The EPA clearly states to look for the approved emerging viral pathogen claim on the master label. In order to be qualified to be on List N., Bioesque Botanical Disinfectant Solution Master EPA number is 87742-1. Our master label includes the approved emerging pathogens claims and meets other criteria expressed by the EPA on their List N webpage. It is very clear that, Bioesque Botanical Disinfectant Solution has demonstrated effectiveness against viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 on hard, non-porous surfaces. Therefore, it can be used against SARS-CoV-2 when used in accordance with the directions for use against Norovirus (Feline Calicivirus surrogate) on hard, non-porous surfaces listed on our label.
Cleaning companies have shifted their focus to help keep your employees and customers safe.
By Jim Pytell, Assistant Editor – NEW JERSEY BUSINESS MAGAZINE
The coronavirus pandemic has forced all businesses to adjust their operations in a variety of ways in order to maintain a proper level of health and safety for their employees and customers. Not only does this “new normal” include government mandated mitigation requirements such as wearing face coverings and practicing social distancing, but it also requires business owners to completely reassess the regular cleaning routines at their companies.
While many employees have been directed to work from home for the foreseeable future, in the event that someone needs to visit the office, or for the many businesses that are able to open and serve customers during the pandemic such as outdoor dining at restaurants and shopping at retail stores, for example, giving employees and customers the confidence that your place of business is properly disinfected during this pandemic is vital.
Additionally, cleaning companies themselves have had to significantly beef up, and in some cases shift their focus, to thorough disinfection according to the standards that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have laid out.
A New Threat Requiring a Heightened Focus
Robert Rivadeneira, president and CEO of Moonachie-based York Building Services, says that in the early stages of the pandemic, he started receiving all sorts of questions from customers about whether his professional cleaning service could help businesses properly disinfect their workspace to keep employees and customers safe.
“It really was on the back of our minds,” Rivadeneira says. “A pandemic is something you see in horror movies as a sort of doomsday scenario. While we’ve always cleaned for health, typically our [professional cleaning services] industry has been focused on cleaning for appearance. How shiny can we get the floors? How clean are the windows? That was kind of always the emphasis. You can see the results of freshly buffed floor, but you can’t see a disinfected doorknob. Given the choice, I’ll take the disinfected doorknob because that’s what is going to keep people healthy.”
Rivadeneira says that his company has shifted its focus to helping companies reopen by providing deep cleaning disinfection services, implementing the use of Environmental Protection Agency-approved, hospital-grade disinfectants, as well as focusing on training and helping clients create strategic plans to ensure a safe reopening.
Tony Crisafulli Jr., president of Pompton Plains-based ATRA Janitorial Supply Company, says that his company has been providing cleaning and maintenance supplies, as well as training, to its clients since 1982.
“Two-and-a-half years ago in Kenilworth, we had a workshop day with 275 school districts where we showed them how to better utilize technology, with a big part of it being on disinfection and decontamination, and understanding what you do when you are cleaning
for health,” Crisafulli says. “If the threat level increases within your community or within your school, because of seasonal flu, MRSA or now COVID-19, we have to ramp up our frequencies and evaluate our products and procedures.”
Understand What Disinfectants are Safe and Effective
In addition to physically cleaning and supplying clients with the right cleaning supplies, a big part of what companies like ATRA Janitorial and York Building Services are doing is helping clients navigate the complexities of what disinfectants to use and how to use them safely.
“When this first started, the EPA came out with List N, which listed the products that it deemed would be effective against COVID-19,” Crisafulli continues. “Not all disinfectants are created equal though, and many of them, even though they’re on List N, have human health and environmental risks that need to be researched and evaluated.” Crisafulli says a bioesque botanical disinfectant, which falls under the safest EPA category of level four disinfecting, has been one of his company’s most successful products during the pandemic, for example.
“The fact of the matter is that your disinfecting frequencies are going to significantly increase. You’ll be disinfecting anywhere between four to eight times more than you normally would,” Crisafulli says.
