Healthy Schools Campaign

Beware the Unscrupulous Vendor: Disinfectants, H1N1 and Green Cleaning

By Mark Bishop, Deputy Director

The EPA issued a press release warning us all "to beware of unscrupulous vendors" who try to sell us ineffective or unnecessary products that claim to protect us against H1N1. According to the press release:

"Unfortunately some vendors may try to take advantage of people’s fears at a time like this and market products that aren’t effective or make unsubstantiated claims,” said Steve Owens, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances. “Americans need to be aware of what they may be buying."

This is right on. And while it applies to the purchases we make in our homes, it also is an important lesson for our schools -- especially when implementing a green cleaning program.

Protection against H1N1 really takes three important steps: Education, Cleaning, and then Disinfection. All of these steps are outlined in HSC's Quick & Easy Guide to Green Cleaning in Schools:

1. PREVENT INFECTION THROUGH EDUCATION

Students, teachers, coaches, and all school staff must be educated about the importance of hygiene and frequent, thorough hand-washing, and the school nurse can play a key role in developing a hygiene education plan for the school. Recent studies show that through proper hand hygiene, schools can actually decrease student absenteeism. If possible, students and school employees should have access to appropriate hand-washing facilities. If not, hand sanitizers should be made available.

2. DEVELOP AND FOLLOW A THOROUGH GREEN CLEANING PROGRAM

Health is the goal of a proper green cleaning program. Along with environmental benefits, infection control becomes the natural byproduct of an effective cleaning program. Through proper cleaning, the spread of germs can be significantly reduced and controlled, and overall health improved.

3. DISINFECT WHEN AND WHERE NECESSARY

Many of the harsh chemicals in disinfectants are highly caustic, toxic in nature and may decrease the quality of the indoor air. Minimizing potential exposure to these chemicals can promote health and wellbeing while still reducing risk associated with the spread of infectious diseases.

When disinfectants are used, it is important to use them as part of a larger green cleaning program, rather than as a hasty reaction. Disinfectant use should be limited to high-touch areas such as door handles, keyboards, light switches, and tables. When selecting a disinfectant, work with vendors to select the least toxic, most affordable option, and always choose EPA registered products.

Here are some great resources for more information:

1) HSC's Quick & Easy Guide to Green Cleaning in Schools

2) CDC's Swine Flu and You

3) Selecting green disinfectants for this flu season from American School & University magazine

If you want to read an account of a school facility director's efforts to clean green while protecting against H1N1, check out this recent blog entry.

Finally, be sure to stay tuned for details about HSC's upcoming webinar, Green Cleaning Your School In the Age of H1N1, scheduled for late January 2010. The webinar will feature experts in the field of green cleaning for infection control. More details coming soon!

Green Cleaning in the Era of H1N1: One School Building Manager's Experience

Today we have a guest blog from Bill Thompson, Director of Facilities for Lockport Township High School

---

Editor's Note: Bill Thompson, Director of Facilities for Lockport Township High School, first considered starting a green cleaning program after his janitors became dizzy when using a traditional chemical floor stripper. Since then, the school has become a model for successful green cleaning program implementation and Thompson has worked with HSC to spread the word about green cleaning. Thompson even traveled to Springfield to testify in the state legislature about the benefits of green cleaning as the legislature considered the Green Clean Illinois Schools Act, which now requires green cleaning in all Illinois schools.)

Here Thompson discusses how schools can work against the spread of H1N1 using green cleaning.

---

I started implementing a green cleaning program back in 2003, and when H1N1 starting getting a lot of awareness last spring, I realized we needed to adapt our regular cleaning plans. We've made it through MRSA and SARS in the past, so it seems that cleaning for infection control is going to become even more of a standard practice in the future. So far this year, our attendance rate has not dropped from the past years, so we're doing OK. In short, we took a seven-step approach to controlling infections while maintaining a green program. Here's what we are doing.

1. Hand sanitizers. We got serious about providing hand sanitizers in every classroom and in common areas throughout the school.

2. Education. Information was sent out via notices to the kids about washing hands, proper coughing, staying home for 24 hours after a fever ends, eating properly and getting enough sleep.  Notes, announcements, information on the school web page and phone blasts were sent out to parents, students and staff ensuring that they all had this information.

