A landmark payout has been awarded to a pensioner after he suffered severe burns from sitting on his “toxic sofa”. Maurice Heminsley, a 68 year old from the West Midlands was awarded an undisclosed four figure payout after he was left with severe chemical burns from his imported leather sofa. Upholstery cleaning firms should be aware that there are large numbers of these sofas amongst the population as a whole.

Mr Heminsley purchased the sofa from Furniture Warehouse unaware that it was packed with a toxic fungicide now banned in the EU. The dehumidifier dimethyl fumerate (DMF) was contained within the “toxic sofa” and lead to the pensioner developing a rash across his neck, back and legs after just a couple of days. Within three months the rash had developed into a set of agonising open sores requiring hospital treatment.

The pensioner’s settlement has paved the way for thousands of similar claims from others who have also suffered due to imported furniture containing DMF. It is quite likely that there are many more people suffering in silence from injuries like Mr Heminsley’s. Upholstery cleaning companies should be on the look out for these imported sofas and inform owners of the potential danger contained within them. Doing so will hopefully prevent others from suffering in the way Mr Heminsley has.

His sister, Joyce Barham described him as being “in a terrible state” before comparing his wounds to those of a burns victim. Mr Heminsley was taken to hospital to be treated for acute contact dermatitis as a result of his “toxic” Chinese sofa. His entire ordeal could have been avoided if his sofa came to the attention of trained upholstery cleaners.

Alongside the undisclosed payout Furniture Warehouse also provided a full refund for the sofa which housed the toxic dehumidifier. The sofas were sold by numerous retailers throughout 2007 and 2008. These included Land of Leather, Argos and several independent furniture retailers. The DMF sachets were intended to prevent the leather furniture from going mouldy while it was being stored.

Since May 1st 2009 the European Commission has banned all products containing DMF. The biocide should no longer be found on the market within the EU and it is hoped that the larger furniture retailers will find a swift resolution to the claims lodged against them. Despite the illegality of DMF upholstery cleaners should remain vigilant, it is likely many people still own sofas containing the toxic dehumidifier and are completely oblivious of what it can do.

Last year I was sitting in a monthly BDM (Business development meeting) with the rest of our management team discussing replacing one of our Bane-Clene truck mounted carpet cleaning units’ when it struck me that we had been operating the same machine for over twenty years!

Wow! That made me feel my age but it also brought back fond memories of my very first visit to America and Indianapolis, home of the Bane family. Yes these machines and the whole Bane system are the brainchild of a real life family firm who live and breath carpet cleaning and put into practice on a daily basis their principles, which make them the acknowledged leader in the field of carpet and soft furnishing cleaning.

Originally their equipment was distributed in the UK by an American called Bob Kelly who used to flog up and down the country in a big Renault Master van doing demo’s for anyone interested in truck mounts. You have to remember back in the 80’s a truck mount was a really unusual piece of equipment when most operators were still using small portables and Bob found it really hard to make users realise the benefits the Bane system would bring them.

Whenever Bob was passing through the North of England I used to always give him a bed for the night and we would yarn about carpet cleaning and the industry in general over a few beers. In a typical example of ‘what goes around comes around’ when Bob eventually decided he couldn’t afford to continue his one man crusade to turn British carpet cleaners onto the merits of truck mounts, he gave me the opportunity of buying one of his demo models at a discount in return for the support we had given him.

It was all well and good getting the truck mount at a discounted price but at the time we couldn’t afford to buy the van for the gear to go in and there was resistance to investing ten grand in buying one just to have it dedicated solely to carpet cleaning. Just as it does now the market appeared to be dominated by “blow-and-suck” merchants who advertise that they clean a room for a fiver and your whole house for twenty-five quid so the idea of using a twenty thousand pounds set up to clean carpets appeared total madness.

It was then that I visited Bane-Clene’s Indianapolis facility for their annual convention. This was an awe inspiring visit as I saw at first hand the devotion and belief our fellow operators had in Bane-Clene as suppliers and as a force for good in the carpet cleaning industry. Messianic is the only word I could use to describe the atmosphere. Remember this is a bunch of self employed small business owners, the archetypal independent type of person and they were so committed to being the best at what they do that it was, to a Brit, almost embarrassing as was the almost a religious fervour.

Here I heard for the first time that Bane-Clene guaranteed their equipment for 5 years. So what you might think but you have to remember that at that time even when you bought a new car in the U.K. you were lucky to get a one year guarantee never mind 5 years. It was this simple fact – belief in how good their gear was, combined with everything I has seen and heard from the operators at the convention that persuaded me I had to really push the system and prove that it would work in the UK as well as it did in the States.

Returning home, I took the first step towards getting the equipment mobile. Initially using a twin wheeled trailer, aka ‘The Painted Wagon’ as it had a canvas cover, we used to take just the base unit out to do domestics. After months of towing ‘The Painted wagon’ around we realised that there was enough business to warrant a Merc van Our big break through came though when we purchased a small carpet cleaning company called Maple Leaf that had gone into liquidation. They already operated a couple of truck mounts but they were massive, noisy jet engined machines that ran on diesel and operated at far too high a temperature and pressure to clean carpets safely.

