Airborne illnesses

Germs are everywhere, in the office, at school, at home, in the car, even in our beds. How can we prevent airborne illnesses from occurring and costing employers to pay for sick leave? Here are some easy tips to prevent airborne illnesses:

Tip # 1 - Tell your Employees to Stay Home
It never is fun to pay for sick leave, but it's much easier to pay for sick leave for one employee than for ten. When the cold and flu season hits, make sure your employees are boosting up their efforts to stay healthy by getting immunized and by having their children immunized. Employees with children are more vulnerable to airborne illnesses because their children normally contract them.

Tip # 2 - Healthy Diets
Employers can help to reduce the spread of airborne illnesses by encouraging their employees to eat better. If an employee starts getting symptoms of a cold, give them some vitamin C. To prevent the spread of the sickness, the employee should stay away from their co-workers for at least 2 days. If you don't want to pay for sick leave, ask them if they feel good enough to put in a few hours of work at home.

When you have staff meetings, bring vegetable and fruit platters. This will encourage the employees to snack on them during the meeting and they will get in some of the vitamins they need to prevent airborne illnesses.

Tip # 3 - Masks
It may not seem like your favorite thing to do, but you can cut down on airborne illnesses by wearing a mask when you are sick. Hospitals commonly ask their sick patients to use masks when they come in for exams or to visit others so it is common courtesy for others to wear a mask when you are sick.

Tip # 4 - Hand washing
One of the best ways to prevent airborne illnesses is to cover your mouth or nose when you sneeze or cough. Immediately wash your hands after you sneeze or cough. Use a Kleenex instead of your hands, as it will catch more of the airborne illness than your palms.

Tip # 5 - Isolation
It sounds a little harsh to place sick employees in an isolated room, but it is the only way to prevent the airborne illness from infecting everyone else in the office. Place an air purifier in the office with them and make sure everyone that goes into that office wears a mask when they are speaking with the sick person. Once they leave the office, they need to immediately wash their hands and use antibacterial hand wipes to kill any bacteria that could be lingering on their skin.

Common airborne illnesses
Some of the common airborne illnesses include the following:

• Anthrax


• Chickenpox


• Influenza


• Smallpox


• Tuberculosis

The common cold is the most well-known airborne virus. When sick people sneeze, small respiratory droplets are sent through the air and they can travel into the bodies of people around them. These airborne viruses are like an invisible cloud that is waiting to infect the next person it can. Airborne viruses can travel a great distance to infect someone, so you can still get sick if you are on a different floor from the person that is sick. This is simply because of the ventilation system in the building.

You do not need to have direct contact with a person to become infected by an airborne illness. Chickenpox is a good example of an airborne virus. Children often become infected with chickenpox because they are exposed to it at daycare or at school. When parents take their child in public, that child can infect anyone in the building. This means your child could get chickenpox because you went out to dinner and didn't know the people sitting in the booth behind yours had a child with chickenpox.