3. A reasonable but aggressive disinfection campaign. We began disinfecting desks every other day (Tuesdays and Thursdays) and then on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we use an accelerated hydrogen peroxide cleaner, which has sanitizing properties.  We want to disinfect, but not go overboard because we don't want to trade an infection risk for a chemical exposure risk. And sometimes the disinfectant gets a sticky residue if you use it too much without wiping if off.  What’s really new is we are wiping down every desk every night instead of only when it is needed.

4. School buses. We provided all buses with hand sanitizers for the students to use.

5. Proper use of cleaning cloths. We want to minimize cross contamination so we trained and enforced our custodial staff to fold cloths twice and use one side and then the other side and so on.  I encourage them to use as many cloths as necessary.  We have in-house laundry so it is really no big deal keeping the cloths clean.

6. Personal protection. My guys wear gloves, wash their hands regularly and don’t come to work if they are even remotely sick.  This is highly encouraged.

7. Focus on health (rather than shiny floors). We cut down on the burnishing of floors and then dedicate those employee hours to disinfecting and cleaning lockers, door handles, computer labs, and other high- touch areas. The floors are still auto scrubbed every night. Our floors are not as shiny as before, but we decided that to clean for health is more important than having shiny floors.  This was a tough one for me because I like shiny floors, but ultimately it means healthier students and staff.

H1N1 may hit us hard at some point, but so far so good.

Plus: Interested in learning more about cleaning for health? Be sure to check out the infection control section of HSC's free Quick & Easy Guide to Green Cleaning in Schools!

Green Cleaning for Workers' Health

By Mark Bishop, Deputy Director

We give four primary reasons for green cleaning in schools. (And we could probably come up with 20 more. . .) Here they are:

1. Green Cleaning Helps Students Stay Healthy and Learn
2. Green Cleaning Protects the Health of Custodial Staff
3. Green Cleaning Increases the Lifespan of Facilities
4. Green Cleaning Preserves the Environment

We tend to focus on the students, but we shouldn't lose perspective on the broader set of issues around providing a healthy environment for everyone in a building, including the employees. Green cleaning is an important aspect of a healthy work environment. According to this recent article:

When supermarket janitors in Local 1877 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) rallied last month at Safeway and Lucky stores in San Jose, Calif., they weren't only demanding improved wages and health benefits. They were calling for the adoption of green cleaning standards to make their jobs safer.

Take a read of the full story. It's interesting, and it provides real insight into how janitors work and how the chemicals they use affect their health. 

When we work to support green cleaning or other healthy indoor air quality programs, we are speaking up for the health of teachers, custodians, administrators and everyone who works in a school building -- in addition to the schoolchildren who often come to mind first.  Remember, more than 50 million students and 5 millions adults are in school buildings on any given work day. A healthy environment protects us all.

Science of Green: New Research Documents Benefits of Green Cleaning

By Mark Bishop, Deputy Director

When Healthy Schools Campaign began working on green cleaning issues in 2003 we had a simple premise: clean for health, reduce the use of nasty chemicals, and we'll have a healthier learning environment as a result. I must admit that we took what I consider a very logical and acceptable leap of faith. (I mean, it doesn't take much to think that if you choose to not put contaminants in a room, you'll have a room with fewer contaminants in it.)

Fortunately, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) has put some science to our premise. The group just came out with a fantastic report that gives us some concrete research documenting the benefits of green cleaning. When you clean a classroom with a "green cleaner," do you end up with fewer toxic chemicals in the room? The answer is a resounding YES.

In short, EWG tested several "green cleaners" as defined by Green Seal or EcoLogo; their testing showed that these products cleaned effectively while polluting the indoor environment significantly less. Actually five times less:

• Green cleaners released a lower overall number of measurable air contaminants. The conventional cleaners analyzed produced three to five times more air contaminants than green general purpose cleaners.
• Green cleaners produced lower levels of one important class of air pollutants, volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Total VOC levels measured from conventional general purpose cleaners were six times higher than their green counterparts.

http://www.ewg.org/files/2009/10/school-cleaners/general-purpose.png

Of course, what you also see in the graph above is that green cleaning isn't perfect, so there's still room for improvement. From my perspective, there are two take-aways here:

First, green cleaning isn't just about switching out traditional chemicals for "green" chemicals. It's also about processes, procedures, and training. Yet this study only looked at swapping out traditional products with green products. The greenest chemical in the world isn't very green if it's over-used. Even better than using green chemicals alone is also finding ways to reduce overall chemical use, such as:

• Stopping dirt before it gets into the building (by putting proper mats at doorways, for example)
• Adapting processes to reduce the need for chemicals (microfiber cloths can do wonders if used properly) 
• Using innovative technologies that reduce or eliminate chemicals all together (have you heard of the Active Ion or the Tennant Ec-H20?) 

This means that the report may actually over-estimate the amount of contaminants one would be exposed to when a classroom is cleaned in a green cleaning program. (Put another way: the report may under-estimate the benefits of a green cleaning program as it would be used in real life.) Those properly implementing a green cleaning program not only use healthier chemicals, but also identify ways to use fewer chemicals.

Second, "green" chemicals can still get greener. Will there be a point when we can create cleaning chemicals that produce zero contaminants? It may be possible, but we're not there yet. We still need to work with manufacturers, regulatory agencies, elected officials and school leaders to strive for continual improvement. We all have unintentional and very intimate day-to-day interactions with cleaning products and their residues. Because of this, we need to make sure they are as healthy as possible -- and continue to get healthier.

But most significantly, this research shows how important green cleaning programs are. Green cleaning is very effective, it doesn't have to cost more, and this report documents that green cleaning clearly creates healthier environments.

Rarely in this world can we say we have a win-win-win situation. This is one of them.

To learn more about green cleaning in schools, check out HSC's free Quick and Easy Guide to Green Cleaning in Schools.

And thanks to the EWG for such a great and health-promoting report!

Green Training, "Nutrition Labels" for Cleaning Products and More: New Developments for the Future of Green Cleaning at ISSA 2009

By Mark Bishop, Deputy Director

Earlier this month HSC attended the ISSA 2009 conference for three days. For those not in the know, ISSA is the international association for cleaning service providers and manufacturers. And their convention is huge.

We started attending the ISSA conference five years ago, after we decided to launch our Quick & Easy Guide to Green Cleaning, and this conference has changed a ton since then. It went from having just a few boutique green products available to having green as the entire theme of the conference. Of course, you have to watch for greenwashing, but that's what third-party eco-labels are for.

This year was really interesting for us. We had a booth, gave two presentations, and got to meet with our sponsors and allies in the green cleaning world. But one of the most exciting things about ISSA is the opportunity to hear about what's new, what's in development and what we can look out for in the year ahead for green cleaning.

And it looks promising: not only is the industry continuing to shift toward healthier and more environmentally preferable products, but we're seeing changes in the eco-labeling world. From my perspective, the two most exciting opportunities are the CIMS-GB program, and the IBEL eco-labeling development.

CIMS-GB

We know that green cleaning is more than just better chemicals. It's about equipment, recycled paper and plastic, and proper training. And of that list, training is the hardest to quantify. Now ISSA is developing CIMS-GB, a cleaning management standard for green cleaning that will offer a level of assurance that a cleaning provider is trained and can provide services for a green cleaning program. What Green Seal, Ecologo and the EPA's Design for the Environment are for products, CIMS-GB may become for cleaning programs.

IBEL

IBEL stands for Information-Based Environmental Label. This is an effort to give chemical manufacturers a tool to communicate a broad set of health and environmental attributes for their products, and to give consumers a set of practical facts to help inform purchasing decisions.

Up until this point, manufacturers were limited to "green dot" programs; while these programs take into account many attributes, they are one dimensional because the entire product analysis comes down to an all or nothing decision -- you get the "dot" or you don't. Of course these programs are a great help and have moved the industry forward tremendously. But there is little opportunity for verifiable claims of exceeding the criteria of existing green dots in their current form. The IBEL will address this and many other issues.

The idea is essentially a "nutritional label" for environmental attributes. Of course a great deal of consumer education will be important to making these labels meaningful to a broad audience, but this type of labeling can provide consumers with enough information to make fact-based decisions for their purchases. 