With that increase in use comes other challenges such as unsafe overuse of disinfectants. “Too much of anything can be bad,” Rivadeneira adds. “The last thing we want to do is kill COVID-19 and create a safe environment, but then also destroy the indoor air quality and do potentially irreversible damage to our respiratory system or our skin by using products that aren’t safe,” Crisafulli says.
At the End of the Day, You Need a Plan
Ultimately, in order for businesses to properly disinfect their workplace, they need to develop a plan. The CDC recommends identifying common “touch points,” such as door knobs, light switches, faucets, copy machines and printers, for example, which will need to be cleaned using a two-step process that includes a soap and water clean first, followed by the use of an EPA approved disinfectant. These cleanings will have to occur regularly throughout the day, as Crisafulli mentioned, so again, a plan is key.
To help businesses develop a plan, the New Jersey Business & Industry Association (NJBIA) has created the NJBIA Healthy Business Certification online course, which provides businesses with
best practices to develop policies and procedures for a healthy and safe workplace. It teaches the basics to identify, reduce, eliminate and report potential hazards at one’s workplace. At the completion of the course, participants will submit their plan to be certified. A Healthy Business Certificate will then be issued, along with a safety decal to display at the location of your business.
“NJBIA is providing this certification course because it provides employers the vital tools needed to reopen safely,” says NJBIA President and CEO Michele Siekerka. “Obviously, business
owners want to put the safety of their employees, customers and vendors first and foremost. This course gives them a chance to work with our instructors to develop and follow a deep set of workplace procedures and a documented plan. We’re talking ways to identify, reduce, eliminate and report potential hazards. Once the course is completed, business owners can display a safety decal, which gives anyone who enters the premise peace-of-mind knowing they’re entering a safe workplace.”
Mr. Fogger can sanitize an entire office/seating area, vehicles and shop equipment in minutes.
Killer Tools has introduced the Mr. Fogger sanitizing mister/fogger, a 110-volt plug-in or 18-volt cordless tool that can sanitize an entire office/seating area, vehicles and shop equipment in minutes with a 36-micron mist that reaches into every crevice.
Use it to spray a light mist of the EPA-registered Bioesque disinfectant that kills 99.9% of most allergens upon contact and is on the N list approved to kill COVID-19 with a contact period of four minutes. It is all natural, non-corrosive, free from chlorine and does not have to be wiped off surfaces.
Mr. Fogger is built in the USA with globally sourced components and comes with one quart of Bioesque® Solutions and a one-year warranty.
Keeping schools clean and safe for students and employees is a heavy lift on an average day, let alone during a pandemic.
That’s why Lee County schools will be ramping up daily cleaning procedures, pumping more outside air into the classrooms and fogging out the virus whenever a positive case is found on campus.
School officials staged a demonstration Thursday at Lehigh Elementary School to show off the new procedures to Southwest Florida journalists. The purpose of this and other district-sponsored events held this week has been to illustrate how face-to-face instruction and campus life might be different when schools re-open on Aug. 31.
Under the new procedures, each school will undergo a routine fogging with a disinfectant solution made by Bioesque® Solutions on a weekly basis. Officials say it is 100% organic and CDC-approved to fight the COVID-19 virus.
Ideally, this will be done between Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, with additional foggings scheduled whenever there is a positive case of COVID-19 tied to the campus.
“In a case positive situation, we would come in with airless sprayers on carts and completely saturate the air and it has a longer dwell time,” said Jimmy Thompson, who is in charge of indoor air quality for the Lee County school system.
During a live demonstration, two photojournalists accompanied Corey Chalkley, a trained independent contractor for the district, into a classroom to film a staged classroom fogging.
The demonstration required all three to suit up with hazmat-style coverings and face gear as Chalkley pointed a handheld machine around the learning space and bathroom area, coating the room’s surfaces with the spray.
The demonstration took about 2 minutes.
The cost associated with each use of the fogging solution will vary based on the size of the space and how accessible it is for cleaning. A small-scale fogging, as was displayed Thursday morning, could cost a “few hundred dollars,” while Thompson said an entire school could cost anywhere from $2,500 to $5,000 or $6,000.
