From crime scenes to COVID contamination – Cleaning Specialist Inc. does it all

Keeping clean is keeping Lynwood business busy

By Josh Bootsma

LYNWOOD, Ill. (August 25, 2020) – Though the COVID-19 pandemic has left many businesses struggling, it has also provided a unique opportunity for others. Cleaning Specialist Inc. is one such business. Experts in biohazard and other specialized cleaning situations, Cleaning Specialist Inc. (CSI) has been able to translate its cleaning expertise to help its customers tackle COVID-19.

Located in Lynwood, the 20-year old company frequently works with local police departments in “biohazard remediation” situations where it provides cleaning and transportation services for situations involving bodily fluids, including homicides and suicides. For example, if CSI were to receive a call about a homicide, one of its teams would transport the deceased and clean the scene after the police had finished with it.

Cleaning Specialists Inc. also provides services for other unattended death situations. Sales and Marketing Manager Stacy Gorgas said, “For elderly people, I would say a good third of the time it is the funeral homes coming to pick them up, because they’ve already made arrangements, especially if they were suffering from an illness. But we easily go out five or six times a night for deceased persons.”

The company also provides cleaning services for situations involving hoarding or animal urine and feces.

COVID cleaning

As the pandemic has forced businesses and families to be more intentional about keeping workplaces and residences clean, Cleaning Specialists Inc. has adapted to meet those needs. Gorgas said the amount of calls for sanitation services has at least tripled since the pandemic started.

A new service the company has been providing in recent months is sanitation using a TOMI Steramist machine. Steramist uses a cold plasma arc to convert a special hydrogen peroxide solution into an ionized mist, which contains a high concentration of hydroxyl radical agents. This powerful oxidizing agent kills bacteria and spores, and inactivates viral cells.

“We’ve never used an electrostatic fogger or sprayer in the past because most of them do a great job at eliminating the first problem [sanitizing an area], but what happens is a lot of the chemicals that you’re spraying are not things you necessarily want left in the workplace,” Gorgas explained.

Steramist, however, is a non-toxic alternative to such options. “It’s very safe for pets, kids, and any person with preexisting health conditions. And what’s great is that it’s so effective. It kills 99.9999% of everything,” he said.

According to Gorgas, a small office that is somewhat clean would take about an hour to sanitize with a Steramist, partly because there is no need to move furniture and other items. Gorgas explained, “Because you don’t have to prep for us, we can clean all of the stuff that’s on your desk, the stuff that you touch, that most other companies wouldn’t sanitize like your stapler. Things like that. All your paper clips. Because they’re in that room and because they’re getting the mist, they’re getting sanitized.”

The fog that emerges from the machine leaves no residue or moisture if applied properly. “When we’re done sanitizing a room, it doesn’t have an odd chemical smell, and everything’s fine—you don’t have anything left to wipe down. We can actually sanitize dry erase boards and everything on that board stays,” Gorgas said.

The following video is found on CSI’s Facebook page and demonstrates how the Steramist works:

Widespread interest

Cleaning Specialist Inc. will often get a call from a business that has had an employee test positive for COVID-19 and wants to sanitize their building before they bring people back to work. Gorgas notices that many of these businesses will become repeat customers. Some other businesses call CSI as a preliminary precaution. “With COVID, what we’ve seen is a huge uptick is people doing preventative maintenance,” he said.

Large agencies and companies have also worked regularly with Cleaning Specialist Inc. before COVID, including multiple YMCA locations, Metra, Union Pacific, and Pace.

Gorgas said calls at the residential level have also increased as families want to sanitize their house after they’ve had a confirmed case within their family and the two-week quarantine period has finished.

In response to the increase in business, the company has hired more employees to help. Training for these employees takes a week and they are then paired with an experienced specialist to continue training on-the-job.

Of the roughly 15 employees at CSI that deal regularly with cleaning COVID areas, only one has tested positive for the virus so far, and that man was infected not by the job, but by his fiancée, who works at an assisted living facility. Gorgas said CSI performed a complimentary cleaning at the employee’s house after his two-week quarantine was done.

Community-focused cleaning

Customers looking to find Cleaning Specialist Inc.’s office might think they have stumbled upon some sort of dog hotel. And they wouldn’t be far off. The cleaning company shares its grounds with Paw Palace, a company that provides dog boarding, day care, grooming, training. Some local police departments bring dogs to Paw Palace to be trained. Both companies are owned by the same family, who also live on the property.

Gorgas said that as a local cleaning company, CSI has a unique opportunity to serve its community. “We understand that nobody has COVID money lying around, nobody had that in their budget from last year going into this year. This is impacting businesses and homeowners at a high rate, and so we want them to know that we’re not here to gouge them,” he said. “We understand that we’re a part of the community and we want to do what we can to help the community to get back to what it was doing, businesses to get back open and stay open…We care. We live in this community and all of our workers are from this community.”

Cleaning Specialist Inc. is located at 739 Glenwood Dyer Road in Lynwood. The company’s phone number is 708-757-9274 and its website is www.csiillinois.com