Here's a visual representation of the IBEL concept:

For the sake of full disclosure, I should add that HSC is on the core committee for the development team of IBEL.

I'm looking forward to seeing these program develop further in the year ahead.

It’s Global Handwashing Day! Spread the Word, Not the Germs

Today we have a guest blog by Donna Duberg, assistant professor of clinical laboratory science at Saint Louis University, a leading hygiene expert and a member of the Tork Green Hygiene Council (TGHC.) Tork created the TGHC to assist in its commitment to providing environmentally friendly and hygienic away-from-home washroom solutions and to make the world a greener, cleaner place to live and work. Tork is a Green Team Leader sponsor of HSC's Quick & Easy Guide to Green Cleaning in Schools.

Teachers and students around the world are being reminded of proper hygiene techniques on October 15, Global Handwashing Day. With flu season beginning and concerns regarding the H1N1 virus top of mind for parents and schools, advice from authorities, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) remains the same: good hand hygiene is a powerful public health preventative measure.
 
Despite this advice, a new Harris poll, commissioned by SCA Tissue North America’s Tork® brand, shows:

• Thirty-eight percent of U.S. adults won’t be washing their hands more frequently this flu season and
• Forty-eight percent of U.S. adults are not planning to take advantage of available flu shots

Considering that we use our hands for almost everything and that the flu virus can live for up to eight hours on common surfaces like faucets and door handles, it’s especially important to teach students proper hand hygiene techniques early on to ensure healthy, lifelong handwashing habits.
 
To celebrate Global Handwashing Day, below are some handwashing tips and advice to help keep our students and teachers healthy and safe.
 
When should students, faculty and staff members wash their hands?
Good hand hygiene is especially important during flu seasons and during school hours. Students, faculty and staff members must wash their hands often and dry them thoroughly. If available, an instant hand sanitizer can be a good supplement between washes. To prevent infection and cross-contamination, wash hands:

• After arriving at school.
• Before meals or eating any food.
• After visiting the restroom.
• After sneezing.
• After coughing.
• Before preparing food.
• Before and after visiting a sick person.
• After arriving home.
• When hands are visibly dirty.

After washing and drying hands, be sure students, faculty and staff members:

• Avoid touching their eyes, nose or mouth.
• Avoid close contact such as shaking hands, especially with people who are sick.
• Cough or sneeze against their sleeve or in a paper tissue that is then thrown in a waste basket.

The best way to wash and dry hands:
Hands are full of surfaces that can be difficult to reach, which means that many tend to forget certain parts. When using a public washroom, handwashing should take as long as singing “Happy Birthday” twice. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1. Wet hands with clean warm water.
2. Apply soap.
3. Rub hands together vigorously and scrub all surfaces for 20 seconds. Remember to wash both thumbs as thumbs are quite often skipped in the handwashing process!
4. Make sure to wash under nails, watches and jewelry since millions of germs gather there.
5. Rinse with clean water.
6. When at school, a single-use paper towel ensures that hands can be completely dried and virtually germ free.
7. Use the paper towel to avoid contact with frequently touched surfaces when leaving the washroom, such as the faucet and door handles.
8. Since hands are to be washed frequently, use mild and gentle soaps.

Happy handwashing! 

Global Handwashing Day Today - Win a Glitterbug Kit!

=====

UPDATE: Congratulations to @dese2, winner of our Global Handwashing Day Twitter contest! She'll receive a Glitterbug handwashing kit for her school. 

=====

Today is Global Handwashing Day! So, Healthy Schools Campaign wants to remind everyone that good habits can protect us all from getting germs -- and spreading germs -- at home, school, or work. Simple actions such as covering your mouth and nose and cleaning your hands often, can stop the spread of germs, prevent illnesses and cut back on absenteeism.

Three Steps to Stop the Spread of Germs

Make sure you:

1. Cover your mouth and nose when you sneeze or cough
   
2. Clean your hands often
3. Remind your children to practice healthy habits, too

1. Cover your mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing

Cough or sneeze into a tissue and then throw it away. Cover your cough or sneeze if you do not have a tissue. Then, clean your hands, and do so every time you cough or sneeze.

