Astral Hygiene

  Care Home Case Study – Uric Acid and Odour Control  21st March 2025  | By Anna Armstrong   |  Cleaning Tips ,  Environmental Health ,  Hygiene Following on from last weeks case study, I thought this week I’d expand and discuss the best way and the appropriate products to help to control the odours associated with incontinence. The urine odour that is associated with urinary incontinence is caused by the water products from the kidneys, including ammonia, urea and other compounds. These water products are encased by protein, which is made up of amino acids – amino acids are inherently sticky, so they stick to any surface that isn’t completely smooth. This characteristic means that uric acid sticks in between tiles, to grout and to the fibres that make up mattresses. The thing about uric acid, the smell comes from the break down of urea into ammonia. In dementia patients dehydration is an important factor, as many patients forget to drink and become de...

Safe cleaning & disinfection of TASKI cleaning machines You know how important it is to clean your hands, so  clean your TASKI machine  to ensure the highest cleaning quality. At TASKI we design our machines to be easy to clean and disinfect. Features such as  easy access to recovery tanks, easy to clean yellow maintenance points and tool free accessories  all add up to a higher frequency of cleaning and vastly superior hygiene. Yellow maintenance points –  vacuum recovery filters, clean water filters, squeegees, pad drives & brushes  are all colour coded and easy to clean. Colour coded clean (blue)  and  dirty (red) water hose caps  to differentiate and help prevent cross infection when cleaning. To help with cleaning and reducing cross infection TASKI squeegees need  no adjustment and require no tools  to remove for cleaning. TASKI yellow pad drives & brushes feature  touchless operation.    

  Winter illnesses round up......  14th February 2025  | By Anna Armstrong   |  Hygiene ,  Environmental Health It feels like we have really high levels of winter illnesses this year, with a large proportion of our team here at Astral off all at the same time.  We have flu, RSV, COVID-19 and norovirus doing the rounds all a the same time, which is making sickness absence really high at this time of year. There are other virus that our government are also tracking including rhinovirus, adenovirus, human metapneumovirus (hMPV) and parainfluenza ... all of these are also peaking during the current winter months.  All of these virus's can be killed by a simple spray and wipe that you can find by following this  link....  In the UK, we offer free vaccines to vunerable groups for COVID-19, flu, and RSV. We have all heard the phrase 'stay at home' but this could never be more pertinant during this winter. All of these different virus's are spre...

  How to set up your Hygiene when running or opening an abattoir…  28th February 2025  | By Anna Armstrong   |  Cleaning Tips ,  Environmental Health ,  Hygiene I was recently engaged to set up the cleaning & hygiene practices in a newly established abattoir. This was a newly built project, and the client had engaged a health and safety team, and a consultancy to design the building, ensuring sinks etc were all in place. At the final stages when the build was almost complete, I was engaged to ensure that all cleaning and hygiene practices met the standards that were required by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) who are responsible for inspection of the hygiene standards but also the inspection of the environmental impact of an abattoir. I arrived on site, to do a site audit, and take the brief in terms of what meats they would be processing, to find that we were starting from the ground up, there were no chemicals onsite and we had a single qualified...

  Environmental Health Assessment: Fish Processing Plant case study  7th March 2025 I was recently engaged by a start up firm who had plans to begin processing a specific type of fish and then selling it on their website. This fish was line caught, so sustainably caught and the client wanted to process this fish in new premises. The client had no previous experience with processing raw foods, so needed comprehensive guidance prior to a scheduled environmental health assessment to allow him to open and begin trading. After finding out about his vision and what he wanted to achieve from our meeting, I firstly began with the PPE requirements needed on site to ensure that contaminants from outside weren’t being brought in to the factory. I provided  mob caps  which are food safe and comfortable to wear,  overshoes  were also delivered, as shoe protection.  Waterproof aprons  completed the ensemble. Finally, we provided nitrile gloves as hand protectio...

 Infection Prevention and Control: Care Home case study  14th March 2025 | Environmental Health, Hygiene, Cleaning Tips Infection Prevention and Control: Care Home case study Today, I'd like to discuss the Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) guidance for care homes (released by NHS Scotland and the Care Inspectorate), specifically those caring for elderly patients with dementia. I've reviewed the latest IPC and Care Inspectorate documentation to ensure that my advice aligns with current standards. Having worked with several care homes over the last few years, I have been heavily involved in implementing cleaning guidance, and also attending meetings with the NHS Care Home Assurance Team to give me clear insight into what the standards are and what I need to do as a supplier to make it enhance my understanding so I can help my clients to achieve and attain the standard set out in these guidelines. **Hand Hygiene** Hand hygiene remains crucial in reducing infection transmissi...