Newscaster Interupted by Window Cleaner

Drought Threatens Window Cleaners

Hosepipe law could threaten window cleaners

By Graham Tibbetts
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 23/10/2007

The livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of window cleaners could be threatened by a tough new hosepipe law, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Under a Government proposal to tackle future droughts, it would be illegal to use hosepipes for a number of activities, from filling swimming pools to cleaning windows.

Up to half the nation's estimated 400,000 window cleaners have recently dispensed with the traditional bucket and sponge in favour of a ladder-free system of poles which relies on hosepipes.
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Andrew Lee, vice-chairman of the Federation for Window Cleaners, said: "It's going to be disastrous if we are included in the ban. I can't encourage people to break the law but that's what these boys are going to be faced with."

The concern follows moves by the Government to update the 62-year-old drought legislation, which only restricts the use of hosepipes for watering gardens and washing cars.

The new law would allow water companies to enforce a "discretionary use" ban, outlawing virtually all domestic activities involving hosepipes.

Window cleaners, under pressure from health and safety legislation which discourages the use of ladders, have been converting their businesses to water-fed poles.

The cleaners fill a tank in their van with mains water via a hosepipe.

The water is piped from the van to a brush on the end of the pole, allowing cleaners to wash windows up to 60ft high without ladders.

Mr Lee, who has a business in Cumbria, said many cleaners had spent around £15,000 upgrading to the new system.

"To go down the water-fed pole route you're looking at a Transit van with a 650-litre tank that has to be fitted.

Then you've got poles that cost £1,000 apiece. A lot of people have taken out loans to finance the transition," he said.

A spokesman for the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs confirmed that water-fed poles would be covered by a hosepipe ban under the law but said: "Window cleaners could still revert to a bucket and sponge."

Window Cleaner Falls To His Death...

The Cumberland Police Department was called to the 500 block of N. Centre Street today at approximately 11:43 am for a subject that had reportedly fallen from a ladder. The Cumberland Fire Department transported the individual to Western Maryland Health System’s Memorial Campus where he was pronounced dead. A witness had observed the subject on the ladder, cleaning windows, and slip off a top rung, falling to the pavement. The investigation was turned over to C3I as a matter of policy, but no foul play is suspected. The name is being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

Man still busy after 6 decades in Window Washing business

Mayor John Jenkins joined those honoring Palman, saying, "Your outstanding and unwavering service allows us to see our community with clear vision."

"Do you take apprentices?" added the mayor. "I'm looking for a new job."

One of Palman's admirers read a poem honoring him. It said in part, "he inspires us all to do our jobs for as long and as well as we can."

"I just hope this is me you're talking about," joked Palman. "I'm kind of overwhelmed."

Palman, who now limits his washing to first-floor windows, said he has no intention to retire.

"I've had a lot of fun over the years," he said. "You meet the nicest people."

Home Spray Cleaners Could Make YOU Cough

Home Spray Cleaners Could Raise Asthma Risk Spritzing just once a week boosted odds by 50%, study found By Serena Gordon FRIDAY, Oct. 12 (HealthDay News) -- Using household cleaning sprays and spray air fresheners just once a week can increase your risk of developing asthma, new research suggests.

Whether or not the cleaning products are a direct cause of asthma, or simply a trigger for people who already have the disease, isn't clear from this epidemiological study. However, the European team involved in the study believes that spray cleaners can be a cause of new-onset asthma, because the people included in this study did not have asthma or asthma symptoms at the start of the study.The use of spray cleaners as little as once a week increased the risk of developing the respiratory ailment by nearly 50 percent, the researchers found.