2. The "Happy Birthday" song helps keep your hands clean?

Not exactly. Yet we recommend that when you wash your hands -- with soap and warm water -- that you wash for 15 to 20 seconds. That's about the same time it takes to sing the “Happy Birthday” song twice!

3. Alcohol-Based Hand Wipes and Gel Sanitizers Work Too

When soap and water are not available, alcohol-based disposable hand wipes or gel sanitizers may be used. Non-alcohol-based hand sanitizers may also be useful. You can find these in most supermarkets and drugstores. 

Resources

You can download and print these posters from the CDC to help educate people in your schools about the importance of hand hygiene.

Poster of Boy	English	Spanish
Poster of Girl	English	Spanish
Cover your Cough	English	Spanish

Win a Glitterbug Handwashing Kit for Your School!

In honor of Global Handwashing Day, HSC is hosting a drawing to give away a Giltterbug Handwashing Kit for you to provide to your school. This kit includes everything one needs to present an effective and memorable hand hygiene training event. The kit includes: GlowBar lamp with 4 D-Cell batteries, AC adapter for plug-in convenience, Handwash DVD (HCU.DVD), GlitterBug Potion (240ml), GlitterBug Powder (68gm), GlitterBug Instruction Manual, How to Wash poster (P132), two pages of "I Was Rude" stickers (ST6), two Hand Brushes and one GlitterBug Champion Medallion. Estimated Retail Value: $185.

All you have to do to enter the drawing is to tweet on Twitter about handwashing on October 14 or 15, 2009 with @healthyschools in the tweet. For example:

@Healthyschools - Global Handwashing Day Today! RT to win free Glitterbug kit for your school! http://tiny.cc/X19IZ

Good luck -- and happy handwashing!

Updates and Observations from HSC's Green Clean Schools National Summit

By Mark Bishop, Deputy Director

Earlier this fall, HSC pulled together more than 60 advocates, cleaning manufacturers, distributors and national partners in Washington D.C. at our second Green Clean Schools National Summit. It was a time to network, share, and plan for more efforts to promote green cleaning policy.

A few of my observations from the Summit:

1) As of 2009, 8 states have some sort of school green cleaning policies. Green cleaning in schools is no longer new. It's common, it's being done, and it works.

2) My favorite factoids come from comparing Illinois and Connecticut. Illinois passed a school green cleaning law in 2007 and then in 2009 followed up with a law requiring green cleaning in state buildings. Connecticut passed a green cleaning law for state buildings in 2007 and then in 2009 followed up with a school green cleaning law. So no matter where you start, passing policy begets more policy -- especially when your policy is for something as smart and efficient as green cleaning -- and starting smaller can lead to bigger gains down the road.

3) There is still no single consensus on how to define green -- it's still a bit of the wild west in the green world. There are great third party programs out there that are helping guide the way, but no single entity has established one all-encompassing way to define a complete green program. From a guidance perspective, HSC's Quick & Easy Guide to Green Cleaning in Schools is our effort to put a comprehensive bow around the available green programs in the current marketplace. But when it comes to policy, it gets a bit more complex.

4) Finally, there are great changes on the horizon when it comes to how we label green products. In the next year, we should see the emergence of a "nutritional label" equivalent for environmental attributes. I mean, you can't represent every environmental attribute in a single green dot. So the creation of an easy-to-use label that puts more usable information into the end user's hands is an exciting development. We'll keep people up to date.

As for next steps from HSC's perspective -- we'll keep our eyes on legislation that is being introduced, work with our partners to support their efforts, and identify states where we can help introduce new bills to encourage greater adoption of green cleaning policy.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Spotlight on Green Seal & EcoLogo: Labeling Safe, Green Products

By Lindsay Muscato, HSC Writer/Communications Specialist

In an ideal world, all cleaning products would be safe -- both for people and for the planet, says Scot Case, vice-president of EcoLogo. But until that ideal becomes a reality, organizations such as EcoLogo help consumers identify the safest, most environmentally preferable products.

The organization researches the safety of products based on a variety of factors, including chemical composition and how the product is manufactured, and then places its seal on the top 20 percent of the safest products available, Case explained.

“All of our standards are transparent and open to the public,” says Case, “so that the public knows exactly what the product had to do in order to earn our label.”

