Every healthcare facility has its own cleaning challenges, and one of the most stubborn ones sits a few inches below the faucet. Sink drains and the P-traps beneath them hold a layer of biofilm that most environmental services (EVS) teams never see and few cleaning programs ever reach. George Clarke has spent years working on that problem.

Clarke is founder and CEO of UMF Corporation, the Northbrook, Illinois, company behind the PerfectCLEAN^® brand. UMF is one of the sponsors supporting the ISSA Healthcare Hub at ISSA Show North America, Nov. 16-19 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, and Clarke is one of the hub’s guest speakers.

A company built around infection risk

Plenty of people in the industry know the company by its best-known product line. The corporate name is UMF Corporation, and PerfectCLEAN is one of several brands it sells into healthcare, hospitality, education and other markets, alongside Klorese^™ disinfectant. Through all of it, the focus has stayed on hospital-associated infections (HAIs).

“UMF Corporation for the past decade plus has been involved in developing solutions for the elimination and prevention of hospital-associated infections,” Clarke said.

Working closely with hospitals and long-term care facilities showed him how large the problem is. “We were just surprised to learn how, at the time, nosocomial infections, now referred to as hospital-associated infections, were essentially at epidemic levels and are still there today,” he explained.

In his view, the toll these infections take on patients, staff and society still gets far less attention than it should. Clarke, a biologist by training, has built the company around practical ways to lower that risk.

Why biofilm suddenly has everyone’s attention

Biofilm is a slimy layer bacteria build to shelter themselves. Once it forms, the microbes inside are shielded from many of the disinfectants meant to kill them.

“Biofilm is a matrix, and it’s very difficult to clean because it actually protects the microbes that are encased in it,” said Linda Lybert, founder and executive director of the Healthcare Surfaces Institute and ISSA Healthcare lead.

Clarke pointed out that none of this is new. “Biofilm has been with us since the beginning of time, since bacteria first evolved,” he noted. “But for whatever reason, it’s only been over the last three to five years that all of a sudden everyone’s starting to realize that biofilm is a serious problem.”

That growing awareness reaches from the CDC to the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC), ASHRAE and The Joint Commission. Recent guidance from the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), APIC and the Infectious Diseases Society of America calls for disinfecting hand-washing sink drains with an EPA-registered product that carries kill claims for bacteria in biofilm. The CDC even runs a lab full of sinks where researchers test possible answers, Clarke noted.

“People are finally just now really realizing how pervasive biofilm is, and of course we can’t see it,” Lybert added.

Pouring isn’t enough

The usual instinct is to pour disinfectant into the drain and move on. Clarke said that approach misses the target.

“If you just pour disinfectant down the drain, all it’s going to do is collect in the P-trap,” he said. “It’s not going to be able to eradicate the biofilm that’s on the interior walls of the drain P-trap pipe.”

Chemistry adds another obstacle. Only a small number of chemistries carry EPA-registered kill claims for bacteria in biofilm, and most of those can’t legally go down a drain. “If you look at the EPA master label, most are actually illegal to pour down the drains,” Clarke stated. “It’s a bit of a quandary, if not a catch-22, so to speak.”

His answer is foam. “The key to actually eliminating the biofilm in sink drains is not pouring a liquid down the drain,” Clarke explained. “It’s being able to generate a very high-density foam that fills the drain, evacuates the P-trap of all fluid and fills the drainpipe with disinfectant Klorese foam.”

One hospital’s outbreak shaped the device

The equipment UMF brings to Las Vegas grew out of a real infection problem. According to the company, the CDC had been investigating a multiyear Stenotrophomonas maltophilia problem at an acute care hospital, and the reservoir turned out to be sink drains in the ICU and trauma unit. UMF built a prototype with a 10-gallon tank that could fill drainpipes and clear P-traps in seconds. Cultures taken before and after foaming showed the Klorese foam wiped out the Steno along with the biofilm.

That prototype became QUICKfoam-5, a rolling, battery-powered unit cut down to five gallons, with adjustable foam density and attachments for sink drains, floor drains and surfaces. Clarke described it as a feature-rich product, and attendees will see a new, improved version at the show.

What’s inside the foam

Klorese comes from a manufacturer in Ireland and is private-labeled by UMF. The company announced its partnership with Medentech, part of the Kersia Group, in 2021. The active ingredient is hypochlorous acid at a neutral pH of about 6.8, and the product is EPA-registered for biofilm in sink drains.

“What’s really important here is that Klorese is on all 11 EPA lists pertaining to disinfectants,” Clarke said.

He also pointed to where the chemistry comes from. “Hypochlorous is the chemistry our bodies, our immune system produces to fight infection, bacterial and viral,” he shared.

From the drain to the patient

It’s easy to assume a sink drain has little to do with patient safety. Lybert shared a case that suggests otherwise.

An industry advisor who works with her contracted Pseudomonas through an ECMO machine. The machine’s leads were lying on the counter next to a sink, and water splashing from the drain carried bacteria onto the equipment. From there, the infection reached her body.

“Sink drains play a key role in cross-contamination,” Lybert said.

Clarke added that biofilm comes in both dry and wet forms, and the patient room needs attention beyond the drain. He cited a New York researcher who published a paper based on the chemistry UMF uses and summed up the stakes this way: “If you’re not disinfecting the patient room for biofilm, you are not disinfecting.”

Finding UMF at the Healthcare Hub

Clarke has a speaking slot in the Healthcare Hub booth, giving attendees a chance to meet him and dig into drain disinfection in more depth. The hub is also running a scavenger hunt with its sponsors. Visitors pick up a card at the hub, stop by UMF’s booth for an activity or a few questions, then return the completed card to qualify for the grand prize, an iPad.

“We’re going to ask you to follow him to his booth and get more information about his products that he sells, which are amazing,” Lybert said.

For EVS leaders who have never given the sink drain a second look, that booth visit may be the most useful stop of the week.