"Cleaning sprays, especially air fresheners, furniture cleaners and glass cleaners, had a particularly strong effect. The risk of developing asthma increased with the frequency of cleaning and number of different sprays used, but on average was 30 to 50 percent higher in people regularly exposed to cleaning sprays than in others," said the study's lead author, Jan-Paul Zock, a research fellow at the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology at the Municipal Institute of Medical Research in Barcelona, Spain. Results of the study were expected to be published in the second

Nanofibers to Create Self-Cleaning Windows

A group of Ohio State University scientists, headed by Dr. Arthur J. Epstein, found that fibers of different heights and diameters can be used to engineer materials with different properties. The scientists also discovered how exposing the fibers to different chemicals can change the fiber's behavior. The findings from this research project may have a variety of potential applications, including the production of self-cleaning surfaces, transparent electronic devices, and biomedical tools that manipulate strands of DNA.
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Scholar Nan-Rong Chiou places a drop of water on a plastic surface covered with microscopic fibers. Photo by Jo McCulty, courtesy of Ohio State University
Scholar Nan-Rong Chiou places a drop
of water on a plastic surface covered
with microscopic fibers
(Credit: Ohio State University)
The Ohio State University group succeeded in growing nano-scaled Polyaniline fibers on surfaces.
The fibers, which are not visible with the naked eye, can dramatically alter the properties of the surface on which they are grown, resulting in many new and exciting applications. The diameters of the tips of the nanofibers can be controlled within a 10nm-40nm range, and the length can be controlled within a 70nm-360nm range. Using nanofibers, the group developed different kinds of surfaces - some are water-repellent, some attract water, and some even repel oil and dirt. Windows made in this way could stay cleaner for much longer periods of time, as dirt will not stick to them. On the other hand, water attracting surfaces could be used as anti-fog coating (useful for car windshields and windows), seeing as the attraction of the water drops to the surface will cause them to flatten over it uniformly.

A very different application of these fibers could be in DNA interaction research. The scientists put droplets of water containing DNA on a water-attracting surface and found that the DNA strands uncoiled. Epstein said to the Ohio State University Press that scientists could use the fibers as a platform for studying how DNA interacts with other molecules. They could also use the spread-out DNA to build new nanostructures.

A scanning electron microscope image of plastic dots deposited on a sheet of transparent film (Credit: Ohio State University)
A scanning electron microscope
image of plastic dots deposited
on a sheet of transparent film
(Credit: Ohio State University)
Another application has to do with transparent plastic electronic devices. Much of the research conducted by Epstein focuses on polymers that conduct electricity, which in the process of conducting electricity light up or change colors. Depending on the choice of polymer, the nano-fiber surface can also conduct electricity. The researchers were able to use the surface to charge an organic light-emitting diode (OLED), an achievement that may pave the way for transparent plastic electronic devices.

TFOT recently covered a different research project that was conducted in the Gent University in Belgium. The findings from the Belgian research product may enable production of electronic devices that are not only transparent but are also stretchable and washable. On another related issue, Sony recently announced it will start selling the first commercial OLED-based TVs in Japan this December.

Window Cleaner Jailed

Matthew Taylor Saturday October 13, 2007 The Guardian Two men jailed for the rape of young girls had their prison sentences doubled by the court of appeal yesterday after judges agreed with the attorney general, Lady Scotland, that their original jail terms had been "unduly lenient". Window cleaner Keith Fenn and chef Simon Foster had both been sentenced to two years for the rape of girls aged 10 and 12 respectively. But yesterday appeal court judges in London gave both men new sentences of four years following an appeal brought by the attorney general. Article continues Yesterday the court heard that Fenn had been sentenced in June at Oxford crown court after admitting two charges of rape. He said he had genuinely believed the girl was 16 after she approached him and a friend and asked them for a cigarette. Foster was jailed at Exeter crown court - also in June - after he admitted a series of sexual offences against a 12-year-old girl, including two counts of rape. The appeal judges were told that both girls, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, appeared older than their years. Lord Justice Latham told the court: "A child under 13 cannot give consent in law to any sexual activity. And the offender's belief in the age of the child, even if reasonably held, is irrelevant."

Threatened by a squeegee?

By JESSICA SAVAGE
The Lufkin Daily News

A Lufkin police officer arrested a man Sunday at a gas station after the man allegedly threatened two women with a squeegee and stabbed the officer with a pen, according to a Lufkin Police arrest report.

