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by HEPACART on Aug 20, 2019
DUSTBUGGY, our mobile dust containment cart, can improve hospital maintenance and patient safety — here’s how.
You don't have to be as old as Methuselah to recall the days before dust containment carts were used in healthcare settings. Just dial the Wayback Machine for about 15 years ago — that's not much different than the time gap experienced by early Model T owners when looking back to horse-and-buggy days.
While the first DUSTBUGGY® dust containment cart may not have had quite the broad impact on society of Henry Ford's Tin Lizzie, it was nonetheless a significant 4-wheeled innovation, one that has changed how hospital maintenance is done.
Awareness of healthcare-associated infections has grown over the last two decades, and it's now recognized that one of several causes of HAIs is airborne transmission of pathogens — some of which are spread around a building by hitching a ride on dust particles produced by maintenance and construction activities.
Before the invention of mobile dust containment carts, temporary barriers surrounding the removal of a single ceiling tile or a wall-mounted utility had to be painstakingly constructed by methods wasteful of both materials and labor or were skipped altogether.
HEPACART® was founded in 2006 to create products that protect people during high-risk construction, renovation, and maintenance projects. The company's success led to a broad product line of products for dust containment and infection control, but in this post, we'll focus specifically on the DUSTBUGGY® Mobile Dust Containment Cart and examine how it can improve hospital maintenance.
What a Dust Containment Cart Does
In simplest terms, a mobile dust containment cart is an aluminum box mounted on a sturdy aluminum frame supported by heavy-duty casters, equipped with an entry door with an air-tight seal and a mechanism for raising a flexible fabric enclosure to seal against the ceiling. DUSTBUGGY® is a mobile dust containment cart that can be deployed rapidly for small projects that involve ceiling or wall (or even floor) access, where more elaborate methods such as anterooms and barrier walls are not required.
Wired for electricity and illuminated by LEDs, a DUSTBUGGY® creates a secure workspace on a stable platform that will accommodate a ladder, tools, and one or two workers, depending on the model. Pass-through ports make it possible to move long objects such as cable, conduit, pipe, wiring, and tubing through the walls.
The DUSTBUGGY® is intended for use where air filtration is not considered critical, as it does not come with a built-in negative air machine with HEPA filtration. This differentiates it from our HEPACART units which are otherwise similar in design and construction. However, if the need should arise after purchase or rental, a DUSTBUGGY can be retrofitted with an onboard negative air machine with HEPA filter. Also, a DUSTBUGGY® can be ordered with an optional export adaptor for flex hose attachment to a negative air machine located outside the cart.
Safety and Dust Containment Regulations
It's hard to convince people to make certain changes even when they could be better for all who surround. While implementing may be a little inconvenient, they are effective. Disturbing a single ceiling tile can release spores of environmental fungi that can cause disease in immunocompromised patients. That's why we need ceiling access regulations as detailed by the ICRA matrix of precautions for construction and renovation (available on the American Society for Healthcare Engineering website). The ICRA matrix ranks patients in four groups from low risk to highest risk, and construction activities in four groups ranging from least likely to produce dust (inspection and maintenance activities) to major demolition and construction projects.
The ICRA matrix simplifies the task of selecting precautions for a given activity. But it also enables us to make generalizations. For example, in all but the most minimally dust-producing maintenance or inspection activities, a dust containment cart used in the vicinity of the higher-risk patient groups (type III and IV) should be equipped with a negative air machine with HEPA filtration. However, as a facility or construction manager, you're well aware that many activities take place around low- or medium-risk patients where the need for maintaining negative air pressure is minimal. The DUSTBUGGY® was designed for those situations, where dust containment is required, but not air filtration. As mentioned earlier, DUSTBUGGY® units can be upgraded with HEPA filtration by HEPACART should the need arise.
Dust Containment, Safety, and People
We know what safety looks like for patients, visitors, and staff when a mobile dust containment cart is deployed:
- Dust and debris are contained.
- Worksite looks clean and professional.
- Compact footprint means minimal intrusion on floor space.
But what about safety for the worker? For maintenance workers and construction workers, a DUSTBUGGY® provides:
- A well-lit, secure space in which to work.
- Sturdy ladder support and tool storage.
- 120-volt switched outlets for safe power control inside and out.
- A 25-foot retractable extension cord.
Providing a safe, clean space for the worker — and the worker's tools and supplies — can only serve to improve safety and move the job along toward completion.
Eliminating Dust and Raising Productivity
One area in which a mobile dust containment cart excels is the speed of deployment. A DUSTBUGGY® can be rolled into place, casters locked, and the enclosure raised to seal against the ceiling in about 90 seconds. Since many maintenance tasks involve repetitive access to utilities running above the ceiling, the time savings can add up significantly.
Buildings and construction projects are never simple, and a dust containment cart must be able to adapt to many situations. For instance, a ceiling tile that's directly above a utility box protruding from the wall could push your cart out of alignment. What about reaching ceilings that are much higher than ten feet? Or, suppose you need sideways wall access to install a number of emergency fire or communication boxes? What if you have large, heavy piping that can't be handled by one worker? You may need a longer cart with a door on each end. How about welding? Can your cart's upper enclosure handle a shower of sparks without turning into a pyrotechnic display?
Here are a few options that allow the DUSTBUGGY® to work in such varied scenarios:
- Side ports for wall access.
- Funnel-shaped ceiling adaptor (expands workspace at ceiling interface 2x to 3x without enlarging footprint at floor).
- Tall enclosure, up to 12 feet, for extra-high ceilings.
- Clear enclosure for total visibility, replaces opaque or translucent fabric.
- Enclosure side windows.
- Heavy-duty welding enclosure made of heavy-duty silicone. Standard height (10'6") or tall (12'+).
- Auto lift with electrical actuators.
- Slide-out enclosure — extends out up to 8 inches (for working around wall-mounted obstacles).
- Adjustable extension module supports longer ladders.
- Lockable top converts DUSTBUGGY® or HEPACART® to job box.
- Ladders, HEPA filters, walk-off mats, HEPA vacuum.
Beyond options, HEPACART® has built custom solutions such as:
- A micro-cart mobile containment for very tight spaces.
- Mobile containment with floor access.
- Mobile containment with multiple doors.
- Linked mobile containment carts, both end-to-end and side-to-side.
- Tile adaptors for specialty ceiling tiles.
- International mobile containment with specified electrical systems.
Environment & Air Quality
Dust containment carts were designed to keep potentially harmful dust away from patients, visitors, and healthcare workers. But they also prevent environmental waste, enhance productivity and safety, and provide a clean, professional look and minimally intrusive presence. To learn more about DUSTBUGGY® and other infection control products from HEPACART®, visit our products page and if you're not sure which product fits, take the customer project assessment. You can also learn more by going to our page that lets you compare HEPACART® containment tools.
You can also download the HEPACART catalog containing greater detail on the entire product line.
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