For decades, the cleaning and facility solutions industry has built its case for value around appearance, productivity and, especially since the pandemic, infection prevention. A larger conversation is now taking shape around healthy buildings grounded in science, one that gives cleaning and facility solutions professionals a stronger voice in how buildings are designed, managed, measured and evaluated for occupant health and well-being.

Allen Rathey, founder and executive director of the Indoor Exposure Index (INDEX), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, is leading much of that push. INDEX develops practical exposure metrics and science-based approaches to healthier indoor environments, and its outreach arm, the Indoor Health Council, carries that work to a broader audience.

Rathey spent years as a cleaning contractor before turning his focus to public health, an experience that shaped his mission of connecting cleaning work to measurable, science-based reductions in indoor exposure. He calls the approach evidence-based cleaning for health.

Selling cleaning as a profit driver

“Our ability to sell the value of our cleaning services is tied to the bottom line of our customers,” Rathey said, repeating the line for emphasis. The goal, he explained, is to sell the business benefits of healthy indoor spaces enabled by better cleaning.

Cleaning has long been treated as a cost center or maintenance function. Rathey pointed to what he calls the 3-30-300 model to explain why that framing underpins the work: for every $3 a company spends on utilities, it spends $30 on rent and $300 on payroll. Healthier spaces affect that $300 payroll figure the most, he said, which turns cleaning for health into a profit center rather than an expense.

Rathey cited a range of figures to make the case. Reducing sick building syndrome symptoms by 20% to 50% is linked to annual productivity gains of up to $200 billion, he said, and improved indoor environments can lead to 61% to 101% better cognitive performance among workers.

He also pointed to the Harvard Six Cities study, which found that greener, healthier buildings prevented an estimated 54,000 respiratory incidents, 21,000 lost workdays, 16,000 lost school days, 11,000 asthma exacerbations, up to 405 premature deaths and 256 hospital admissions, adding $4 billion in related benefits. Combined with $6.7 billion in energy savings, the total came to $10.7 billion, meaning every dollar spent on greening a building returned an additional 60 cents in health-related savings, according to Rathey. That calculation came before any focused effort to clean specifically for health, he noted, and higher levels of airborne particles such as PM2.5 were tied to a 7.3% increase in mortality rates in the same body of research.

Applied to Harvard’s own building portfolio, roughly the same square footage as Google’s buildings, over 10 years, the health and related benefits added up to $12.3 million on top of energy savings. At Carrier’s new global headquarters, $172,000 in annual energy savings was paired with an additional $83,000 in health-related savings, again without a dedicated cleaning-for-health program in place, Rathey said.

Measuring, indexing and managing exposure

INDEX exists to provide information, education and training that define, measure, index and manage indoor exposures, covering environmental pollutants, chemicals, bioload, ergonomicstressors, lighting and other factors, Rathey said. The organization’s approach, which it calls LASER, for localized, applied science, environmental routines, is meant to give cleaning professionals a sharper, more defensible case for their work.

Central to that effort is a new credential, the Certified Indoor Environmental Quality Specialist, available for $100 a year after free training and proctoring. Credential holders can list it in their email signatures and receive recognition through INDEX. Rathey said the goal is 1,000 certified specialists by 2030, with training grounded in current cognitive-learning research. Courses cover primary  topics such as hand hygiene, clean-equipment certification and ATP sampling, plus ala carte topics such as ladder safety, letting companies build programs suited to their own needs.

A new metric for bioload exposure

INDEX is also developing the Bioload Exposure Metric Index (BEMI), a single, at-a-glance number meant to integrate comprehensive ATP readings into  one figure representing average hygienic and cleaning levels. Rathey compared it to how CO2 readings serve as a proxy for indoor air pollutants generally, with BEMI standing in for organic, microbial, particulate and chemical soils rather than measuring such contaminants directly. Phase one, completed in June 2026, established practical sampling methods; phase two will define a 1-to-10 cleanliness scale through field testing.

Building a broader coalition

Much of that work now involves ISSA. Rathey pointed to ISSA’s role in co-forming the Healthy Buildings Coalition with the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), which INDEX joined at the invitation of Jason Hartke, IWBI’s executive vice president of external affairs and advocacy. The coalition includes more than 80 national organizations, industry leaders and trade associations, Rathey said, among them the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, the American Industrial Hygiene Association, the Building Owners and Managers Association and the International Facilities Management Association.

INDEX and ISSA Today have also formed a media partnership that begins publishing content this fall, starting with an installment on what Rathey calls Total Integrated Measurement of the Environment, or TIME. INDEX plans to eventually pair the metric with a companion app for certified specialists, connecting field-level measurements to the return-on-investment case built on the science and data.

“We want to elevate cleaning from an aesthetic task to a verified health utility that drives business forward,” Rathey said.

Supporting Links

ISSA Article – ROI Playbook
https://www.issa.com/articles/the-roi-playbook-for-sensitive-populations/

3-30-300 Model (information)
https://www.officespacesoftware.com/blog/whats-the-3-30-300-rule-and-how-can-facility-managers-use-it/

Harvard Six Cities Study
https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/groundbreaking-air-pollution-study-marks-30-years/

Healthy Buildings Coalition with ISSA / WELL Building Institute
https://www.wellcertified.com/healthy-workplaces-coalition

BEMI Phase One
https://indoorexposureindex.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/BEMI-A-LASER-Project.pdf

Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivityhttps://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674237971