The officer tackled Johnny Flynn Lewis, 45, in front of Chevron, 804 N. Timberland Drive, after asking Lewis to drop the rubber-edged blade, the report stated. A squeegee, a long rubber-edged blade, is typically used for window cleaning at gas stations.

"(Lewis) was standing in the parking lot swinging a squeegee. (He) was observed to be in an aggressive stance, facing two black females and hollering at them," the report stated.

As the officer took Lewis to the ground, Lewis allegedly stabbed him in the right arm with a ballpoint pen he had in hand, the report stated.

Lewis was arrested and charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a public servant — a third-degree felony offense.

WIndow Cleaner Around The World In 80 Ways

By Kim Murphy

GREENWICH, England - He was a young man then. Fresh out of the University of London, Jason Lewis was running his own window-cleaning business and playing in a grunge rock band when his friend, Stevie Smith, was struck by the terrifying thought that the prime of his life would turn out to be less than it should.

“What I see, day after day, are captured lives, half-lives, dedicated to a mirage of fullness that never comes,” Smith would explain later. “My greatest fear is of mediocrity and of a slow, unremarkable acquiescence to society.”

“Come with me around the world,” Smith told Lewis. “We'll (circumnavigate) the globe like Magellan did riding the wind, but we'll do it under our own power: by bicycle, pedal boat, kayak, skates and our own remarkable feet.”

“When do we start?” Lewis replied.

The answer to that question was July 12, 1994.

One of them finished Saturday, more than 13 years later, but it wasn't Smith.

Leather-faced, thin, weeping and now 40, Lewis pedaled his boat up the River Thames to the Prime Meridian in Greenwich - 46,405 miles later and exactly to the spot where he and Smith had started. Smith, who dropped out five years into the journey, stood back quietly among the cheering spectators, jostled by the TV camera crews.

Along the way, Lewis capsized in two oceans, was chased by a 17-foot crocodile in Australia, suffered from two bouts of malaria, underwent surgery for two hernias, nearly died of blood poisoning 1,300 miles out to sea from Hawaii, stumbled upon a civil war in the Solomon Islands, suffered acute altitude sickness while biking over the Himalayas, got hit by a car and suffered fractures to both legs in Colorado, was robbed in Sumatra at the point of a machete and arrested as a spy in Egypt.

He sold T-shirts and did odd jobs to raise money, and then kept going. He fell in love, but said goodbye and kept going.

“Thirteen years, coming to an end. It's been a big, long journey. It's good to be back,” Lewis said simply as he pushed his 26-foot-long pedal boat, now resting on a trailer, across the famous cobblestone courtyard outside the Greenwich Royal Observatory.

Although it is still in dispute, Lewis and his Expedition 360 team believe it to be the first true human-powered circumnavigation of the globe, a voyage that spanned 37 countries, both north and south of the equator, and ended at Greenwich, 0 degree longitude, where Earth's time zones begin.

Before Lewis left Greenwich 13 years, two months and 23 days ago, he had spent a total of three days crewing on a sailboat and had ridden no more than three miles at a time on a bicycle.

He and Smith crossed the English Channel, bicycled to the Portuguese coast; spent 111 days crossing the Atlantic to Miami in the pedal boat (at a speed of 2 to 4 knots) and spent a year roller-skating across the U.S., where Lewis was waylaid for several months in Colorado recuperating from the car accident.

They set off early in 1997 by bicycle for South America, intending to cross from Peru to Australia. They made it as far as Honduras, but unfavorable currents forced them to reverse thousands of miles to San Francisco and pedal to Hawaii first.

It was in Hawaii, five years into the journey, that a no-longer-aching-for-adventure Smith threw in the towel.

Lewis kept going. While later he would bring in occasional crew members on various legs to help, he pedaled alone for 72 days across the Pacific.

“I just let the boat drift when I was sleeping,” he said, which caused a problem when he ran into countercurrents near the equator.

“I'd pedal in the day and go to sleep, and wake up in the same space where I started the previous day,” he said. “That was probably the most demoralizing part of the whole expedition.”

