Preparing the home for cold and flu season

Annie Mae, thanks for that. Well, in this morning's Fox 5 Health Watch, it's all about preparing for flu and cold season. It's already here. Specifically, how to properly disinfect your homes. We have Jessica Eck. She's back from the American Cleaning Institute. Welcome, and you came on a fun day. Thank you, absolutely. So how do we properly, you know, disinfect so we don't get sick and get away with all of those germs? Yes, so you have your first level where you want to clean the surface. Okay. And then once it's clean, you can disinfect and you use an EPA registered disinfectant, whether that's a wipe, a spray, you can use diluted bleach. You don't have to disinfect everything. Focus on where it matters most. We have, we like to call it the dirty dozen. Oh, this is good. Those high touch surfaces that you wanna focus on. That's the doorknobs, the handles, the light switches, shared electronics like the remote control, things that people are touching all the time. Those are the things you wanna make sure you are cleaning and disinfecting. I was just looking at the dirty dozen and I see printers. I have to do mine. Yes. I forgot about the printers. Yes. Particularly in offices. Yes. That's something you need to pay attention to. In those settings. And I love too that you drew the distinction between disinfecting and cleaning because there is a difference. Absolutely. You have to do both. Yes. So cleaning can remove dirt, soils. It can also remove germs from surfaces, but disinfecting is what's going to actually kill the germs on the surface. And that's really important because some of these viruses for respiratory illness can last on surfaces for days. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. I'm glad you brought some products here. Yes. I think more often than not, people do not read the labels, but we should for many reasons. Absolutely. So the labels have Labels have a lot of important information, particularly for disinfectant They're going to give you the contact time, how long something needs to stay wet for the disinfectant to work. And it's going to have important information like safety information, ingredients, all of that you're going to find on the label. All right. And keep it down for the specified time so it can do its work to get rid of anything. And then also to make sure once you're done, you wash your hands properly. Don't touch your eyes and your nose. I've made that mistake before and broke out. Yes. And if you're disinfecting something that, say, is a toy that a kid is going to touch or a food surface area, you want to rinse it off with water after you're done disinfecting and then let it dry. All right. Well, Jessica, thank you so much. You're always on it. And that's where you all can stay abreast with the American Cleaning Institute to make sure you can do all that you can to say stay healthy and safe. Have a great weekend. Thank you for coming in. All right. It's 7:52.