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www.gsabusiness.com
August 9 - August 22, 2021
The Simply Sterile team sprayed mats and gym equipment for the U.S. Olympics gymnastics team as the gymnasts competed in various championship events up to their trip to Tokyo. (Photo/Provided)
SC OSHA creates new infectious diseases standard By Molly Hulsey
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mhulsey@scbiznews.com
lmost two years ago, Jake Stancell was a medical and dental salesman living in Greenville. Come 2021 and an ambitious string of emails, Stancell became a staple of the USA Gymanstics team, traveling alongside the likes of Simon Biles and Sunisa Lee. Under the name SimplySterile, he wields a technology used in hospitals, offices and day care centers that he thinks could help give U.S. employers back some of the 111 billion employee sick days filed annually. “The majority of people just don’t disinfect according to manufacturers’ guidelines,” he said, adding that household disinfectant names have a “dwell time” written in fine print on the back of the bottle. “That dwell time means the time it takes to do its job and kill the germs and bacteria. Many of these household cleaners have a dwell time of six to 10 minutes.” In lieu of the traditional disinfectants that he argues are also “highly corrosive and toxic,” he and his team use a chlorine dioxide-based spray solution which he said coats surfaces and exterminates MRSA, staph and salmonella bacteria as well as viruses from the common cold to COVID-19 without having to be wiped off.
In early 2020, Simply Sterile was a mere glint in Stancell’s eye. Now, Simply Sterile has built out franchises in Charleston and Columbia with more to come, he said, and is one of thousands of virus-exterminating cleaning services that arose from the pandemic. “Businesses are more in tune now with the wellbeing of their employees,” QBS Loss Control Consultant Ramon Serrano told GSA Business Report. “Some businesses [didn’t] even know who OSHA is or what they do.” Now, business can’t help but know. Their workforce and survival is on the line. An uptick in delta variant cases aside, the current awareness of disease prevention in the workplace isn’t going to disappear anytime soon either, human resource experts say. The S.C. Occupational Safety and Health Authority is currently in the process of developing an infectious disease standard that tailors federal benchmarks, set into motion in June, for South Carolina data. The state is required to adopt standards that are the same or at least as effective as the federal requirements, according to a statement from the agency. “This approach acknowledges the issues previously seen during the pandemic, recognizes the progress made during this time, and anticipates the
growing need for stability among employers, employees and the public when dealing with similar situations,” S.C. OSHA Deputy Director Kristina Baker said in the statement. “This alternative approach will place significant focus on employer assessment and allow flexibility as the pandemic has proven to be both fluid and unpredictable.” The agency is still working out the details as it assesses current updates regarding impending waves of delta variant infections. S.C. Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation Spokesperson Lesia Kudelka told GSA Business Report that the agency expects to have the standard completed no later than October, when it will be posted on the agency website and social media platforms. In the meantime, employees can still file a complaint on the basis of whether they feel that their employer is not providing a “safe and healthy” worksite that curbs infection, COVID-19 or otherwise. For now, the S.C. OSHA Compliance Team is prioritizing COVID-19 exposure claims, according to the statement. As the regulations now stand, Scott Black, another loss control expert with QBS, has seen that workplace air quality tends to rank high on the list of unexpected yet damnatory liabilities. “Indoor air quality has been a
challenge for businesses way before COVID ever came into play,” he said. “An employee has the right to a safe work environment, and they also have the right to let OSHA know they don’t think they have a safe work environment. And a lot of time, that can be [that] an industrial hygienist hasn’t come in to do air quality testing.” HVAC systems have received renewed attention recently, Black said, as have disinfectant teams like SimplySterile and additional after-hour cleaning services. Large-scale industrial employers have invested in temperature readers utilizing facial recognition technology and installed them as a permanent feature at their front entrance. At the end of the day — or perhaps more accurately, at the beginning — best practices for infection control (and protection from OSHA complaints) really boils down to the type of industry on the hot seat, according to Serrano and Black. “The best advice we can give our clients, and it’s on a case-by-case basis of what they’re working on or what they’re doing, is lead them toward ‘these are the regulations for your state. This is what you’re supposed to do. Let’s work together to develop it and make it work for what you have,’” Serrano said. Reach Molly Hulsey at 864-720-1222 or @mollyhulsey_gsa on Twitter.