Answers
(To Frequently Asked Questions)
ADSS uses technologies and techniques that are new to many, even in industries that require completely clean, contaminant-free facilities. Many of the most commonly asked questions are answered here. If you have a question not listed here, please don’t hesitate to contact us! We love to hear from our customers, existing and potential alike.
The SteraMist™ designator refers to the machines and equipment used in the application of BIT™ decontamination technology.
TOMI developed the products, processes and procedures involved in conjunction with the United States government DARPA and Titan to respond to and successfully neutralize the threat of weaponized anthrax.
Since 2013, TOMI has held the intellectual patents on Binary Ionization Technology® and has recently made the solution available to the industrial, commercial and residential sectors.
The best way to begin is to contact us at 717.820.1010. We begin by learning more about your organization and its unique requirements, then create a detailed project plan and estimate with your specific requirements in mind. Once that process has been completed, we’re able to schedule service in order to safely and effectively provide your facility with our advanced sanitization services and return you to production status as swiftly as possible.
When looking at the ROI of the technologies and methods used by ADSS in the sanitization and decontamination of facilities and environments, a prospective customer should carefully consider many variables. The following questions are a solid beginning to analysis of ROI while taking into account variables such as labor, facilities costs and potential lost profit in the form of revenue.
How long will facilities be unavailable?
The SteraMist™ system requires just over seventy minutes to clean a 108 m3 closed area.
What are the labor and materials costs for to prepare for service?
No internal preparation is required; our technology sanitizes over, above, atop, behind and around surfaces and equipment.
What is the utilities cost per hour while the facilities are unavailable?
Clients must answer this for themselves, taking into account utilities and internal operations.
What is the labor cost per hour while the facilities are unavailable?
Only a client can provide this insight. How many employees use the environment? What are the associated labor costs, including overhead?
What is the potential lost revenue per hour while facilities are unavailable?
This is a difficult question to address. A reasonable model can be created by dividing revenue by the production days in a year, then the production hours in a day to assign a value to hourly revenue.
What are the labor and materials costs to return the facilities to working order after service?
No special operations are required after service. Only trace amounts of pure water in the form of humidity remain, easily managed by proper room control mechanisms.
Binary Ionization Technology® (BIT™) and its SteraMist™ platform were developed in conjunction with DARPA and Titan to respond to the threat of weaponized anthrax attacks following 09.11.2001.
Binary Ionization Technology® is a patented two-step process that activates and ionizes a 7.8% hydrogen peroxide solution. The fine mist created by this process is called AIHP. The AIHP fog contains a high concentration of ROS, consisting mostly of hydroxyl radicals. These radicals damage pathogenic organisms through oxidization of proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids. This oxidization leads to cellular disruption and/or dysfunction and allows for disinfection/decontamination in targeted areas and large spaces.
TOMI™ Environmental Solutions’ testing has confirmed the applicability and effectiveness of the SteraMist™ BIT™ system on a variety of infectious pathogens, resulting in EPA registration of Binary Ionization Technology® (BIT™) for use as a hospital-healthcare disinfectant as a combination solution and application technology. (EPA registration# 90150-2).
Part of what makes the ADSS suite of decontamination and sanitization services so attractive is the low overall turnaround time coupled with minimal requirements to prepare for service. There’s no need to move equipment, no need to clean before the cleaning and no need to clean up after the cleaning.
Our processes and technologies are engineered with complete room cleaning in mind: the AIHP mist reaches under, over, around and behind obstacles so that ROS can aggressively break down bacterial, fungal and viral contaminants and remove them from your environment.
Since the only byproduct is water vapor in the form of humidity, standard HVAC equipment easily removes it from the cleaned environment. Facilities with adequate ventilation systems can literally return to production minutes after we finish.
Tom the traveling salesman, good enough at his job to remain competitive in an Internet-based economy, needs repairs on his vehicle, essential in his line of work. He can’t work without it.
Gary’s Garage estimates $500 and two days to complete the repairs. Anne’s Automotive estimates $700 and one day to complete the repairs. Tom is pretty sure he can do this himself – he Google’d it after all – for $100, but it will take him two days at least. In the end, since Tom is a salesman – not a mechanic – it will end up going well over the projected budget for both materials and time, at $200 and four days.
Assuming that both the shops will be able to complete the repairs in the time stated and exactly at the target estimate, which option should Tom choose?
To determine this, it’s necessary for Tom to answer several questions and compare the answers side-by-side. A chart (really a very simple spreadsheet) is a great way to do this.
