Dealing with unsavoury odours

By: Col Nation

I hope you are not intending to read this while eating your lunch. If you are then it might be a good idea to come back to this article a bit later.

Ever hopped into a lift only to be confronted by a stale urine smell? If you haven’t yet, then welcome to your first days in this industry.  In my travels with the WoolSafe Organisation and the Daniels Associates doing training and working in the cleaning industry, I have stayed in a wide variety of accommodation. From luxury hotels in the major capital cities to cheap motels in regional Australia. They all have a similar problem. Urine and vomit odours, plus the occasional prawn shells left in a bin under a sink for a few days.

Footballers make headlines by urinating (or worse) in a public areas. This includes hotel corridors or lifts because they couldn’t make it all the way to their rooms after a night of celebrations after a big win. Sozzled salespeople, tipsy teenagers on binge drinking holidays, gastronomically challenged guests, or even just the poor person with an occasional bladder weakness may be guilty of making a deposit in or on your valuable furnishings. Occasionally it is a pampered pet that has been smuggled into a room.

Fresh urine smells are bad enough, but if we do not find it immediately then we can be faced with an even bigger ongoing problem. Vomit can also pose some real odour issues. It is not just odour that is the problem, because staining and fibre damage can also result from extended exposure to the chemicals in urine and vomit.

Consider for a moment the contents of vomit and urine. Urine is the result of burning fats in the body plus the expulsion of liquid wastes that don’t leave the body by other means. Vomit can contain a wonderful mixture of partially digested food from a few hours before, plus the remainder of beverages that have been consumed, plus some stomach acid, bile and of course the carrot chunks from last Wednesday’s dinner.

It could be an excess of alcohol or a dodgy prawn that has caused the vomiting, or it could be an infectious disease or a stomach virus that has been picked up from another country that has upset someone’s digestive system.

By the way how is your lunch going?

Urine and vomit is a fact of life. It’s now on the carpet or the lounge or in the bed. How do we deal with it? Fresh is best they say, and I would tend to agree. The sooner you can remove it the better.

First things first. Think of the safety aspects. In the healthcare industry they have a policy called “Standard Precautions.” This means they treat every patient as if they are infectious. This includes spills of bodily fluids including vomit and urine. Oh, and did I mention before the occasional blood spill. All of these spills can contain pathogenic organisms that can infect the poor cleaner whose job it is to fix the problem.

Using Standard Precautions means that we will protect ourselves from potential infection by wearing the appropriate Personal Protective Equipment, namely thick rubber gloves, eye protection, and a face mask to help prevent infectious material entering our own body and making us sick as well. You just never know what is in that spill.

Cleaning staff who deal with this sort of thing should also be immunised against Hepatitis and Tetanus and the flu virus as well is a good idea.

Cleaning and sanitising equipment after use on potentially infected materials is also a good practice to follow to prevent the spread of germs and odours throughout the facility.

So how do we deal with the odour? Once we have dealt with the safety issues, we then need to find the source of the odour. Vomit is usually fairly easy. There is usually plenty of colours to guide you to the spot, especially if they have been drinking coloured drinks such as red wine or brightly coloured cocktails and drinks. By the way, did you know that the artificial colours used in many beverages are acid dyes? These are the very same dyes that are used to dye both wool and nylon carpets. We use these very same dyes to repair bleached carpets.

This can create yet another problem for the cleaner. We might be able to remove the vomit chunks and other gooey components, but the dyes from the drinks will remain. This can be dealt with only by specialist stain removal operators who can de-colour and re-colour carpets. The WoolSafe Organisation may be able to help you locate operators who can help you fix these dye stains and save you having to replace valuable carpet.

Dealing with odour.

As I said before, to treat an odour we first have to locate the source. Urine is not always easy to see. It is sometimes quite clear, although it will still contain the chemistry that can cause odours and stains later on. Urine contains a number of chemicals such as Urea and Uric Acid produced by the body from the breakdown of protein, plus Urobilin (a brown pigment from oxidised bile, some times called Urochrome).

While they are wet or damp, we can simply use a battery operated moisture probe. When it lights up, we have found the spill.

When they are dry, they can be a bit more difficult to find. We can however use an Ultra Violet light to find the uric acid crystals. Darken the room and switch on the UV torch and simply look around for the yellow patches.

