 Hey everybody, this is Derek Christian with Cleaning Business Today, and today I am going to be doing something a little bit different. We are doing a live stream with Dr. Charles Gerba, and he is an expert in indoor places where you live. He's a professor of environmental microbiology at the University of Arizona. He's authored over 400 articles, including several textbooks on environmental microbiology. He conducts research in this area, and we're going to be talking about ways you can use the Ladybug Professional Dry Vapor Steam System to actually make more money in your business, because the science is great, and Dr. Gerba is going to give us a lot of the science, and I'm going to help kind of bring that down to what does that mean to your customers, and how do you make your customers care. So the public knows Dr. Gerba best for his crusading on the behalf of Household Hygiene. He's been on Good Morning America today, Dateline, and been quoted in all sorts of newspapers and magazines. So welcome Dr. Gerba, thank you for joining us today. Oh, thank you. Can you give us a little bit of background? I tried to give the 10 second version, but I'm sure you can give your bio better than I can. Yeah, I got a lot of interest in how germ spread in the indoor environment is one of our topics. We look at a lot because lifestyle has changed so much. Today, we spend 90% of our time indoors, and we try to understand how germ spread in this type of new environment from one individual to another. Most people don't realize how important surfaces are in the spread of germs, and that's what we really try to emphasize and study how important and what we can do about it to prevent germ spread in the indoor environment. Great. Well, like I said, we're going to try to get into the business side of things today and talk about things like efficiency and things like that. But before we get into some of the details, I want to talk a little bit about the technology we're talking about. So the dry vapor team technology, which is used in the ladybug system, is a lot different than the things that maybe we're used to in the home environment. You and I talked a little bit about this before it starts, but can you talk about the difference of a system that maybe you would buy in retail versus this type of system? Well, this system is really designed to help reduce the number of microorganisms which may be a problem and spread in the household, and also it can reduce the number of allergens in it. It's basically a non-chemical system based on steam, vapor, particularly designed to kill microorganisms that can be a problem in the indoor environment and spread from one person to another. Now, you mentioned the indoor environment. Why is that really important to think about? You were talking a little bit about this earlier with me on how important this is. Well, most people don't realize like the common cold and other illnesses you get in the household are transmitted by surfaces. They play a major role in terms of movement of microorganisms in the home. Even in the office, for example, we found if a person comes in with a virus and puts it on a doorknob to an office building, within four hours it'll be on half of the surfaces in that office building and half of the people's hands. So surfaces are playing a major role in how well disease spread. And that's true in the home too. A child comes in with a virus in the home within just four hours. Again, 90% of the surfaces in the home will have the virus and everybody will have it on their hands. So this type of technology has the advantages of reducing the number of microorganisms on these key surfaces in a very simple manner. And now, the drive-over technology can kill the germs in as little as two to seven seconds. Where I used to work for some of the big chemical manufacturers and our products typically took two to ten minutes to kill germs. Can you explain how the technology works and how they get that type of quick kill claim? Yeah, it's really based on steam. And he really are doing the killing here. And it really denatures the proteins of the microorganism, killing them basically. So it's very rapid. In fact, that's how using similar technology, how we actually sterilize and sanitize surfaces in our own laboratory and our equipment, actually, to be honest. One people have to realize that most chemical disinfections take time to act. Many of them are somewhere around ten minutes, some of the most popular ones. Others even require maybe as low as 30 seconds, but they still require time. And I think that's one of the things people forget, particularly with commonly used disinfectants, is the kill-dwell time you need. And this helps alleviate that time. We find, at least in our studies in households and facilities, people just don't wait long enough for the disinfectant to act. So that overcomes that behavioral trait because it's so rapid kill. Yeah, you don't have to actually leave it on all that time to get the germ kill. Now, you also have mentioned before that there's a problem with the cleaning cloth sometimes. Yeah, one of the problems with cleaning cloths with chemical disinfectants, one, they can spread germs from one location to another. It's really sometimes it looks like from what we've seen, cleaning cloths play a major role in mops and other cleaning tools in the spread of germs from one location to another when people are cleaning, much more than