“This is a huge financial burden for the school district as well as school districts across the state,” he said. It is possible the district might shift to a “reactive model” instead of doing weekly site foggings and only using the solution for positive cases, he added.
The district has about 5,000 gallons of the solution on hand, with the ability to get more if needed.
“With all of this, it’s living, breathing and it’s changing,” Thompson said. “We have the bandwidth to change with it, so that’s what we’re shooting for so everyone knows their children and their family members inside the buildings are safe.”
The biggest change students and staff will notice this school year is how often high-touch areas will be cleaned throughout the day, explained Tammy Rodriguez Garcia, the district’s building services supervisor.
This is a task that will require cleaning crews to have more staggered work hours, so they can make constant rounds with disinfectant during the day instead of doing the brunt of the work after kids have left the building.
Seven custodians are on staff at Lehigh Elementary, with five typically working nights. Under the re-opening plan’s cleaning guidelines, it’s likely two of the nighttime workers will be asked to come in earlier in the day to help out.
“Restrooms, entrance areas, where there’s a lot of people normally coming in, and classrooms, those are the main areas that we try to make sure to keep on top of,” said Rodriguez Garcia.
While teachers and other staff will “participate” in some cleanup, she said the heavy lift is being done by custodians.
Another big change for students is they can no longer stop by a water fountain to slurp from the faucet. The district is begging off the traditionally touched parts of the fountains and adding a touch-free bottle water filler on top of all of its 1,365 refrigerated drinking fountains.
One-time-use disposable cups are also part of the district’s re-opening plan.
“You stick the bottle underneath the machine, it has got a sensor and it dispenses the water into the bottle and they go, and then the next child comes up and does the same thing,” said James Flock, director of maintenance for the school system.
The touch-free devices come at a cost of $1,100 a unit and have been a long-held wish list for the schools. If all of the devices aren’t in place by the first day of school, the district will provide bottled water in those areas.
“…Our goal is to get them changed out before school starts,” Flock said.
More fresh air is going to be pumped into classrooms this fall, too.
During the media event, journalists toured one of the school’s air handler rooms to see how the district’s air conditioning system works.
Because of COVID-19 concerns, Thompson said the district is “drastically increasing” the amount of outside air being breathed by students and employees during the day, upgrading the unit’s filters and “bumping up the amount of air exchanges” to up to 20 per hour.
Filters used to be changed quarterly, but Thompson said that will now occur monthly.
Staff will also be monitoring carbon dioxide levels hourly each day to make sure students are “breathing fresh air,” Thompson said.
“The more fresh air that I can bring in these schools and the more air exchange that I can bring in, the faster I can get whatever’s in this building back out of the building,” Thompson said. “My whole job, my purpose of being in this building, is to keep the students safe and the staff safe and keep them here.”
The routine cleaning, fogging and fresh air upgrades are helping keep students and employees safe during the pandemic, said Thompson, who is a dad of two Lee County school-age children.
“I want them to be safe. I want your kids to be safe. I want everyone here to know that when they drop their kid off, if they choose to do so, that they’re safe here,” he said.
Bioesque Solutions rolled out a new Botanical Disinfectant Solution that was recently accepted by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) for the fight against Norovirus, bacteria, fungi and mold.
By CRUISE INDUSTRY NEWS
Bioesque Solutions has introduced a new, ready-to-use Botanical Disinfectant Solution for daily cleaning and sanitizing. This product was recently confirmed by the Environmental Protection Agency as effective against norovirus, bacteria, fungi and mold.
The patented formula is a botanically derived and Thymox-based solution that contains no harsh chemicals and is free from chlorine, phosphate, and NPE. Furthermore, the environmentally-conscious, highly effective disinfectant is also non-flammable, non-corrosive, and non-abrasive. This makes it a perfect product for a vast array of hard and soft surfaces, including metals, plastics, rubber, glazed tiles and bathrooms, wood finishes, sealed marble, floors, fabrics, walls, and curtains. The solution is also kitchen and dining area friendly as it does not require a rinse for food contact surfaces.
