Every building you manage, every product you manufacture, every account you serve has one thing in common: the decisions made about how to clean it are almost certainly not grounded in science. They are grounded in habit, vendor relationships, and institutional inertia. That is not a criticism; it is a diagnosis.
The problem is not a lack of science but, rather, a lack of translation. And it is the problem the Center for Evidence-Based Cleaning, a research-based academic program, was built to solve.
What the science already shows
The research literature on cleaning is deeper than most people in the industry realize. Hundreds of peer-reviewed studies, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses document the connections between cleaning chemistry, worker health, indoor air quality (IAQ), and building occupant health. Here is what the evidence already tells us:
- Cleaning workers face real, preventable health risks. Multiple systematic reviews confirm elevated rates of occupational asthma, dermatitis, and musculoskeletal injury among cleaners. Specific cleaning product ingredients and disinfectants have been linked to measurable respiratory and skin symptoms during routine cleaning tasks. These outcomes are preventable with the right products, methods, and protection.
- Product emissions affect building occupants. Cleaning chemicals release volatile organic compounds into indoor air. Aerosols travel through ventilation systems. Residues re-volatilize under foot traffic and temperature changes. None of this is routinely measured. All of it matters.
- Training and safety culture are decisive. Studies of environmental services workers consistently show that well-designed, sustained training programs improve cleaning performance, safety behavior, and worker retention. English-only programs consistently fail workers whose primary language is not English, a significant portion of the cleaning workforce in most markets.
- Measurement drives improvement. You cannot manage what you cannot measure. Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) testing, fluorescent markers, IAQ monitoring, and occupant health tracking can connect cleaning program decisions to building health outcomes, but only when they are deployed systematically and interpreted correctly.
A research platform built for industry
The Center for Evidence-Based Cleaning is not a traditional academic program. Its research is conducted in real buildings under real operating conditions, not in laboratory chambers. It is an industry-facing research and translation hub, organized around research pillars targeting a distinct dimension of the cleaning-for-health challenges. Each pillar is designed to answer the practical questions that building service contractors (BSCs), facility managers, manufacturers, distributors, and public agencies need answered.
- Safer cleaning chemistry and product innovation: Which products perform as claimed? Which ingredients pose risks? What safer alternatives work in real-world conditions?
- Exposure science and risk assessment: What are workers and occupants breathing, absorbing, and ingesting during routine cleaning tasks? How do we reduce their exposure to these substances?
- Indoor environmental quality and building performance: How does cleaning affect air quality, ventilation performance, dust composition, and occupant health at the building level?
- Occupational health and workforce safety: How do we protect the people who do the cleaning? Is it through better products, personal protective equipment (PPE), ergonomic job design, multilingual training, and safety culture?
- Cleaning for health, infection prevention, and public health preparedness: When does cleaning prevent disease transmission? What protocols work for asthma-sensitive schools, healthcare settings, and high-occupancy transportation environments?
- Measurement, implementation, training, and standards translation: How do we turn research into practical tools? How do we implement artificial intelligence (AI) to drive real business value? How do we scale dashboards, protocols, procurement criteria, and training programs that companies and facilities can use immediately?
The business case for science
Evidence-based cleaning is not more expensive than tradition-based cleaning. In most cases, it costs less because it eliminates unnecessary product use, reduces occupational illness costs, prevents over-application of chemistry that creates liability exposure, and produces the documentation that clients, regulators, and certification programs increasingly require.
The companies and facilities that partner with the Center will gain something the market does not currently provide: independent, credible research that supports better decisions, protects workers, and proves performance. Those benefits offer a competitive advantage that price discounts cannot replicate.
The industry’s inflection point
Every mature industry eventually reaches the point where the practices that got it started are not sufficient to take it where it needs to go. Medicine reached this point when it moved from clinical judgment alone to controlled trials. Construction reached it when it moved from rules of thumb to structural engineering. Food safety reached it when it moved from sensory inspection to hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) and microbial monitoring.
The cleaning industry is at this inflection point. Clients are asking for proof of cleanliness. Regulators are tightening restrictions on cleaning chemistry. Workers are facing preventable health risks that drive turnover, workers’ compensation claims, and liability. Institutional purchasers are incorporating health-based criteria into procurement requirements that tradition-based cleaning programs cannot meet.
Through the Center for Evidence-Based Cleaning, the industry answers those demands with science, not just assurances, with measurable outcomes, not just promises.
To become part of the community and partner with the Center for Evidence-Based Cleaning, complete the form on the Making Safer Choices website at issa.com/making-safer-choices.
How Your Organization Can Collaborate with the Center for Evidence-Based Cleaning
Building Service Contractors (BSCs): Help evaluate, prioritize, and implement measurable cleaning protocols, document performance outcomes, improve workforce safety outcomes, and build the performance record that supports performance-based contracts. The BSCs that can prove outcomes will outcompete those that can only promise them.
Facility Managers & Building Owners: Use research to strengthen procurement decisions, reduce chemical exposure risk, improve indoor air quality (IAQ) programs, and demonstrate the value of your cleaning investment to tenants, boards, and certification programs. Connect your cleaning program to measurable building performance metrics that matter to stakeholders beyond the facilities department.
Schools, Healthcare, Transportation & Public Agencies: Partner as field study sites, contributing real-world data from the environments where the research matters most. Gain early access to cleaning-for-health protocols designed specifically for high-occupancy, high-risk settings, such as schools serving children with asthma, healthcare facilities managing infection risk, transit systems cleaning under time pressure, and public venues serving mass gatherings and vulnerable populations.
Manufacturers & Formulators: Partner on safer product design, emissions testing, ingredient substitution studies, and independent performance validation. Research-backed product claims carry credibility that manufacturer-funded studies cannot provide. Use the Center’s findings to differentiate your portfolio and support procurement decisions across all markets.
Distributors & Suppliers: Use research findings to build technical selling capabilities, train customer-facing teams, support procurement decisions, and connect product selection to documented health and safety outcomes. Help your customers make better decisions and position your organization as the partner that knows why it matters.
Standards Organizations & Regulators: Engage with the Center’s standards translation and knowledge, doing gap analysis work to ensure that evolving industry standards and regulatory guidance are grounded in the best available science. The Center produces policy briefs and competency frameworks that can directly support standards development with guidance from public health and consumer protection agencies, the Department of Labor, and associations including ISSA; the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC); and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE).