people recognize. Secondly, that the disinfectants, the chemical disinfectants will react with the cleaning cloth material, like the bleach will combine with the organic matter and the cleaning cloth, the cleaning cloth itself. So the efficacy of that chemical disinfectant decreases over time that you're actually doing it. So it's important to remember that you don't have that same issue when you're using dry steam vapor, but you should recognize the difference. You should really watch your cleaning tools at all times, no matter what. Now, you were mentioning also earlier that we spend a tremendous amount of time inside the house now versus in the past. So can you get a little bit into that and why it's so important to make sure it's clean and sterilized? Yeah, I mean, you just correct the word not sterilized, but let's say you don't have to kill everything. You know, it's like anything it's targeted cleaning and disinfecting those high touch areas where you touch all of that are really the germ transfer point in the home. And today we spend more time, like I said, than any generation in history. So we're really in a way our environment is more germy today in the home. And the other issue is that we're in larger buildings. We have larger cruise ships. We have larger football stadiums. So we're actually coming in contact with more surfaces that more people have touched at any generation in history. So in a way, your exposure is much more rapid. It was 100 years ago to other people's germs. Let's take the example of the farmer 100 years ago. He went into town once a week and went into two or three small stores in a country town. Does it happen today? Today you're going to a large store where thousands of people are in the store at the same time. So it becomes much more fluid for germs to move from one facility to another from one person to another. Much more people realize that's why we see new germs spreading so rapidly around the world. It's often said that a new emerging pathogen can travel anywhere in the world in 24 hours today. So a lot more exposure than most people realize. So sometimes it's really hard to make your average consumer understand why this is so important. One of the ideas we want to talk about that we thought there was an opportunity around is to sell a cold and flu fighting cleaning idea. Obviously flu season, we are coming out of it now. It goes all the way into May, but it's still sort of flu season. And when those viruses are going through the house, that's when people for the first time start to really think about how important it is to kill it where it's at. So and we can talk about when you use dry vapor cleaning technology that unlike everyone else, we can actually kill the germs and do it quickly without chemicals. Dr. Gerber, what's your opinion of something like that? Well, one of the things advantage is broad spectrum. It kills viruses, bacteria and spores very well. Not all the common household disinfectants will do those equally too. So that's an advantage of the broad spectrum of germs is you can actually kill with the product. The other thing is recognizing how colds and foods spread. You get the common cold actually by getting it on your finger and bringing your fingers to your nose, mouth and eyes. That's how you get the common cold 95% of the time. That's the way. So it's what you touch that becomes really important. And you do it, you know, just to give you an idea, you're touching your face about 16 times per hour in adult. As a child, you're doing it as many as 50 times per hour, believe it or not. So it really plays a major role of parents, particularly at home should be aware of how important surfaces are in the spread of a virus from one individual to another. Why it's so important to keep the levels of these organisms to a level that is not important in the transmission of infectious disease. You know, you don't have to sterilize the household, get those high touch points. And that's why it's so important. When you talked about the high touch points, a lot of them are things like doorknobs, light switch plates, vertical surfaces, spraying a chemical on there and getting it to stay for two to 10 minutes is a little bit tricky. So what are some of the advantages of the steam vapor on vertical surfaces? Well, you can treat the vertical surfaces just as effectively as any horizontal or flat surface. Yeah, chemicals are a little bit more difficult. One of the problems people will do is they'll spray it and it tends to run. And they spray and wipe quickly on a vertical surface. And it's not enough dwell time for the disinfectant to be effective. Spray and wipe, as I call it, is not as effective as like steam vapor because one, you got to wait long enough. You got to wipe it up. And then the cleaning cloth in itself may inhibit the action of the disinfection. They won't work as effectively. Now, what about fabrics? You know, when my son said he's five, he sits on the couch and watches TV all day. And it just hit me the other day that I tried to disinfect the house, but I don't do anything about the couch that he's on. Can fabrics hold in the viruses like that? Yes, they can. Fabrics are actually kind of important. And they're very difficult to disinfect. We've seen outbreaks, for example, in firehouses of MRSA, a skin infection by the organism getting into the cloth couches. And you can't effectively kill those with chemical disinfectants. You