With the epidemic, sterilization of areas where people come into contact in public areas has become more important than ever. Facilty managers continue to take all the precautions they can. It seems that these measures will increasingly continue to be taken in the coming years. Today is for Covid19, tomorrow is for another bacteria or virus. The most important issue here is that people realize that the life of the world is not very pink.
In this article, we will talk about the hygiene of escalators, one of the most important and practical transportation machines of city life. An escalator can serve 1000 to 100,000 people a day. In some major metropolitan subways, this number is even higher. Considering that 50,000 people and 100,000 people touch the same escalator's hanrail belt. It will be understood more clearly how the escalators function within the dish chain. I think that the results of people who come into contact with hundreds of surfaces with dozens of people a day touch the same point at the end of the day or at the beginning of the day are not fully noticed.
Although there are very few facility managements who approach this situation with sensitivity and try to take precautions, the vast majority of them try to produce solutions with traditional methods. On the other hand, it is understood that there is not enough knowledge about the decontamination techniques of escalators. Regardless of the intervals you make manual sterilization, you return to the point where you actually started at the first contact after the process is finished, and this can sometimes take two to three seconds. Another issue is the adequacy of the technique invested for this process.For example, it is seen that some facilities prefer systems that are claimed to sterilize with UV-C led or UV-C fluorescence. At this point, those who manage the facility put their visitors at risk, perhaps unwittingly. Handrail belts are objects that move at a speed of 50/60 cm per second. It is hard to believe that an object moving at this speed can be sterilized by light. There was a project initiated four years ago by a South Korean company, one of the world's largest electronics companies in this field. If this technique was really a fruitful technique, the device of this company would be used all over the world. Did the managements that preferred this system request any reports from the manufacturer or installer? Not satisfied with this, did they have a test themselves after the system was implemented? These are very important details. It is a great responsibility to be able to announce "We sterilize our escalators handrail belt, you can use them without hesitation" in promotional advertisements. On the other hand, investment costs have become so important, especially during the epidemic period, that no one questions whether the investment costs of these systems are realistic. It is known that these systems, which can be supplied around $ 100/120 in the Chinese market, are priced in the range of $ 1000 / $ 1500$.
One of the most important issues is that the most contaminated area of a handrail belt has side sections, not large sections. Virus, bacteria, fungi all of them accumulate more on the side sections of the handrail belt and the sterilization process of the handrail belt is an ongoing process that must be renewed every round. We hope facility managers focus more on this area.