The product kills both enveloped and non-enveloped viruses in as little as one minute
The Bioesque Botanical Disinfectant Solution meets EPA standards for broad range disinfection and sanitization against norovirus, M. bovis (TB), MRSA, VRE, S. aureus, P. aeruginosa, S. enterica E. coli, K. pneumoniae (NDM-1 ), L. monocytogenes, S. suis, human coronavirus, HIV-1, swine influenza A, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), T. mentagrophytes, and C. albicans. The product kills both enveloped and non-enveloped viruses in as little as one minute and has a four-minute kill time against norovirus. In addition to its efficacy against viruses and bacteria, the Botanical Disinfectant Solution eliminates 99% of allergens.
Additionally, the Bioesque Botanical Solution is as efficient as it is effective, eliminating the use of a wide variety of multiple cleaning products by handling cleaning, disinfecting, sanitizing, and deodorizing all in one safe, sustainable solution with a two-year shelf life. No personal protective equipment is needed to handle or apply the product as cleaning crews can just spray and leave to dry. The solution can also be added to foggers and sprayers for safe coverage of large areas.
Already a part of sanitization procedures in major hospital and healthcare groups across the country as well as cruise ships and hotels, the Bioesque Botanical Disinfectant Solution is fast becoming the disinfectant of choice in schools, offices, airlines and public transportation, restaurants, and athletic and sports facilities.
When developing a remediation plan after a commercial flooding event, many customers might voice concerns about the consequences of using toxic chemicals to aid in the cleanup. Finding reliable, EPA registered flood restoration equipment and products that disinfect using plant-based agents can answer those concerns while offering proven and practical answers for the ever-increasing challenges presented in a broad range of industries.
Bioesque® Solutions gives professional restoration companies an integrated suite of disinfecting, cleaning, and protective products. The different options available in the line focus on the different tasks needing completion during a flood remediation project. Unlike some conventional products that can produce dangerous and noxious reactions when used together, Bioesque® Solutions powered by Thymox®, innovative flood restoration equipment, and trained technicians work harmoniously during all aspects of a job.
Flood Restoration Equipment the Industry Needs
When flood waters invade a commercial site the moisture, contaminants, and pathogens can cover and soak into structural components, inventory, machinery, furnishings, documents, and a host of other items. Restoration crews need access to equipment that removes water and dries spaces quickly, and a reliable arsenal of cleaning and disinfecting products that clear the recovered surfaces of dirt, grease, and soiling as well as sanitizing building materials and fixtures. Add it to your supply of flood restoration equipment. The Thymox® Technology in every Bioesque® Solution helps deep clean and kill pathogens after flooding.
When used with professional grade flood restoration equipment, Bioesque® Botanical Disinfectant Solution provides bactericidal, virucidal*, tuberculocidal, and fungicidal** action. The Botanical Disinfectant is premixed and ready to use as a wash, bottle or broadcast spray. Featuring the capability to disinfect, sanitize, clean, and deodorize in one step, this Solution facilitates fast and efficient flood cleanup. For significant soiling after flooding, Bioesque® Heavy Duty Cleaner & Degreaser offers superior heavy duty cleaning also supported by the product range’s Thymox® Technology. Bioesque® Botanical Surface Cleaner & Sealant not only cleans immediately but also leaves a protective barrier to provide a long-lasting clean.
Flooding scenarios can lead to mold growth if the moisture remains available for an extended time. Bioesque® Botanical Disinfectant Solution features EPA registered antimicrobial effects applied. Applied with appropriate flood restoration equipment and partnered with a final sealing of Bioesque® Mold Resistant Coating, these products work together to inhibit mold growth on treated surfaces.
*Virucidal according to the ASTM Standard Test Method for Efficacy of Virucidal Agents
** Fungicidal according to the AOAC Germicidal Spray Method
Restoration and remediation companies are open to finding products that deliver EPA registered disinfectant strength yet are safe enough to use around both people and pets. Commercial and residential customers express concerns about the harsh and toxic chemicals traditionally used as restoration and remediation supply mainstays. Botanical-based alternatives sound like an answer, but the products must deliver results that equal or exceed the performance of more conventional cleaners and treatments.