know, it's kind of interesting. You've done studies where we put the virus in a couch and have people sit on the couch. And then what we found, it creates the viruses will spread all over the individual. You create a cloud of viruses when you flop down on a couch, believe it or not. And about speed vapor is about one of the few technologies you can actually use to kill the organisms in cloth materials. There's issues with getting into drapes and cloth materials of microorganisms. And so it can become a real issue. But this is one of the ways you can get around that technology. I think it's also important, like, let's take drapes, for example, where allergens can build up. So it's another way you can reduce your exposure to allergens is by using steam vapor. Well, another area where it comes up, and this isn't necessarily cold and flu season, but when my son gets on the road, our doctor always tells us to drill into toothbrushes. And we use electric toothbrushes, so that gets a little bit expensive. So can you steam something like a toothbrush and have it achieve the same ends? You probably could. I said I've never done it, but it's a possibility to do that. Yeah, well, if nothing else, you should change the head of your disinfect, the toothbrush every once in a while, too. That's a good idea. At least Dennis recommended that. The other thing I always recommend, make sure you keep your toothbrush at least three feet away from a toilet, because when you flush a toilet, you get droplets injected. So you don't want to be brushing your teeth if it wasn't the toilet. So three feet away and we learned is a good thing to do. So that's sort of the first idea to actually get to customers to care about is to talk about the cold and flu. You can talk about how you can stop the spread, how we can hit those high-touch surfaces with the dry vapor. I've never really thought of the fabrics. And like I said, now that I think about my son sitting on the couch and when I sit down, I'm shooting a cloud of viruses and that's a little terrifying. And then just the fact we can kill it so quickly. You know, when you invest in this type of instrument, I'll be honest, it's not the cheapest thing in the world. So to be able to explain to your customer that you can do this type of cleaning and maybe charge a $250 flu or cold would really help pay for that type of equipment. The second thing you actually touched on a little bit already, which is selling add-ons with this type of technology. Another thing that we see a lot of is steaming the mattresses. This can kill dust mites, which is really important because my son's got really bad allergies. But once again, when you've got that type of illness, I imagine trying to get the virus out of the mattresses. Yeah, no, it is. Really, I think gives you an opportunity to actually reduce the number of allergens and microbes that could potentially cause illness. So in a way, it expands the range of places you can actually make a difference in reducing your exposure to allergens or organisms that can make you ill. Well, I really love the idea when it comes to the bed too, because sometimes when you talk about chemical disinfectants, people don't mind you using a chemical somewhere in the house, but when you suggest that you're going to spray their bed with the chemical and they're going to lane it all night, they get really uncomfortable with that idea. So I think, go ahead. I was going to add to it, usually a lot of the chemicals won't work on cloth material as well if you spray it on it. So besides getting everything wet, which is not a good idea, they're not really as effective as something like steam vapor. Yeah, and another thing we've talked about as an add-on potentially is children's toys. This comes up from time to time where we're cleaning for someone and they've got young children. And as you know, especially really young kids put everything in their mouth and they ask us to clean the toys. And I can get a little uncomfortable because of the chemical residue left behind. Do you think a dry vapor would be a good approach for that? Yeah, I think toys would be an excellent thing because if you use chemicals, you should really wipe them off after you use them on children's toys to make sure they don't get ingested in that. So this does solve that problem, I think. So that was the second idea that we kind of had as a way to pay for the dry vapor equipment, the investment you're making is the opportunity to sell add-ons like mattress cleaning or toy cleaning, etc. But then finally is just it's a lot more efficient, a lot more effective. We already talked about how the chemicals take two to ten minutes to kill germs, but especially when you're dealing with hard to reach places like the joints on a toilet, around the fixtures on the sink. Those are places where it can be hard to get in there and get between the seams. And using a dry vapor technology can kind of blast in there and clean it out more effectively. Well, the natural product like vinegar is one that's received a lot of attention. You have to remember any kind of disinfectant, just using that word has to be approved by the Environmental Protection Agency, for example. And if vinegar was effective, it would be sold as a disinfectant, but it's not effective. While it will kill some organism, it doesn't kill them to a degree where we could call it a disinfectant or useful as a disinfectant product, for