Los Angeles Crime Scene Cleanup

Infectious Material - Biohazards

Los Angeles crime scene cleanup often calls for exposure to infectious materials. Crime scene cleanup for a drug related death exposes cleaners to syringes used by intervenous drug users. They may enounter outer infectious materias on homicide scenes and suicide cleanups. Blood may have dispearsed during the incident or it may have localized. If localized, time becomes important because localized blood migrates, given the conditions.

A minimum of latex gloves and a protective garment like Tyvek will help reduce exposure to infectious material. Dried blood stains must come off carpets, walls, toilets, table, and other objects. Using hydrogen peroxide will help locate these materials while begining their dwell time for disinfection and removal.

Particle masks, half-face respirators or full-face respirators also reduce exposure to infectious materials, like bloodborne pathogens.

A Los Angeles crime scene cleanup practitioner must remain alert to sharp objects at all times. Once sharp objects like needles and broken glass gathered by pliers, tweezers, dust pan, or shovel have a safe container, this container becomes a biohazard box, not to be be emptied. In effect, this part of crime scene cleanup becomes biohazard cleanup. At times biohazardous materials may go into a biohazard bags. This means no sharp object go in this bag.

Often enoug a red biohazard bad will become a container for heavy, thick black plastic bags. In this way everyone in the vicinity of the red bag has more than a single red bag's protection during biohazard cleanup. It would be imprudent to allow children or animals to come anywhere close to biohazard cleanup bags. Although I rarely get to do biohazard cleanup in Orange County, I do use black bags first. With an appropriate symbol clearly affixed to bags, and a tightly tied duct tape opening, bags should be ready for travel through Los Angeles County without incident.