Bioesque® Solutions are an option more and more remediation, and restoration companies investigate. The integrated suite of disinfectants, cleaners, and specialty products use Thymox® Technology to power the formulations. A derivative of thyme oil, Thymox® offers a disinfectant action effective enough to be registered by the EPA. Each of the products in the line works with the other harmoniously, never creating a dangerous mixture as can occur when non-botanically derived types of products are used together.
Companies that help a wide variety of industries and individuals cope with the challenges of viral, bacterial, fungal, and other pathogenic contaminations appreciate restoration and remediation supply options that are ready to use without dilution or mixing. Bioesque® Solutions can be wiped or sprayed on affected surfaces. Broadcast application using electrostatic equipment helps manage hard to reach areas and broad expanses.
Products in the line include Bioesque® Heavy Duty Cleaner & Degreaser, effective on the tough residues left after fire damage or flooding. Bioesque® Botanical Surface Cleaner & Sealant cleans hard surfaces and leaves behind a protective barrier that resists soiling for over two weeks. Bioesque® Carpet Cleaner can be used in steam extractors, leaving no sticky residue behind.
The Bioesque® Botanical Odor Neutralizer uses an enzymatic process to neutralize lingering smells while Bioesque® Mold Resistant Coating inhibits microbial growth after cleaning and sanitizing with Bioesque® Botanical Disinfectant Solution.
Disaster recovery crews find that Bioesque® Solutions achieve results comparable to or better than the noxious products upon which they previously relied. Sustainable and environmentally friendly, these botanically-based restoration and remediation supply products are a welcome addition to the list of products that get the job done.
Restoration companies help businesses and individuals who are in the middle of a wide range of crises. The sudden onslaught of fire, water, or microbial damage inside a property exposes structural components, contents, and the people who live or work there to potentially toxic vapors and residues. During the cleanup and sanitization after disaster restorers choose products that make the process more thorough and efficient.
The last thing wanted are products that add to the hazardous load. Conventional cleaners and disinfectants contain harsh ingredients that can create toxic mixtures if used together. Instead, restoration professionals look for sustainable, naturally-derived botanical disinfectants options that deliver similar cleaning and sanitizing results without safety concerns.
Bioesque® Solutions use botanically-derived ingredients to clean and disinfect. The Thymox® technology powering each Bioesque® product permits the different Solutions to work together harmoniously. The plant-based extracts in Bioesque® products never react with each other to form noxious vapors or corrosive substances, while working to loosen grime and eliminate pathogens.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reviews the data supporting the chemistry, safety, and efficacy of products claiming to disinfect surfaces. Only when the product passes that review and substantiates labeling information is it termed “EPA registered.” Bioesque® Botanical Disinfectant, as well as the Heavy Duty Cleaner & Degreaser and Surface Cleaner & Sealant, are EPA registered.
Bioesque® Bactericidal, Virucidal*, Tuberculocidal, and Fungicidal** products are pre-mixed and ready to use, providing the proper concentration of the active ingredients right out of the bottle. No rinsing or wiping off the product is necessary, permitting restoration technicians to move quickly from surface to surface while completing a project.
Botanical disinfectants are safe to use around all individuals and pets, even those who suffer from chemical sensitivities and allergies. Bioesque® Solutions uses Thymol derived from thyme oil to deliver impressive kill rates for a wide range of microbes, eliminating 99.99 percent of viruses in one minute, 99.99 percent of bacteria in two minutes, and 99.99 percent of fungi, molds, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis in three minutes.
*Virucidal according to the ASTM Standard Test Method for Efficacy of Virucidal Agents
** Fungicidal according to the AOAC Germicidal Spray Method
Bioesque® Solutions
Bioesque® Solutions are 
The last thing wanted are products that add to the hazardous load. Conventional cleaners and disinfectants contain harsh ingredients that can create toxic mixtures if used together. Instead, restoration professionals look for 