example. So that's an issue with using something like vinegar natural product. You really only want to ever use anything that's really approved by the EPA. One of the other things is like natural products like thymol and that can be allergenic is the other issue that you deal with. So you have to be careful that you're not allergenic to that or anybody's allergenic to that type of product. So one of the big issues with all natural products are two things that there's an added cost to it, of course. But then you have to worry about is it allergenic? Will certain people be sensitized to it? Well, that's true with any chemical disinfectant, too. Now, the most common chemical disinfectant I believe is a Quad Sanitizer. Is that right? Yes. Quad Sanitizer is one of the most common chemicals that uses disinfectants household. They are pretty effective and particularly with the right formulations in that. But again, you do have to be conscious of the dwell time for those. It's really important. So in particularly if you're going to use those, you got to spray and then wait usually the number of minutes it says on the label. You have to read the label very carefully with those. And some are only effective against certain types of viruses and bacteria. So you should look at those and be aware of that. So like I said, one of the big advantages here with the dry vapor technology is also the ability to move faster and get a lot of cleaning done more efficiently. There have been time studies done by cleaning companies. I know who use it and have been very happy with that it was at least as fast as if not faster than using the chemicals. And in some applications, like I said, especially in bathrooms, it actually sped them up quite a bit. Now, when it comes to cleaning, we talked a little bit earlier and I'm not sure if we got into enough detail. You can buy things that are labeled as steamers in retail a lot of times and they don't work as well. And what's the reason why? Well, the important thing is to realize with the technology we're talking about it has been tested against specific microorganisms are concerned and the spread in both health care and in the hall. And I think that's what you want and that's been documented and published in scientific journals. And so the technology has been well evaluated from a scientific point. We know it's effective. And that's what you want to see with any product. You want to see some testing of its efficacy that's been actually published and documented scientifically. And that's what this product has. And you'd also mentioned to me previously that a lot of the retail machines just don't get to the right temperature, correct? Yeah, that's always a problem. You got to make sure it's the right temperature to evenly distribute. I think the most important thing is it hasn't been evaluated. It hasn't been tested against a spectrum of organisms that the dry steam vapor has been. Yep. Well, I mean, there are definitely, I think some marketing advantages to showing up with a piece of equipment that shows that you're a true professional when you have dry steam vapor machine and a customized toolkit versus showing up with spray bottles or a bottle of vinegar, which it looks like anyone can do. And once you have the machine, you know, you don't have to worry about taking care of more chemicals in the future. And there's a lifetime warranty on the boiler in there, which does most of the work, which I know is getting a little more on the product side than your side. But I kind of wanted to explain that, you know, a lot of times people are really concerned about making this investment. But once you make it, it does help pay off in time. And you've mentioned there's a scientific basis for the claims being made on this technology. Gene, what do you know about the tests that have been run? Well, we've done a series of tests in another laboratory, too, on the efficacy of this against a broad spectrum of microorganisms that are at concern. I think that's what's really important. You know, one of the things that you point out about things like dry steam technology, too, is you can kill almost all, you can kill all classes of organisms basically with this type of technology where anytime you're dealing with a chemical technology, there are limitations in dwell times and the types of organisms that can be effective against. And I think that's what, excuse me, we're looking for this will kill viruses and bacteria, which are both the leading causes of infections transmitted in the household and an indoor environment. I think I think that's really advantage of it. You can kill and any other thing is, well, every time we're faced with a new microorganism being evolving or coming out of the world, every year you read about a new one as swine flu, bird flu, SARS, Ebola. You can, I think that you can have the confidence that this type of technology will work against those type of organisms without before any kind of testing is done because it's the standard way these types of organisms can be killed. Now, we've spent a lot of time talking about, at least I did, how to make sense and explain to the customer. What about your employees? In the market we're in right now, it's actually more difficult to recruit employees than it is to find clients. So what are some advantages potentially we could offer to the employees using a technology like this around fewer chemicals, fewer risks