What is invisible secondary pollution?

How do you define whether your home is clean if you sweep, mop, and wipe everywhere every day? Is it clean if there is no dust visible to the naked eye?

In fact, keeping your home tidy and clean can be divided into two parts. Tidying up is relatively easy to achieve, as long as you tidy up in time, you can even use storage to make your home look tidy. However, keeping your home clean is a big project.

Today I want to talk to you about something that is easily overlooked: secondary pollution caused in the attempt to achieve cleanliness.

01. Is your home really clean?

Is your home really clean? Let's take the floor as an example. The range that the eyes can see is limited. Achieving cleanliness that the eyes can see is the first step; and to truly achieve cleanliness, we must deal with the dirt that deceives the eyes. Do you think I'm talking about bacteria? No, it's secondary pollution.

You come to my house as a guest and see the floor is very clean, so you walk around my house in white socks. When you lift your feet before leaving, you suddenly discover that your white socks have turned into gray or even black. Is this normal in everyone's life?

If you use a super magnifying glass to look at the floor of your home, you will find that it is really a large petri dish. The dirt and nutrients left over from secondary pollution are fully assisting the fermentation of microorganisms. Even the floor that was carefully mopped five minutes ago still retains a lot of dust, tiny garbage, food residues, etc. What's going on?

In fact, this is the secondary pollution problem that is easily overlooked during the mopping process.

02. Invisible secondary pollution

Why do we clean? To remove dirt, reduce the growth of bacteria, and create a good living environment.

What will happen if the cleaning method is not appropriate? Take an example of a situation that often happens in our lives:

A cup of milk spilled in a 20-square-meter living room. The original contaminated area was 1 square meter. At this time, we took out the mop and started cleaning the floor in the most familiar way. During the cleaning process, the mop was dirty as soon as it touched the milk. The mop collected all the dirt and bacteria on the floor, and these stains were adsorbed on the mop and were not cleaned in time. We habitually let the mop clean the floor completely first, and spread the dirt evenly.

After the first cleaning, you find that you have successfully removed some of the dirt. At the same time, thanks to the "contribution" of the dirty mop, the area of ​​the floor has expanded from the original contaminated 1 square meter to 4 square meters.

After the first cleaning, you cleaned the mop and came back to clean the floor again. The second cleaning took away more dirt, and the area you covered became larger, from the original 4 square meters to the current 8 square meters. However, because the remaining dirt became less and the contaminated area became larger, you thought the floor was clean, but was it really clean?

During the entire mopping process, the mop has changed from a cleaning tool to a new source of pollution. The cleaning process is the process of constantly collecting dirt with the mop and smearing the dirt on the floor. Every cleaning is a process of creating secondary pollution.

Our eyes may not know whether the ground is clean, but our socks will know, the soles of our shoes will know, our pets at home will know, and our babies who like to crawl on the ground will also know.

03. Deep cleaning is not only about keeping the floor clean, but also about keeping you healthy

In fact, ubiquitous microorganisms have become a major threat to our daily health. Homes often contain fungi such as Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and various molds. Many of these fungi are conditionally pathogenic bacteria. If we cannot clean them up in time, they can easily cause microbial infections through contact or even spread into the air.

So cleaning is very important, and the correct cleaning method is the fundamental solution to the problem.

Many times, as we mentioned above, we thought we had cleaned the floor thoroughly, but we didn’t realize that improper cleaning methods provide a new growth environment for bacteria. Rapidly growing bacteria slowly enter our daily life utensils through various contacts, not to mention families with pets and babies who are learning to crawl. They are in deep contact with the floor all the time, which directly poses a health threat. Therefore, it is really important to reduce secondary pollution.