the time necessary to successfully complete the intervention, which can take many hours, days or even weeks.

It is very common to find bone fragments, brain matter and other body parts (anatomical pieces) in places where violent deaths have occurred, where sometimes, even after the body has been removed, many fragments are left in the space, being unnoticeable to those who do not have the experience or knowledge to act in these places. Microscopic droplets, tiny splashes, small bone fragments, among other biological traces, are sometimes present in the most diverse and unsuspected places, undetectable to those who are simply not used to witnessing and qualified to intervene in these traumatic situations.

All these traumatic traces cannot be “forgotten” in the place due to incorrect cleaning carried out by non-specialized companies (domestic companies, pest control, among others), because as soon as the family returns home they will not be able to find any trace of the event that occurred, because if something was forgotten, all those traumatic memories will come flooding back! No family member or friend should clean or attempt to clean a place where a traumatic death took place. Not only will they be cleaning without knowledge, without the appropriate products and equipment, leaving traumatic traces in the place, they will always be exposed to trauma and the risk of becoming contaminated and affecting their physical and mental health, both during the cleaning and later, causing post-traumatic stress, which is often irreversible.

Unless specialized equipment, techniques and certified products are used to remove and treat all the bad odors present in the area, they will remain for years and may never completely leave the affected space.

It is not enough and does not work to simply apply an “aerosol spray” and hope it works, because it will not solve the problem, it will only momentarily disguise the bad odor. Placing a toxic product in the space for days will not solve the problem either, techniques should be used by accredited technicians, using specialized products and equipment tested to eliminate bad odors coming from decomposing biological sources, the odor of death! DEATHCLEAN^® It does not mask odors, giving a feeling of cleanliness or purification, we eliminate them completely, we are the only national entity internationally certified for this purpose, in the elimination of odors.

The guarantee of the success of the service presented by DEATHCLEAN^® lies in the pioneering and certified professional training that we have, in the experience and care for each client and in all the attention and support provided to family members. All of our employees carefully analyze each case in a very particular and careful way, always providing the family with all the necessary clarification and support.