A solution of 3% hydrogen peroxide will also help pinpoint the exact location of older urine spots. The Peroxide reacts with chemicals in the urine and creates a white foam. Don’t worry, 3% Hydrogen Peroxide should not harm a wool or nylon carpet. It will actually help dissolve the urine residues which make them easier to extract. It also help to kill bacteria that cause some of the odour.  Any residual Hydrogen Peroxide will simply revert to normal water in a few hours and at 3 % is not usually strong enough to cause bleaching of carpet dyes.

Now that you have located the urine you can treat it by applying either a specialised urine treatment and extracting, or use more Hydrogen Peroxide and extracting until it stops foaming. We then apply some Acetic acid (white vinegar) or a specialised carpet acid rinse treatment to ensure the carpet dries to a slightly acid state. This helps reduce the probability of staining.

There are quite a few specialised urine treatments available from a number of chemical suppliers.  Don’t buy one that won’t give you the active ingredients. From an OH&S perspective we need to know what safety precautions are required. Some urine treatments use enzymes. These can be quite dangerous if inhaled. Enzymes are produced by living micro-organisms and the less foreign organisms, or their by products, we put in our bodies the better.

I find the Peroxide treatment followed by the acid rinse treatment to be very effective in removing not only the odour, but also the staining, to a degree. This requires some professional skill but is usually fairly effective. If I do have to extend the treatment by heat processes, and it depletes the colour of the carpet, I can simply apply some acid dyes to match the original colour of the carpet.

This is not always effective on older urine spills because of yet another factor. While fresh urine is fairly sterile (unless someone has a bladder infection), and it is slightly acidic most of the time, it will soon pick up bacteria present in the carpet or the air and start to go off. In the process it will oxidise and create alkaline salts which can eventually cause a chemical burn, especially on wool fibres.  This is the reason that older urine stains turn a yellowy-orange colour. These are not always fully removable.

The next variable in all of this is volume.

A small pet spill is easy to deal with. Depending on the absorbency of the fibre, the spill may be on the surface of the carpet or lounge.  The volume of urine from a drunken sailor can be quite a staggering amount. Spills of this volume will penetrate to the backing of the carpet, through the underlay and may even be absorbing into the flooring below.

Larger spills may require the removal of the carpet and underlay, as well as a sanitising treatment to the wood or concrete flooring, followed by a layer of special sealing compound applied to the floor to prevent re-infecting the carpet and underlay. We would normally replace the underlay and clean and treat the carpet from both sides to ensure thorough removal of urine contamination.

Fortunately, vomit and blood will also respond to similar treatments, although the residual staining may not be removable with normal cleaning procedures and chemicals.

Why don’t we just spray on a deodorant?

Spray deodorants are usually very superficial. They just don’t get down to where they are needed, especially with the larger volumes. Some deodorant sprays are just masking agents. These simply cover the malodour with a stronger, less offensive odour. Over use of a pretty perfumed deodorant can be just as offensive to guests as the urine or vomit smell.

An alternative is Ozone. Ozone generators work well for temporary relief. Ozone is a bit like a gas version of Hydrogen Peroxide. Close up the room and switch on the ozone generator and over the next few days the odour will dissipate. There are two problems here. No one can use the room for a few days as it needs to be closed tightly, and ozone is poisonous.  It doesn’t remove the source of the problem so in the next spell of bad weather it will re-moisten from the humidity and will just come back to haunt you.

Sometimes it is just easier to call for some professional help. www.woolsafe.com.au has a search data base for professional carpet cleaners who can help you deal with these problems. Simply click on the map on the front page and then click on the state you are in on the next page. Scroll down the list until you find someone close to you.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, I’ll let you enjoy the rest of your lunch now.

About Col Nation:
Col Nation is a 30 year veteran in the carpet maintenance industry. He operates ABBsolve Services, a specialty stain removal service on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. Colin is also the Director of WoolSafe Australia, the Australasian arm of the worldwide WoolSafe Organisation that tests and certifies chemicals for use on wool carpet and trains and certifies the leading carpet cleaners around the world. As a Woolsafe registered Inspector, Colin helps carpet owners and manufacturers solve many types of issues relating to carpet. With this experience behind him he passes on this information and experience through the Daniels Associates of Australasia a Registered Training Organisation that specialises in the cleaning, healthcare and hospitality industries. Colin can be contacted through office@woolSafe.com.au or colin@danielsassociates.com.au