1 week Ago By [email protected] (Brad Harper)
Clearing up drug dens, hoarders’ houses and hotel rooms covered in blood is not what most people would call a dream job. But despite the risks involved and the physical and emotional demands, two Kent mums have explained why they love being biohazard cleaners, as Brad Harper reports..
. Warning: The following article contains graphic descriptions, with references to suicide and domestic abuse Lauren Baker was on a routine job when she found a dead cat stuffed in the freezer. As comes with the territory when clearing hoarders’ homes, the pet was something the owner “could not physically let go of” because they had “too much of an emotional attachment”.
But it’s far from the only grim discovery Lauren has made as a biohazard cleaner in Kent. She’s also found animals trapped in masses of nappies, bottles of urine, tampons and takeaway boxes. Calls to crime scenes, decomposition clean-ups and drug dens are also part of the day job for the 30-year-old mum-of-two.
Her task is to safely remove and dispose of biohazards, including bodily fluids, needles and deadly bacteria. ‘I absolutely love filth and grime’ Keen to learn more about this niche job, I met Lauren at her office in Sheerness. A sign on the door of LIT Biohazard and Trauma Cleaning Specialists reads: “You do the crime, we’ll clean the grime.
” Lauren travels around in her branded 2008 Vauxhall Zafira, with the slogans “Follow me on my socials, not in real life though, that’s weird” and “When a bodily fluid becomes a floor fluid, scan this!”, with a giant QR code above. The Minster resident proudly proclaims she is the only biohazard cleaner on Sheppey and one of very few in Kent. It’s a pretty unusual line of work - so how did she get into it? She explains she had been working as a domestic and commercial cleaner when she was called to a “really grotty” house.
“I realised some people live like that and I could make a difference,” she says. So three years ago, Lauren took a course in biohazard cleaning in Birmingham and hasn’t looked back. “I absolutely love filth and grime,” she says.
“Throw me in a sh***y toilet and I will have a field day.” Some clean-ups can be done in hours - whereas more severe cases can take a whole week. ‘When I walked in, it looked like a bloodbath’ When Lauren isn’t arm-deep in dirty bathrooms, she’s called to trauma clean-ups, which can include the aftermath of violent incidents, including fights and stabbings.
Once police and forensics have finished their work, they hand over to Lauren to set about making the crime scene look spotless. “I cleaned a hotel room once where a couple had stayed,” she says. “The bathroom was quite bad, and when I walked in, it looked like a bloodbath.
“It will always stick with me because you sit there and think, what actually happened?” ‘My emotions come flooding back’ Crime scene clear-ups are not frequent, with most handled in-house by the police. Decomposition cleans are far more common. Such jobs also present a health risk from infectious diseases that those who have died may have suffered from, including HIV, hepatitis B and C and tuberculosis.
To protect themselves, biohazard cleaners wear full personal protective equipment (PPE) head-to-toe, which is formed of a hazmat suit, boots, respiratory masks and double gloves. They are armed with industrial-strength chemicals and disinfectants, plus traditional cleaning tools like mops and buckets. Lauren says being called to the aftermath of suicides is particularly difficult for her, as a close member of her family took their own life.
“My emotions come flooding back,” she says. “I'll put myself in their family's shoes because I've been on the receiving end of it. “I know how it feels to have the police knock at your door.
“But I have to take my emotions out of it because this family needs me right now and they need me to be on top form. “So I can't be breaking down. This is not my story.
This is not my place. I'm here to help this family.” Needles jammed down the back of sofa I also spoke to Folkestone mum-of-two Jasmine Layton, who set up her business, Crisis Cleanup, in September last year.
She has always been interested in forensics - but because she had two young children found it difficult to continue her studies at university. “I am not a forensic investigator, but it feels similar,” she says. One of the riskiest jobs is cleaning drug dens and sharps from people’s homes.
But often the needles – which present the danger of transmitting blood-borne infections and viruses – are hidden. Jasmine, 28, says she had three hepatitis B jabs and it took half a year before she was fully vaccinated, which gives her a “tiny peace of mind”. But she says her PPE “needs to be on absolute point”.
The cleaner’s gloves are extra-thick to protect against needle pricks and she uses a magnetic litter-picker to grab the drug paraphernalia. Recalling one clean, she says: “The family didn’t really have much history about the person who passed away, but as I was moving his sofa around, I could hear a jangle. “I cut the back of the sofa and there were needles jammed down there.
“I’ve heard people have put them in fridges and booby traps in walls.” Other obscure locations include needles being jammed in the seals of showers, stashed in tins of urine and stuffed under fences at the bottom of gardens. Taking out tonnes of rubbish from hoarders’ homes In some houses, Jasmine has seen stashes of hundreds of Barbie dolls and teddy bears.
But she has made far worse discoveries than toys. “They tend to hoard their poo and wee,” Jasmine says. “If their bathroom is completely hoarded, which it will be, they sometimes take matters into their own hands and start pooing on the floor.
“We’ve had a bath before absolutely full of faeces.” Lauren says situations with hoarders can become incredibly tense, with some shouting in her face. “I've said to them ‘we need to dwindle these 78 glasses down to just 10’,” she says.
“’There are only three of you that live in this house, so you don't need 78 glasses’.” Lauren estimates the biggest hoard she has removed from a single home is a staggering 39 tonnes – the weight of almost four double-decker buses. She says hoarders are wrongly branded as lazy or vile for creating unliveable environments for themselves and even their children.
But for many, there is often a deeply personal reason behind the stockpiling. “If a hoarder has been a victim of domestic violence, she could be made to feel like having a period is absolutely disgusting,” says Lauren. “So they end up leaving that relationship and because it's been drummed into their heads that periods are vile and they shouldn't have any sanitary products, they start hoarding them – because they have control.
” ‘More than just a cleaner’ Both women are on a mission to help people transform their lives. Lauren says: “People always put us down and say, ‘You’re just a cleaner’. But we’re not.
We take a lot of risks.” She received a phone call a few weeks ago from a person who was “crumbling”, saying they had nothing to carry on living for. They had found her number online and saw she offered mental health crisis cleaning, so they “took their chances” and reached out in the hope of getting support.
“They never wanted a cleaning service; they wanted support and help,” Lauren says. “After two hours on the phone, I believe I managed to change their mindset. “We found hope and sorted out a plan moving forward.
” It is clear that biohazard cleaning doesn’t just present physical challenges, it is emotionally draining too. Wanting to help people improve their lives is a sentiment both Lauren and Jasmine share. Referring to the phone call she received a few weeks ago, Lauren says: “I just know this person was sent to me for a reason.
” And she adds with a grin: “But I'm just a cleaner, right?”.