He arrived in Australia $40,000 in debt and spent more than three years fundraising and working with local schools while traversing the outback by bicycle.

Lewis then pedaled his boat to southeast Asia; bicycled through China and eastern Tibet to India; took his boat to Djibouti in east Africa; bicycled and kayaked through Africa and Turkey; and bicycled to France, before setting out one last time on the pedal boat to cross the English Channel and up the Thames.

He does windows, gladly

From the top of the eight-story Presidents Place office building on Hancock Street, one of the tallest structures in Quincy, the view was outstanding: Boston on the horizon, the buildings of the historic city all around.

Dan McHugh didn't see that. His view was the window just inches from his face. Hanging by what, to the uninitiated, looked like a thread - but was really a well-secured bosun's chair on ropes - he focused on the task at hand: Soap the windows, one by one, and deftly squeegee them clean.

"When you're up there, it gives you time to think, really think," he said. "There's nothing else to do but wash windows and think."

McHugh is part of a little-noticed window-washing workforce that, if you look up, can be seen dangling high over the bustling commerce of our region. It may not be the most people's first job choice - just watching can make one's heart race and palms sweat - but McHugh loves it.

He came to the profession by chance. When he was in his 20s and working at a mall, he ran into someone who was a window washer, and was inspired to "give it a try."

Nine years later McHugh is still at it, working for Robert Lang, owner of LA Window Cleaning in Stoughton, a company that cleans windows from Rhode Island to New Hampshire. "This is the only business where you start at the top, and work your way down," quips Lang.

McHugh said he doesn't get scared by the heights he commands. In fact, he gets the occasional adrenalin rush from pushing his bosun's chair over the edge of the building, climbing in and scaling down to do a job not a lot of people do, or would want to.

Still, there are moments of fear - such as the time, while working at another company, that his improperly locked chair slipped and he fell a short distance before his safety rope caught.

"That was a little scary," he said. "My heart was racing the rest of the day."

One recent sunny and wind-free day - the latter being the more important - McHugh lowered himself smoothly off the Presidents Place roof, swabbed a window and wiped it clean, moving down to the next.

On a typical job, he does one vertical row at a time, takes the elevator back up, moves his gear over a row and down he goes again.

Working under an overhang poses a special challenge. McHugh has to swing in under it, bang a handle with double suction cups to the window, hold it to pull himself in, and use his one free hand to clean. It's not easy.

So what do window washers see on the job? After all, they're outside and people are in there doing . . . whatever people do in there.
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"Believe me, we've seen things no one wants to see," Lang said, telling a couple of funny but largely unprintable stories, not naming names or job sites.

Discretion is clearly required. "At places like MIT, you might see and hear things but you're sworn to secrecy," said Lang. He's also done Billy Bulger's Boston office and a building next to the players' parking lot at Fenway Park.

What McHugh does looks dangerous, but it is safer than it was a few years ago. In 2001, the window-cleaning industry developed an American National Safety Standard for Window Cleaning Safety, said Stefan Bright, safety director of the International Window Cleaners Association, a group of 650 member companies
It spelled out the responsibilities of window-washing companies, from the efficiency of the gear they use, to the need for building owners to ensure their roofs have adequate tie-downs for washers to use.

Gone are the days of looping ropes over anything handy on a roof, Lang said.

"Going back 10 to 20 years, the industry was averaging 18-22 fatalities a year," Bright said. "Since 2001, we've seen a dramatic decrease to eight to 12 a year."

Compare that with how many times people like McHugh swing over a roof to dangle down to their job. Bright's group estimates that nearly 2.5 million times a year, up to 10,000 window cleaners go off a roof in this country to keep the views pristine for those on the inside.

Lang's company, which began in 1991 and has not had a fatal accident, does not use what is known as "swing scaffolding" lowered down on pulleys from a roof. Rather, it favors bosun's chairs, and hydraulic booms with bucket seats. Ladders are used but not preferred, since they are considered most dangerous.

"Me, I'd rather do a chair than a ladder any day," said McHugh.

