Who is allowed to do this work
California's rules for cleanup companies, and how to check one
California regulates this trade by name. Knowing the outline of the law gives you one firm thing to check before you let a stranger's company into the house.
Phone answered all day and all night, seven days a week
What the law says, in ordinary words
The law is the Trauma Scene Waste Management Act, a chapter of the Health and Safety Code that begins at section 118321. It calls a place soiled with blood or body fluids after a serious injury, an illness or a death a trauma scene, and it says plainly that this includes trailers, mobile homes and vehicles.
Anyone who cleans such places as a business is a trauma scene waste management practitioner and has to register with the California Department of Public Health. The department alone enforces the rules on this kind of waste.
Three duties the law puts on the company
Register
The firm sends the health department an application and the registration fee, and must show a contract with a permitted medical waste facility or a registered transporter. To renew, it also shows its waste was disposed of properly.
Take the waste away promptly
Trauma scene waste has to leave the scene as soon as the removal phase is finished. It may not be left in your bin or on your driveway.
Deliver it to the right place
The waste goes to a permitted medical waste transfer station or treatment facility. The only alternative the law allows is a dedicated freezer at the firm's own premises, for no more than 14 days.
How to check a company in five minutes
- Open the health department's trauma scene practitioner page and follow the link to the list of registered practitioners. It is a PDF, reissued from time to time.
- Ask the company for the exact business name on its registration. Trading names and registered names can differ.
- Search the PDF for that name. If it is not there, ask why, and consider calling someone else.
- If you want to confirm by phone, the department's Medical Waste Management Program is at (916) 449-5671.
Registration is not a contractor's licence and it is not a quality mark. It tells you the state knows the firm exists and where its waste goes. Ask separately for proof of liability insurance, and ask what training its workers have had for handling blood.
Why registration matters to your wallet
After a crime, the state compensation board repays cleanup only when a registered practitioner did it. A family that hires an unregistered firm can lose that reimbursement however good the work was.
This website does not check registrations and does not vouch for any company. The firm you reach by phone is independent. Confirming its registration and insurance is up to you, and five minutes is enough to do it.
Questions about the rules
Does the law stop me cleaning my own home?
No. The registration rule is about commercial activity. It does not make a family's own cleaning illegal. It also does not make it safe or wise.
Can a restoration or janitorial firm do it?
Only if it is registered as a trauma scene waste management practitioner. A familiar name on the van is not enough. Ask for the registered name and look for it on the list before the crew starts.
Who protects the workers?
Cal/OSHA. The Act says it does not reduce that agency's authority, and California's bloodborne pathogens standard applies to cleanup crews as it does to hospital staff.
Whenever suits you
Hand the room to people whose trade this is
Two sentences about the situation are plenty. You then hear how the firm would tackle it and what it would bill. Yes or no is yours alone to say, today or next week.
The number for Santa Maria and the valley
Whoever picks up belongs to a cleanup firm that takes jobs from Guadalupe up to Grover Beach. It is a separate business from this website. Name your town, say what sort of place it is, and ask anything.
Call (805) 362-1926Phone answered all day and all night, seven days a week
The call may be recorded. How this works is set out in the referral disclosure.