Wildfire smoke can change the air inside a building faster than most people expect. Even when doors and windows are kept closed, fine particles slip in, settle across floors and surfaces, and rise back into the air as people move through the space.
When wildfire smoke affects the communities where we work, the way we care for a building shifts with it. On days when outdoor air quality drops, our teams pay closer attention to entrances and high-traffic areas where more particles tend to gather, and lean on the practices we already use every day: damp microfibre systems that lift particles instead of pushing them around, and on some sites, we also use HEPA H13 vacuums to capture fine particles rather than releasing them back into the air. This is all part of our Green Cleaning and Cleaning for Health trainings, and site-specific routines let us adjust priorities according to how each building truly operates.
While HVAC systems manage the air moving through a building, janitorial services help manage what settles throughout it. With the right equipment and trained teams, our cleaning plans respond to what a site is going through and help clients keep settled contaminants under control, benefiting the people in it.