EcoLogo, originally formed in 1988 by the Canadian government, is now managed by TerraChoice, an environmental marketing firm dedicated to promoting safer, greener products that meet its science-based criteria. EcoLogo’s seal has a presence in Europe and Asia as well as Canada.

In the U.S., it’s similar in design and mission to Green Seal, an independent nonprofit organization founded in 1989 that also labels products. Case says: “Both Green Seal and EcoLogo are Type 1 environmental labels which means they are environmental leadership labels. They focus on multiple issues and standards.”

Mark Petruzzi, Vice President of Certification and Strategic Relations for Green Seal, Inc. describes the need for EcoLogo and Grean Seal this way: “We do all the dirty work for you so, as a purchaser, you don't need to waste your time thinking about the chemical composition of each product. It's all been distilled down into a seal of approval. It’s like, when you go to the grocery store and are thousands of miles away from the point of production, there’s no way you can look a farmer in the eye and ask if your jug of milk is organic. So you look for the USDA organic seal.”

Petruzzi says that both Green Seal and EcoLogo look at the product’s manufacturing process from start to finish, taking into account factors such as gallons of water used in its production, the qualities of its packaging, and the kilowatts of energy used throughout its journey to the shelf.

“We develop our standards from a rigorous, scientific perspective,” Petruzzi says. “We send auditors out to where these products are manufactured to make sure companies are doing what they say they’re doing. It’s all without bias – we have no direct ties to the products and services.”

Plus, Petruzzi says, each product is tested for effectiveness so that consumers know they can trust the quality of green cleaning products. One big challenge, Petruzzi says is that “with a lot of schools being required to go green, you’re going to run into janitors and cleaning staff who are not convinced that a green product will work. We think green products darn well better work as well as what they’re already using.”

“Consumer confusion leads to inaction,” Case says. There are other labels on the market, says Case – but they’re not all created equal. Recently he testified in a Congressional hearing about the need for consistency in labeling, and he says that in the future, the U.S. government may need to play a bigger role in regulating labels, or maybe a consortium of retailers could agree on which labels to promote.

In the end, though, Case says:  “All labels should be out of business. We wouldn’t be in business if all products were safe for human health and for the environment.”   

***

Plus: Interested in learning more about efforts to label green clean products? Check out our recent interview with Clive Davies, chief of the EPA's Design for the Environment program!

Schools, H1N1 and Green Cleaning

By Mark Bishop, Deputy Director

From my perspective, the theme around the back-to-school season this year has been H1N1 -- swine flu.

Nurses have been overwhelmed with preparing, teachers have been getting information on prevention strategies, administrators are creating plans address outbreaks, and custodians are being held up as one of the key team members to reduce the spread of the disease.

And it seems like the spread is starting.

While most cases so far are mild, and the health care system is handling the load, officials say the number of people seeking treatment for the flu is unprecedented for this time of year.

So first of all, let's emphasize CDC's commonsense recommendations to protect your health from H1N1 and any infectious disease:

• Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
• Wash your hands often with soap and water. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand rub.
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread this way.
• Try to avoid close contact with sick people.
• If you are sick with flu-like illness, CDC recommends that you stay home for at least 24 hours after your fever is gone except to get medical care or for other necessities. (Your fever should be gone without the use of a fever-reducing medicine.) Keep away from others as much as possible to keep from making others sick.

Second, let's look at our cleaning programs, and make sure that we're not over-compensating with the overuse of disinfectants. A green cleaning program is about reducing risk of chemical exposure and targeted use of disinfectants.

Disinfectant use should be limited to high-touch areas such as door handles, keyboards, light switches, and tables. When selecting a disinfectant, work with vendors to select the least toxic, most affordable option, and always choose EPA registered products.

This story has a good Q & A:

Many schools and classrooms are being stocked with soap, hand sanitizer, paper towels and tissues, and administrators are sending home letters to parents outlining prevention strategies.

Following guidelines issued by federal, state and county health officials, teachers, nurses and others will frequently stress the importance of hand-washing, and will be on the lookout for students exhibiting flulike symptoms.

Some schools are stepping up routine cleaning, especially for doorknobs, computer keyboards and other frequently touched areas.

So take precaution, wash your hands, stay home when sick, and look to the CDC for guidance.