Written by Chris Earley Founder, Perth Eco Clean
Chris Earley founded Perth Eco Clean in 2018 to give Perth homes and businesses a genuinely eco-friendly alternative to conventional cleaning. He holds multiple industry certifications including BSCAA and RapidClean accreditations across office cleaning, carpet cleaning, chemical handling, and infectious cleaning in commercial settings.
Key Takeaways
- Around one in ten Australian children has asthma, and prevalence peaks in the primary school years, so a typical classroom holds two or three students for whom airborne irritants are a genuine issue.
- The National Asthma Council advises against over-sanitising, noting that cleaning products themselves can trigger asthma and recommending products with fewer harsh chemicals and no fragrance.
- Most of the improvement available to a school comes from how and when products are used rather than from switching brands.
Cleaning product selection is usually treated as an operational detail, somewhere below staffing and scheduling on the list of things a school needs to get right. It deserves more attention than that. Classrooms are enclosed spaces occupied for six hours a day by a population with a higher than average rate of respiratory sensitivity, and the products used overnight are still present in the air and on the surfaces when students arrive the next morning. This guide covers what in conventional cleaning products causes problems, what practical changes actually reduce exposure, and what to ask of whoever provides your school cleaning in Perth.
Why a Classroom Is Not an Average Workplace
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, around 10% of Australian children aged 0 to 14 have asthma as a long-term condition, roughly 460,000 children. Prevalence is highest in the 5 to 9 age group, reaching 15% among boys. In practical terms, most primary classrooms contain two or three students with diagnosed asthma, and a larger number with allergies or general respiratory sensitivity.
Children are also more exposed than adults to whatever is in the air. They breathe more air relative to their body size, their lungs are still developing, and they spend the day in a fixed room they cannot leave if something bothers them. Add the fact that many classrooms rely on windows rather than mechanical ventilation, and residues linger.
The National Asthma Council notes that the return to school is already one of the peak periods for childhood asthma flare-ups. That has more to do with viruses and seasonal allergens than with cleaning, but it does mean term start is precisely the wrong moment to be adding avoidable irritants to a classroom.
What in Cleaning Products Causes Problems
Volatile Organic Compounds
VOCs are carbon-based chemicals that evaporate at room temperature, and they are present in a wide range of cleaning products. The National Asthma Council notes that people with asthma, young children, and those with heightened chemical sensitivity are more susceptible to irritation from them, and that longer-term exposure can be associated with increased asthma and allergy flare-ups.
The Council also identifies propylene glycol and glycol ethers, commonly found in cleaning chemicals, as potentially harmful, and makes a point worth remembering: the main risk period is while surfaces are wet or drying.
Fragrance and the “Clean Smell” Problem
Fragrance is added to cleaning products for one reason, which is to signal that cleaning has happened. It contributes nothing to whether a surface is actually clean, and scent is a well-recognised asthma trigger.
This creates a genuine problem in schools, because staff and parents often use smell as the quality check. A fragrance-free clean can be read as no clean at all. It is worth naming that expectation openly rather than letting it drive product choice.
Bleach, Ammonia, and What Happens When They Meet
Chlorine bleach and ammonia are both airway irritants in their own right. The more serious risk is combination: mixing bleach with ammonia produces chloramine gas, and mixing bleach with acidic cleaners produces chlorine gas. Both are hazardous in an enclosed room.
This is not a hypothetical in a school setting, where a toilet block might be treated by two different people using two different products in the same hour. It is a training and labelling issue as much as a product issue.
Disinfectant Used Where Cleaning Would Do
Cleaning and disinfecting are different operations. Cleaning physically removes soil and most microorganisms with detergent and mechanical action. Disinfecting chemically kills what remains, and it only works when the surface is already clean and the product is left wet for its full contact time.
Routine disinfection of every surface, every night, is common and largely counterproductive. It increases chemical exposure without a matching benefit, and because most disinfectants are wiped off well before their stated contact time, the disinfection frequently is not happening anyway. You get the exposure without the efficacy.
