Crime scene cleanup
term applied to forensic cleanup of blood, bodily fluids, and other potentially infectious materials
Crime scene cleanup is a term applied to cleanup of blood, bodily fluids, and other potentially infectious materials (OPIM). It is also referred to as biohazard remediation, and forensic cleanup, because crime scenes are only a portion of the situations in which biohazard cleaning is needed. Incidents which may require this type of cleanup include accidents, suicide (or attempted suicide), homicides, and decomposition after unattended death, as well as mass trauma, industrial accidents, infectious disease contamination, animal biohazard contamination (e.g. feces or blood) or regulated waste transport, treatment, and disposal.
Usage
Television productions like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation have added to the popularity of the term "crime scene cleanup". Australia, Canada and England have added it to their professional cleaning terminology. As a profession, it is growing in popularity because of media exposure and the growth of training programs worldwide.
The generic terms for crime scene cleanup include trauma cleaning, crime and trauma scene decontamination ("CTS Decon"), biohazard remediation, biohazard removal, and blood cleanup. The state of California refers to individuals who practice this profession as Valid Trauma Scene Waste Management Practitioners.
Types of cleanups
Crime scene cleanup includes blood spills following an assault, homicide or suicide, tear gas residue, and vandalism removal/cleanup.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Crime scene cleanup” as term applied to forensic cleanup of blood, bodily fluids, and other potentially infectious materials. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5185440. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Crime scene cleanup” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.