In the past, the application of disinfecting and sanitizing products has been dominated by both contained aerosol sprays and handheld sprays with premixed solutions that require manual pumping. Also included were self-mixed solutions, likewise delivered with handheld pump spray devices.
The application with these methods often has uneven, wildly-inaccurate results, and leaves puddles of residue requiring additional wipe-downs, further exposing personnel to excessive chemical contact.
A more adaptable disinfecting product may be Accelerated Hydrogen Peroxide (AHP), a trademarked product which will greatly reduce the exposure of clients, personnel, and animals to high concentrations of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), since this product contains only 2% of H2O2. However effective, it needs an efficient and easy-to-use delivery system that best suits the animal care industry and its specific needs and best suits Accelerated Hydrogen Peroxide delivery with its quick kill and fast dissemination property. A solution that has a good chance of being widely used as frequently as needed in the animal care industry which also limits exposure as much as possible, and has AHP’s quick kill and fast dissemination properties, delivered with minimal residue, appears to be the best option. However, if packaged spray disinfectants are used, they should be labeled for pet use. Using your good sense and avoiding the chance of bad results, whatever the choice of disinfectants, is always recommended.
This new peroxide product, Accelerated Hydrogen Peroxide (AHP), is quickly finding favor and wider use, especially in the medical community. This product enhances antibacterial efficiency by combining H2O2 with a surfactant and an organic acid, allowing a very low 2% share of the overall product being H2O2. This disinfectant in medical usage has proven to kill viral, bacterial, and fungal materials on even hard plastics in a mere 5 minutes, reducing the long-term negative respiratory damage to personnel from long-term exposure to H2O2 or any other known disinfectant. The World Health Organization (WHO) calls this disinfecting product “particularly effective for hospital use” and adequate for sterilization. WHO calls AHP also effective against canine ringworm and canine parvovirus. It has shown success on surface disinfecting against COVID-19, and at a mere concentration of only 0.5%. It is also effective against bacterial, viral, and fungal agents and found by research to be successful against both SARS-CoV-2 and Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) with a fast kill time of only one minute.
In the past, disinfecting products were applied using the old, handheld pump sprayer. This was okay for use in a relatively small space such as an enclosed animal cage, but seldom was a manual wipe down not required to remove excess moisture.
You may want to use the same sprayer on a grooming table or another small-area surface where the same manual, laborious wipe down will be necessary. For groomers compensated financially by the dogs they groom only, it may not be worth time spent to accomplish this task on a consistent basis. The salon’s disinfecting policies to reduce cross-contamination must be done in reduced time and provide wider advantages to grooming management than a hit-and-miss solution offered by this old-fashioned solution, no matter the expense difference and quick-kill chemicals and use. The old fashioned methods used by grooming salons to manage their disinfection challenges are just not sufficient in today’s health-adverse reality.
Today’s application methods for disinfecting have changed to accomplish even surface coverage, greatly reducing liquid residue buildup and ensuring quicker, wider coverage options, eliminating time-consuming manual wipe downs and encouraging more frequent and greater employee commitment to indoor safety and health while reducing customers’ concerns.
In addition, these advanced delivery systems provide not only more coverage with less moisture, faster air drying surface results, and reduced manual wipe downs, they also greatly cutdown the misting to a size that produces less liquid waste, with less disinfecting solution used while propelling mist up to 30 to 40 feet with adjustable mist control, using just the right amount of solution for the right amount of space.
Now you can disinfect smaller spaces, but also enclosed cages, kennel runs, and whole rooms with one product and one delivery system. The ultra-fine mister sprayers achieve what old style solutions do to a greater extent by providing a fine mist that hangs in the air, making the ultra-low volume (ULV) fogger doubly effective on floating particulate matter (PM) with its attached microbes, which helps reduce cross-contaminating concerns of spread to humans or animals in the facility.
This makes the ultra-low volume (ULV) fogger unit especially valuable on cage and kennel enclosures where the risk of viral transmittal such as kennel cough may be most preventable.
Electrically-powered, modern handheld ultra-low volume (ULV) foggers which produce super small droplets of less than 50 microns in size can really make a difference in providing the ultimate health protections against bacterial, viral, and fungal spread.
The moisture dries fast, and being light with such a fine mist, will hang in the air, to do what no other surface spray can do – contain and destroy contagious viral, bacterial, and fungal spread throughout your entire animal care facility.
ULV foggers, used with effective, safe disinfectants, are the better way and may be your answer to ensuring your business thrives for many years to come, staying open, even with future pandemic threats, by protecting all that need healthy and certainly safer public venues when your services are required.
Till Next Time,
The Professor