For the record, the soapy substance his company mostly uses isn't exactly super-expensive stuff. "Dawn dishwashing detergent works the best," said Lang.

Being a window washer opens one up to comments from passers by. Hearing "Hey, you missed a spot," is a common refrain.

The most oft-asked question is, "What do you do when you gotta go to the bathroom?' The answer: "You try to go before you go, just like you tell your kids before you leave on vacation," says Lang.

The work is largely seasonal; McHugh usually gets laid off a month or two in winter, collects unemployment and relaxes until warm weather and dirty windows on big buildings beckon his return.

He says he will continue the work as long as his body holds out, and then might look at the management side of the business. But for now, he'll keep slinging his swing over the sides of buildings. It has its advantages.

"Sometimes," he says, "I'll just turn the chair around and lean back on the building and look."

Paul E. Kandarian can be reached at kandarian@globe.com.
(not an actual picture of Dan McHugh)

Trust to axe hospital window cleaning

By Tristan Kirk


A LOCAL hospital will not be cleaning its windows this year in a bid to save money.

The North West Hospitals NHS Trust plans to save £80,000 this year by cutting window cleaning services at Northwick Park Hospital, in Northwick Park. It wants to use money to improve services at the hospital.

Sarah McKellar, spokesman for the trust, said: "The design of the building and the sheer number of windows means that to clean them all would cost the trust in the region of £80,000. We have decided that this money would be better invested in patient care which needs to take priority at this time.
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"The trust is committed to improving the environment for patients, visitors and staff at Northwick Park Hospital.

We recognise there is still more to do and this includes cleaning all the windows at the hospital."

This saving is part of a £21million savings package, announced at the trust's annual general meeting on Wednesday, September 26.

Margaret Ashworth, director of finance for the trust, said: "We are not cutting services, we are not putting patient care at risk. No one here would do anything that would be to the detriment of patients.

"What are doing is looking at improving the services on offer, and being more efficient in what we do."

TORONTO, Canada—A sparkly new addition to Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, completed this summer, is already posing problems, reports the Globe and Mail.

The structure, designed by Daniel Libeskind and called “the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal,” is 75 percent glass and features no right angles. The glass has leaked, and window-cleaning costs are rumored to have increased $200,000, while the slanted walls have posed several problems: visitors have wandered out onto slanted surfaces overlooking the street, or, in one case, run up a wall tipped at 30 degrees. The space has also proven difficult to install art and artifacts in. “Daniel didn't design this building based on the collections,” said Dan Rahimi, director of gallery development. “We had to design the collections to go with the building. We have an aesthetic imperative—partly because the architecture is so strong.

Fall Arrest

By: Neal Goldwyer

Published: 14 Sep 07 - 0:00

The rope access and fall arrest industry will be changing over to National Qualifications Framework (NQF) standards from October this year. This will also include separate standards for fall-arrest technicians.

“The Rope Access and Fall Arrest Association (Rafaa) is excited by these developments and the position it is taking in implementing them. It translates into higher levels of professionalism and enables Rafaa to play a leading role in the emerging international work-at-height industry,” Rafaa secretary Brian Tanner says.

Rafaa, formerly the South African Industrial Rope Access Association (Sairaa), was established in 2005 in a move to accommodate the particulars of the fall-arrest sector and to reflect the growth in the larger industry.

The body began the process of establishing South African Qualifications Authority- (Saqa-) recognised unit standards for rope access and fall arrest and, together with its approved providers, has since trained nearly 3 000 technicians to South African National Standards rope access standards over the last seven years.

One of a number of significant developments in the rope access and work-at-height industry, the migration to NQF-recognised standards follows the need for higher levels of professionalism among association members and a stronger presence by Rafaa in the industry.

Tanner adds that there are now eight unit standards in rope access and fall arrest registered on the NQF, owing to the involvement and support Rafaa has received from the Services Sector Education and Training Authority (Services Seta).