An analysis of ROI involving business practices and needed maintenance, on a very basic level.
In order to fill in this table, Tom looks back at his sales data for the last few years and finds his average revenue per day versus his cost of goods sold, $250. Tom also budgets $30 per day for gas to be used in the course of his sales calls.
In this case, Tom would save $20 by using Anne’s Automotive: that’s almost enough for another day in the gas budget. Additionally, he loses only one day on the road, connecting with his clients and fulfilling his responsibilities.
For the sake of argument, let’s see what happens if Tom only makes $150 profit each day he spends on the road. The math now looks like this:
Gary’s Garage: $740
Anne’s Automotive: $820
Tom’s home repairs: $680
Tom has the lowest financial investment, if profiting only $150 a day, when performing the repairs himself. He saves $140 (almost five days of gas money) over Anne’s Automotive and $60 over Gary’s Garage (two days of gas money).
However, he would also damage his reputation with his customers by being unavailable and miss the opportunity to meet new clients. There are other questions as well. Is this a busy time of year, where the true money lost per day might be even higher? Or is it a slow time, where Tom saves more by opting to perform his own repairs? Does Tom have an important meeting already scheduled on that second day? Is some of his inventory time-sensitive, so that he’ll lose even more as inventory reaches expiry dates?
In our next example, we’ll look into more detailed ROI considerations by analyzing Tom’s average daily sales calls, the number of existing client relationships he maintains by visiting clients during the course of each day, the number of calls converted to sales each day, and the number of calls that become sales later in a twelve month period.
As we briefly discussed on the main page, log reduction refers to the relative number of live pathenogens eliminated through sanitization or disinfection (cleaning) of a given environment. The number in the reduction value refers to the ‘number of nines’ in the reduction percentage. Log two reduction means that 99% of live microorganisms are eliminated, while log nine reduction indicates that 99.9999999% of specimens are neutralized by a given procedure.
What about a log reduction value of 2.5? We can infer that it reduces the number of live CFU by somewhere between 99% (log reduction two) and 99.9% (log reduction three), but is it really midpoint between them, or 99.45%? The short answer is no. The longer answer involves a small bit of math using the following formula.
P = (1 – 10-L)(100)
P: The percent reduction
L: The log reduction
For a log reduction value of 2.5, the formula offers the following calculations and results:
P = (1 – 10-L)(100)
P = (1 – 10-2.5)(100)
P = (1 – 0.00316227766)(100)
P = (.99683772234)(100)
P = 99.683772234
Log reduction of 2.5 indicates a kill rate of active CFU by 99.68%. In a room with ten thousand active specimens, the number remaining after treatment by a solution with a log reduction value of 2.5 would be less than or equal to thirty-two (32) specimens.
The log reduction of all pathogens against which SteraMist™ technology has been tested is no lower than six; in a room with ten thousand active specimens, a minimum of 99.9999% will be neutralized, leaving less than one survivor.
The EPA publishes strict guidelines to test and verify the efficacy of cleaning and decontamination solutions.
To verify the efficiency and log reduction of SteraMist™ proprietary technology, six laboratories were engaged to test against a wide variety of some of the most harmful microbial pathogens with the following results.
This list is by no means exhaustive. SteraMist™ and BIT™ have proven field efficacy against a wide range of contaminants.
| Organism | Classification | Log Reduction |
|---|---|---|
| Bacillus atrophaeus | Bacterial Spore | >8.3 |
| Geobacillus stearothermophilus | Bacterial Spore | >6.3 |
| Bacillus subtilis | Bacterial Spore | >6.0 |
| Clostridium difficile | Bacterial Spore | >6.0 |
| Escherichia coli | Gram Negative | >7.4 |
| Pseudomonas aeruginosa | Gram Negative | >6.0 |
| Serratia marcescens | Gram Negative | >6.0 |
| Staphylococcus aureus | Gram Positive | >7.4 |
| Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) | Gram Positive | >5.9 |
| Bacillus atrophaeus vegetative cells | Gram Positive | >9.0 |
| Aspergillus Niger | Mold | >8.0 |
| Aspergillus species | Mold | >7.0 |
| Cladosporium species | Mold | >7.0 |
| Penicillium Species | Mold | >7.0 |
| Stachybotrys chartarum | Mold | >7.0 |
| Trichophyton mentagrophytes | Mold | >6.0 |
| Human rhinovirus 164 | Virus | >6.8 |
| Influenza A (H1N1) | Virus | >10 |