We moved them on as fast as we could then installed Bane equipment instead. The effect this had on the Operators who had transferred to us from Maple Leaf was immediate. They realised straight away the benefits of the new equipment far more readily than other Newlife personnel as they had more experience operating truck mounts and couldn’t believe the results being achieved by simply plugging in a three-pin plug. No screaming engines, no smelly dangerous derv, and no high pressure hoses which constantly split spitting out scalding water.

That was twenty years ago and yes we did order a new machine. Infact we went one better and visited Mr and Mrs Bane Snr. both at their Indianapolis offices and at their home. When we told them this story it delighted them so much they offered us distributorship rights for their range in the UK. We haven’t taken them up on their offer yet but who knows what the future holds.

The moral of the tale though is that by setting your stall out as a specialist then setting your standards and aspirations at the highest level possible you can grow a business which is recognised all around the world as the acknowledged leader in it’s field.

www.baneclene.com

Yet again it appears health scares are being used to drive the sale of specialist vacuum cleaners and mattress protectors to asthma suffers desperately searching for a “silver-bullet”, magical cure to breathing problems thought to be caused by the common house mites found in their bedding and soft furnishings.

A review by experts concluded that they failed to curb the allergens commonly held to be the trigger to asthma attacks.

Ordinary house dust contains innumerable allergens but the major cause for concern is considered to be the mites and their waste products.

Many asthmatics are allergic to these mites that live in the dust around the house, such as in bedding, carpets and soft furnishings.

Heavily promoted methods of tackling the mites include mattress and pillow protectors, washing soft furnishings at high temperatures (60C+), special cleaning agents, encapsulation in dry-ice baths and high powered vacuum cleaners fitted with very fine exhaust filters.

However a review of over 50 previous studies – including a survey of over 3000 asthmatics has found no evidence that such methods are effective. Even after such esoteric treatments it was found that the level of allergens were still high enough to trigger asthmatic attacks for the 8% of the British population who are sufferers.

The review, published by Cochrane Collaboration, involved analysing 36 trials involving physical interventions such as mattress protectors designed to block mites out to a further 10 studies using chemical methodology and a further 8 trials combining both chemical and physical interventions.

With Acknowledgement to Daily Telegraph

The UK Cochrane Centre was established at the end of 1992, by the National Health Service Research and Development Programme, ‘to facilitate and co-ordinate the preparation and maintenance of systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials of health care’. During its initial period of funding (1992-1995), the Centre’s objectives included a number of activities intended to promote international collaboration in this work. Centre staff worked with others to help establish The Cochrane Collaboration, which was launched at the first Cochrane Colloquium in Oxford in October 1993. The UK Cochrane Centre is now one of twelve Cochrane Centres around the world, which provide the infrastructure for co-ordinating The Cochrane Collaboration. The Centre supports contributors to The Cochrane Collaboration in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Turkey and countries in the Middle East.

In the Contract Cleaning industry many of our Green efforts are focused on using less aggressive chemicals or introducing equipment such as foam generators and low-pressure steamers, which maximise cleaning results while minimising chemical inputs. But we also need to have regard for the impact our processes can have on the environment.

Consider for example the phenomenon that our Bane-Clene Carpet cleaning division call “Uglied Out”

Most carpet specifiers and major users don’t realise that carpets are actually designed to hide dirt. When I was a child in the 50’s, the majority of carpeting in most homes was a square of patterned woollen carpet surrounded by a perimeter of “lino”. Once a year the carpet would be taken outside, hung over the washing line then literally beaten to release the dirt and grit that had been absorbed even though the carpet had been ”Hoovered” regularly. It would then be wet cleaned either by hand scrubbing or if you were high-tech using 1001 carpet cleaning detergent. Forget hot water extraction, I don’t think it existed then and if you were going to scrub a commercial installation it was a case of using a high foaming detergent and a low speed polisher fitted with a scrubbing head and tank.

Now most carpeting is made with new generation fibres and man made backing materials. Whereas dust and grit has always fallen to the base of the pile tufts with this new generation, often triangular shaped fibres, the soil is even more hidden from the naked eye. The result is that instead of doing an annual “Spring Clean” now, carpet cleaning only gets done when the carpet can’t physically absorb any more dirt and it becomes visible to the naked eye.

Unlike the natural fibres of yore the dirt and soil abrades the new generation fibres causing them to lose their lustre and distort. The net result is dirty dingy traffic lanes set into a carpet packed with pounds of dirt and grit to the square metre. This is the point where we say the carpet has “uglied out” not worn out. And it’s all due to the lack of a basic maintenance programme.

What happens next though is the environmental disaster. With the carpet past the point that a restoration clean can save it, the only option is dumping it to waste. But unlike natural fibre carpets whose final journey could often be to the bottom of the garden where it was used as a weed suppressant or compost cover, new generation fibres and backing do not degrade and get absorbed back into the soil. Just like plastic bags it is estimated that they can take up to 50 years to rot and disappear.

How can you help stop this waste of resources and damage to the natural environment? Well if up to 80% of the contaminants in a carpet are dry soil, the simple answer is the use of vacuum cleaner on as regular basis as your premises needs. Pay double attention to entrances and high traffic zones, use dust mats to trap dirt and reduce the amount being tracked into your building in the first place. Above all though implement a proper planned maintenance-cleaning programme. Just because your carpets can look clean doesn’t mean that they are.

Columbus Dixon