The Services Seta has made a discretionary grant of R1,5-million available to Rafaa for the purpose of recognising the prior learning of individuals already working in the industry. This will provide people with the opportunity to demonstrate competence against the national standards.

“A number of additional processes are being implemented to enable the work-at-height industry to continue to use skills development as a way to enhance professionalism and safety in this growing industry,” he continues.

These processes include the development of learning material and assessment tools for the eight registered unit standards, the application for accreditation with the Services Seta by industry training providers, and the evaluation of Rafaa by the Services Seta as its certification partner in the work-at-height industry.

Rafaa is anticipating the outlined changes to be in place by October 2007. Thereafter, Rafaa will only certify learners who have been deemed competent against the national standards.

Rafaa’s predecessor, Sairaa, was founded in the 1980s by a score of parties active in the rope access industry, which developed out of an initiative by a number of Johannesburg rock climbers who used their climbing experience and equipment to clean windows on high-rise buildings.

Sairaa’s initial mandate was to create a forum for the growing local industry, to assist in the writing of the South African Bureau of Standards-approved standards and to fulfil a certification role for the training of technicians in accordance with these standards.

“During the 1990s, it became apparent that the young industry’s reliance on skills gained in recreational climbing [was] no longer a viable substitute for recognised standards,” Tanner explains.

“The challenge was to adapt our system to accommodate this growth without compromising the existing standards. At the same time, it made sense to align the training and certification system with the country’s developing NQF,” he adds.

Details of the new standards for rope access work are as follows:

Yielding six credits at NQF Level 2, Saqa No 230000 governs how to perform a limited range of rope access tasks and rescues.

This unit standard describes the competence and knowledge required of a person referred to in the rope access industry as a Level 1 rope access technician.

Qualifying learners will be capable of preparing for rope access and assembling personal rope access equipment, explaining and tying basic rope knots, performing (under supervision) basic rope access manoeuvres and tasks safely on a prerigged double-rope system, performing basic rope access rescue manoeuvres (also under super- vision), and maintaining personal rope access equipment.

In addition to the above, learners must be in possession of a medical certificate declaring them free from a condition that may prevent them from working safely, physically fit, at least 18 years of age, as well as communication and mathematically literate at NQF Level 1.

Yielding six credits at NQF Level 3, Saqa 229996 governs how to rig working ropes, undertake rescues and perform a range of rope access tasks

This unit standard describes the competence and knowledge required of a person referred to in the rope access industry as a Level 2 rope access technician.

Qualifying learners will be cap-able of rigging ropes for work and rescue situations, using relevant knots (under supervision), perform- ing rope access manoeuvres and tasks, performing rescues (under supervision), maintaining and inspecting rope access equipment, demonstrating knowledge of worksite organisation, and applying knowledge of the legal and safety requirements to different worksites.

Further, learners must have all the additional requirements as for Level 1 above, and be competent in a registered unit standard for first aid and for performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Yielding six credits at NQF Level 4, Saqa 230001 governs how to supervise rope access teams and perform advanced manoeuvres and rescues.

This unit standard describes the competence and knowledge required of a supervisor, referred to in the rope access industry as a Level 3 rope access technician, who is capable of complete responsibility for work projects, able to demonstrate skills and knowledge of both levels 1 and 2, is conversant with relevant work techniques and legislation, and has comprehensive knowledge of advanced rescue techniques.

Qualifying learners will be capable of performing advanced rope access manoeuvres, performing advanced rescues from any position, organising a worksite in accordance with legal and safety requirements, organising worksites and work projects, and supervising rope access work teams.

In addition to the above, learners must be 21 years of age and have all the additional requirements as for Level 2 above.

Yielding six credits at NQF Level 4, Saqa 229997 governs how to select equipment and rig ropes for rope access projects.

This unit standard describes the competence and knowledge that a Level 3 supervisor should have in addition to the above standard.

Qualifying learners will be capable of selecting equipment for a rope access project, explaining requirements for equipment inspections and storage, determining safe loads for rope access projects, and placing anchors and rig ropes for work and rescue situations.

Edited by: Laura Tyrer