Gym owners are the first to know that effective disinfecting is mission-critical. From resetting studio and locker areas to wiping down sweaty equipment, it’s important to keep your cleaning and disinfecting game as strong as your athletic game. Yoga studios and gyms are a perfect environment for sickness-causing germs like MRSA and illnesses like COVID-19 to spread. Gyms are also full of valuable equipment that can be easily damaged by harsh, corrosive cleaning products. Beyond your physical space, exposing your staff and clients to conventional cleaning products can mean putting them at risk of allergies, asthma, and other serious health conditions. In fact, one recent study found that chronic exposure to cleaning products can be as harmful to our health as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Since your members frequently come into contact with your floors, mats, and equipment, it’s critical to effectively clean and disinfect them with a product that won’t leave toxic residues on surfaces or fumes in the air. Enclosed spaces like locker rooms, bathrooms, childcare areas, and staff break rooms also provide environments for germ-spread and chemical exposures due to residues and fumes from cleaning products. Here are our top tips on protecting your gym equipment and surfaces, and how we can help.
Top 5 Ingredients To Avoid For Cleaning Your Athletic Equipment
A huge portion of your capital investment in your business goes into equipment. From pilates reformer equipment to spin bikes and weight racks, the best-quality athletic equipment is costly and, if you take care of it with careful cleaning and proper maintenance, built to last. Clients aren’t always as careful as we’d like them to be, but one of the worst offenders for damaging your equipment could be how you’re caring for it. Here’s why your cleaning products could be discoloring, corroding, and damaging your valuable equipment.
1. Bleach
We could talk all day about how bleach isn’t the safe, trusted, gold standard of cleaning that we have been taught to think it is. Bleach is an incredibly corrosive and harsh ingredient that can eat through the protective coatings on your athletic equipment and break down materials, causing rusting, chipping, and cracking on the surfaces of your athletic equipment. While we’ve all used bleach to whiten laundry, it can actually discolor and yellow surfaces, too. Bleach is also harmful to your staff and clients because it can cause burns, trigger asthma and allergies, and exacerbate or cause respiratory conditions like COPD. Due to its danger to respiratory systems, the CDC recommends avoiding bleach if the product is to be used around anyone with asthma or allergies (which is about 30% of US adults).
Force of Nature is as effective as bleach, kills 99.9% of germs and won’t harm the valuable surfaces in your gym or studio. Our appliances use electricity to convert tap water, plus a tiny capsule of salt, water and vinegar, into an all-in-1 cleaning, deodorizing, sanitizing, and disinfecting formula that’s EPA registered for use in gyms, hospitals and more. They use an electronic control system that senses and automatically adapts to accommodate differences in water chemistry and temperature, so you can feel confident that every batch meets the EPA’s stringent 99.9% germ-kill requirements.
2. Quaternary Ammonium Compounds (Quats)
Quaternary ammonium compounds are a category of antimicrobial chemicals that are commonly found in disinfectants. Quats have been linked to a broad range of health issues including reproductive and developmental problems in animals and exacerbating and causing asthma and allergies in people. Like bleach, the CDC recommends avoiding quats if the products will be used around people with asthma or allergies. Given the prevalence of asthma & allergies in the US, it’s safe to assume that many of your members are struggling with these conditions.
3. Alcohol
One of the most common disinfecting chemicals, alcohol is only useful to kill specific germs or bacteria and depends greatly on its concentration. Gyms often used alcohol-based products because of how often they use wipes to clean equipment and screens. Unfortunately, alcohol can cause cracking that can allow germs, viruses, and bacteria to hide on surfaces. It can also rust metal surfaces and discolor and cloud display screens.
Alcohol is also a caustic ingredient that can cause toxic and corrosive fumes which, if mixed with bleach can be deadly. Force of Nature is gentle on surfaces, even your valuable technology like computers, tablets, and interactive screens on treadmills and cardio machines. Make sure to always power down technology before spraying any liquid.
4. Fragranced Cleaners
Fragrance ingredients aren’t regulated for safety given a major regulatory loophole that allows manufacturers to avoid disclosing ingredients. As a result, hundreds of ingredients can be hidden under the term “fragrance” and almost every cleaning and disinfection product contains fragrances. One major concern are phthalates, which are commonly used in scented products to make the fragrance last longer. They’re also linked to hormone-disruption, birth defects and developmental delays, and negative impacts on the immune system. They’re also dangerous for gym members you may have suffering from asthma. In a research study among asthma sufferers, scented products triggered reactions so severe that 62.8% would be considered disabling under the ADA.
5. Hydrogen Peroxide
Hydrogen peroxide takes us back to our school days when a pour of it over a fresh scrape was a common way to protect us from bacteria and germs. Even though it is often seen as a gentler cousin to bleach and alcohol, it’s still a powerful chemical that can cause serious damage to your equipment. The main risk of using hydrogen peroxide on your equipment is that it can corrode metal surfaces. Hydrogen peroxide causes oxidization on materials like iron, copper, aluminum, steel, and many other metals. When hydrogen peroxide reacts with the surface of the metal, it creates a layer of rust on your equipment. This is the result of metal corrosion and it can happen fast. This can make your equipment harder to use, leading to misuse, injury, or potential replacement. Force of Nature is safe to use on virtually any surface in your gym or studio.
We’re Here To Help
We knew there had to be a better way to effectively clean and disinfect without exposing our teams, clients, and equipment to harmful, corrosive ingredients.
Force of Nature is an EPA-registered disinfectant that kills 99.9% of viruses and bacteria, including staph & MRSA, and is on the EPA’s List N, the disinfectants approved for use against SARS-CoV-2, the cause of Covid-19. Recently, we launched Force of Nature Pro, our new, commercial-grade appliance for businesses of all sizes. After nearly a decade in the consumer space, our revolutionary all-in-1 EPA registered disinfecting, deodorizing, cleaning, and sanitizing solution, Force of Nature, has been steadily gaining traction in households and businesses around the world – and was recently highlighted on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in America.
Our antimicrobial ingredient, hypochlorous acid (HOCl) has long been trusted in commercial disinfecting, and is trusted by hospitals, NICUs, veterinary practices for its gentleness and pathogen-killing power. Force of Nature Pro is the perfect solution for gyms, studios, and athletic facilities of all kinds, helping you keep your facility clean and disinfected while preserving your valuable equipment and space from chemical damage. Purchasing for a large business or organization? We can customize pricing, assortment and training for you! Just click here to get started.
