Healthy Indoors Magazine - USA Edition

24 | January 2019 crime-scene cleanup is a regulated industry—to a degree. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) maintains rules governing how businesses handle blood- borne pathogens, respiratory risks, and working in confined spaces. However, these laws are not industry-specific and cross over into a variety of professions. The victim sat in the leather recliner for nearly four weeks before a neighbor complained of a possible gas leak (Courtesy of Scott Vogel/Emergi-Clean Inc). The bio-recovery business is generally unregulated. While there is no industry license required to operate a crime scene cleanup company, some certifications and state permits are often necessary to conduct certified busi- ness like annual OSHA training and a permit to transport medical waste. However, uninformed clients seldom verify these qualifications. Upon release of the scene after an in- vestigation, some police officers make referrals to cleanup companies, a relationship that seems sketchy at best. All of which is to say there's no list of certified companies for a grieving relative in need of services. Instead, families are urged to "check the yellow pages or internet for 'crime scene and trauma cleanup'" by New York City Department of Health's "Guidelines for Trauma Scene Management." Type "crime scene cleanup" into Google, and you'll get hundreds of results. Families and property owners are left to fend for themselves, often resorting to their local carpet cleaners. The last option offered by the DOH is to contact the American Bio Recovery Association (ABRA), the first spe- cialty trade organization for this field. The ABRA is working to expand regulation nationwide. Currently, only California, Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana have regulatory require- ments specific to the crime-scene cleanup industry. his technicians—as much as they try to remain unaffect- ed—that they're cleaning up after a life. Eric Morse, founder of Tri-State Bio Recovery based in Catawissa, Pennsylvania, also finds these little details hard to ignore. "When you go into a scene, the less you know the bet- ter," Morse, 44, says. "But the longer you're there, you're able to piece together things as you're cleaning. You're able to make observations that put together the last hours of someone's life." Morse, a former exterminator, had never experienced the level of satisfaction that he received from helping fam- ilies rebuild after Hurricane Sandy. Spurred by that experi- ence, he started his own bio-recovery business, fueled by his desire to help others in their time of need. But the family reactions are often more unpredictable than the scene itself. "You can have people who are in shock and baking you cookies, acting like everything is fine, or you get people who are completely emotionally distraught," he recalls. "Everyone handles death differently." While Morse and Vogel swiftly hedge family questions about what and how, they hesitate when a family member stricken with the guilt after a suicide asks the one question neither can answer: "Why did they do it?" How can a person work in such an emotionally charged situation day after day? "When someone's job comes with the understanding that they will be exposed to traumatic content, it can help the brain digest what it sees," says Lind- say Bira, a clinical health psychologist based in San Anto- nio, Texas. "To think that our jobs do not affect us would be ignoring the science behind plasticity, defined as the way our brain changes in reaction to the world in which we live." Bira explains how taxi drivers in busy cities have mea- surable changes to their memory centers due to the large amount of time they spend at their job. Similarly, Vogel, who often works 36-hour shifts, sometimes feels as if he's grad- ually become numb to it all. Back at the quaint New Jersey home, Vogel and the technicians break apart the leather recliner with an X-Acto knife, an electric saw, and a sledgehammer. Each contami- nated piece is placed in a separate red plastic bag designed for medical waste. The home becomes a construction site, as the floor is drawn up layer by layer revealing just how easily materials soak up human blood. "This is what you call a job that keeps on giving," Vogel says, peeling up a second layer of soiled carpet to reveal an unexpected layer of marble tile, also covered in blood. Since dealing with blood is a part of the job description,

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