for contamination themselves? Well, you know, just effectively in disinfectants, two areas, one, because it reduces the amount of allergens, you can reduce the amount of headaches. Let's just use that as an example. Headaches is the most common cause of loss of productivity in a business, believe it or not, and allergies, which people are believed. So you have a potential impact in that area. I think one of the other things besides the spread of illnesses in the facility like the common colds is a classical example, but also important is presenteeism. You know, the average office worker only may miss three or four days a year from illness, but he may go to work. Recent studies indicate 50 to 60 days a year, not feeling well, feeling sick. Well, that's called presenteeism, going to work when you're not feeling well. People don't want to miss work. It's important. They don't want to use sick daily days, so they come into work all the time. And that is believed out of cost companies as much as absenteeism, going to work less productive. A headache can cost a company as much as $500, for example. Going to work ill with a cold can cost a company as much as $280 in lost productivity, because you're not as productive as you got a headache, you don't feel well. You're not getting as much work done because you're not feeling well. Or you're not as productive. You're not thinking as well because you're sneezing, you're coughing, you're running, getting Kleenexes. It may seem trivial on a one-to-one basis, but on a yearly basis with employees over the year, the lowest productivity can actually is estimated to cost the average employer about $1,500 a year lost productivity from people becoming ill and going to work ill, I should say. So it has more of an impact. I mean, good hygiene in a facility, and that's what we're really talking about, and reducing the amount of allergen exposure. You're talking about hundreds, if not $1,000 for the average worker without really realizing it. If you can reduce that amount of laudous productivity just from being present, probably is something you don't see going on except when some of the work doesn't get done on time. But it's something employers should start thinking about. Any type of impact on hygiene from what we see, well, again, in studies we've done any just normal using good chemical disinfectants, let's say. We know it can reduce your risk of getting colds and flus by 70 to 80% in the office. So that's a substantial savings over a year's time. Well, great. Well, I put a link in the comments here so people can see where they can purchase a machine like this just because I know I'm going to get some questions about it here in a little bit. Now I want to summarize real quick and just run through the ways you can make more money with a piece of equipment like this, like the ladybug. The first one is you can sell the cold and flu fighting deep cleaning package, you know, really differentiate from your competition. During season people will definitely pay $250, $350, $350 to have their house cleaned to try to stop that infection from going from person to person to person. I was talking to a colleague of mine recently who said in her family someone has been sick constantly for the last three weeks because it just keeps moving around the family and it's hit them all pretty hard as a result. Second idea is you can sell a lot of add-on, whether it's the allergen reduction and mattress steaming or cleaning the children's toys or other things like that. There's a lot of add-ons you can get from using this type of product. And the third major benefit is just it's more effective. You've got a quicker germ kill claim so you can move faster. You can get to tight crevices better. And as we talked about reducing the exposure to customers, not your customers, your employees to the chemicals and the fumes and the headaches and the illnesses that cause is also going to give you a productivity bonus. It's hard to measure, like you said, day to day. It's only something you're going to notice at the end of the year. So those were sort of the three ideas we had on how using the ladybug system from advanced vapor technologies could help your company be more profitable. I really want to thank you for coming on. Do you have any final thoughts you want to go over? You know, I think overall, I think it's underappreciated the importance of good surface hygiene in the home and in the office. Both are. In the office, it's a good savings for your employees. You know, you're going to have healthier employees. Yeah, it's going to reduce your cost of operation from what we've seen. And in the home, it prevents that the spread of illnesses in the home as well from what we've seen too. And that's really important today. You know, we still don't have vaccines for these common illnesses to cold, diarrhea, many respiratory infections. So this has been type of cleaning and technology has been shown to be very effective in reducing the exposure to organisms that can make you ill in the home. Well, great. Well, thank you so much for coming out today. I know you're the expert on this type of stuff. I've actually read at least one of your books. How many of you have written on the home environment staying healthy? Oh, we've written about three or four books. Yes. Now, like I said, Dr. Gerber is definitely the expert. So we really appreciate him being on to the game and thank you again.