Sprays, Aerosols, and Application Method
How a product is applied changes how much of it ends up airborne. Trigger sprays and aerosols create a fine mist that is inhaled directly by the person cleaning and settles across the room afterwards. Decanting onto a cloth rather than spraying into the air is a small change that meaningfully reduces airborne concentration.
Practical Changes That Reduce Exposure
- Clean when the building is empty, and leave time before it is occupied. The gap between cleaning and students arriving is doing more work than most product decisions.
- Ventilate during and after cleaning. Open windows and doors while working and leave rooms to air. Free, and effective.
- Go fragrance-free and manage the expectation. Tell staff explicitly that the absence of a smell is the goal, not a sign of a missed clean.
- Apply to the cloth, not the air. Reduces airborne exposure for the cleaner and for whoever uses the room next.
- Target disinfection rather than blanket-applying it. High-touch points such as door handles, taps, and shared equipment, with the full contact time observed. Detergent and microfibre for everything else.
- Reduce the number of products in circulation. Fewer products means fewer chances of an incompatible combination and simpler training.
- Check dilution. Concentrates mixed by eye are routinely over-strength, which increases both exposure and cost.
- Look for recognised certification. The National Asthma Council’s Sensitive Choice program covers cleaning agents, and independent certification is more informative than a supplier describing their own product as safe.
- Store chemicals securely. Locked, ventilated, away from student access, with Safety Data Sheets accessible.
When to Raise It With Your Cleaning Contractor
Worth a conversation if any of these apply:
- Staff or students report headaches, coughing, or irritation on particular mornings
- Classrooms have a noticeable chemical or perfumed smell at the start of the day
- A parent has raised a specific sensitivity or asthma concern
- Nobody can readily produce the list of products being used on site
- Disinfectant appears to be used on every surface as routine practice
- Products are being decanted into unlabelled bottles
Perth Eco Clean’s School Cleaning Approach
- Non-toxic products. Biodegradable, plant-based solutions chosen to be safe around students and staff, with Safety Data Sheets provided for everything used on site.
- Method as well as product. Microfibre and mechanical removal for general cleaning, with disinfection targeted at high-touch surfaces rather than applied across the board.
- Certified team. BSCAA and RapidClean certifications including chemical handling and infectious cleaning in commercial settings, which covers both the safe use of products and where disinfection genuinely matters.
- Transparent pricing. A written task schedule and a clear quote, so you know what is included and what it costs to change.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are eco-friendly products less effective at disinfecting?
They are different tools for different jobs. Most cleaning is soil removal, where detergent and mechanical action do the work regardless of how the product is marketed. Where genuine disinfection is required, use a product registered for that purpose, on an already clean surface, for its full contact time.
Is fragrance-free the same as chemical-free?
No. Fragrance-free only means no added scent. A product can be unscented and still contain irritants, which is why the Safety Data Sheet matters more than the front label.
Should classrooms be disinfected every day?
High-touch surfaces are worth targeting daily. Blanket disinfection of every surface increases exposure without a corresponding benefit, particularly when contact times are not being observed.
How long should a room be ventilated after cleaning?
There is no single figure, since it depends on the products, the room, and the airflow. The practical rule is to ventilate during cleaning and leave the room to air for as long as the schedule allows before it is occupied.
Perth Eco Clean can help with School Cleaning
Product choice matters in schools because the people occupying the rooms are more susceptible than an average adult workforce and less able to remove themselves from an environment that bothers them. The encouraging part is that most of the available improvement is procedural rather than expensive: clean when the building is empty, ventilate, apply to the cloth, disinfect what genuinely needs disinfecting, and drop the fragrance.
Perth Eco Clean provides eco-friendly school cleaning across the Perth Metro area. Call 0459 544 876 or get in touch to discuss your site.