Fighting Odor in Long-Term Care Facilities

Now shifting focus from acute-care to long-term care facilities, the setting may be different, but the central premise is the same: the physical environment impacts the health and mental well-being of the residents, their families, and facility staff in real and important ways. The architecture and design team on a long-term care project holds significant sway over the development of the physical environment. Unit layout, supportive features in common areas, signage, noise management, presence of daylight and outdoor views, furniture, and aesthetic design are all important pieces of the physical environment. Of all of the components that can be considered part of the physical environment, smell is perhaps one of the most critical and immediately obvious differentiators between the physical environment of one long-term care facility and another.

Formaldehyde-reducing paint breaks the organic compound down into water molecules and an inert gas. Photo courtesy of The Sherwin-Williams Company

The nature of long-term care makes odor control an everyday battle. The environment is rife with sources of malodor. This list includes incontinence, infection, poor hygiene, trash, and food waste. Ideally, every long-term healthcare facility would smell fresh and clean. A fresh, clean smell helps to improve the comfort of residents and visitors and also may increase job satisfaction in employees. Unfortunately, the specification community lacked, until recently, a specification-grade product designed to help reduce odor, so specifying equipment ensuring that a facility would smell fresh and clean fell outside the scope of what the design team could deliver.

The potential approaches to odor control are relatively straightforward. The source of the odor can be eliminated or the odor itself can be reduced. Between the two, odor elimination is by all means the more effective line of defense. Disinfectants, detergents, and scrubbing can be used to kill the source of the unpleasant smell and prevent the further release of noxious molecules into the air. There are a few pitfalls to the scrub and disinfect solution. It requires manual labor and, ultimately, the success of the odor removal is directly related to the time and elbow grease invested in the effort. Then there are some smells that, despite Herculean efforts, cannot be eliminated with cleaning and disinfecting. Some smells can have a tendency to linger and may require additional resources, such as odor-eliminating coating to reduce the odor, even though the foul-smelling material has been removed.

Most long-term care facilities combat odor with a combination of cleaning and odor-control products. Odor-control products typically fall into one of three categories: air freshener, odor counteractant, and odor eliminators.

Air fresheners use fragrances to mask the unpleasant odor with something more pleasant. Odor counteractants are chemical compounds that are paired with specific foul-smelling materials and the combination changes the way that the bad smell is perceived by the olfactory system. Citrus and pine are often used as counteractants. A good example of an odor counteractant at work is the result of pairing lemon and fish at dinner. Fish can have a distinct odor, but applying lemon juice to the dish immediately alters how a person experiences the fish odor, even though the fish is clearly still on the plate. Then there are odor eliminators. Odor eliminators chemically bind with the offensive smell and alter it on a molecular level, so that it no longer emits an unpleasant odor.

Specify a Fresh Environment with a Coating that Contains Odor-Eliminating Technology

Until recently, odor management in a long-term care facility was discussed and dealt with during day-to-day operations, long after the design and construction of the project was completed. Now, a new odor-reducing coating enables specifiers to equip a building with powerful odor management technology, before the first resident moves in.

Odor-reducing paint breaks down odors by attacking them at the molecular level. When air-borne odor molecules come into contact with a surface coated in the odor-eliminating technology, the foul-smelling compound is broken down and neutralized. Unpleasant smells dissipate, literally.

This odor-reducing coating helps to keep rooms, corridors and common areas smelling fresher, without stop. The paint will neutralize odors for years. The lifespan of the odor-eliminating technology outlasts the typical repaint cycle in long-term care facilities, so the coating is effectively always reducing odors. Washing the walls does not affect the odor-reducing abilities of the paint.

It should be noted, to avoid confusion, that there is a difference between odor-reducing coatings and low-odor coatings. As previously described, odor-reducing coatings are formulated in a way that they can physically break down air-borne molecules of foul smelling material in the environment, neutralize it and improve the overall quality of the air. Odor-eliminating technology actually removes odor from the air.