Health, safety and hygiene in the salon
Health, safety and hygiene in the salon
This domain tests the legal and practical controls that keep clients and staff safe: infection control, cleaning, disinfection and sterilisation, waste segregation, PPE and COSHH. Expect questions that ask you to choose the correct process for a contaminated tool or the correct waste stream for a used blade.
Core rules
- Cleaning removes visible soil; disinfection reduces pathogens but does not kill all spores; sterilisation destroys all micro-organisms including spores.
- Autoclave cycles are typically 134 °C for 3 minutes or 121 °C for 15 minutes; items must be cleaned and dried first and packaged where the cycle requires it.
- Single-use items such as blades, orange sticks and lash strips are never reprocessed. Metal nippers may be disinfected and then autoclaved.
- Blood or body-fluid spills: wear gloves and an apron, absorb, then disinfect with a chlorine-releasing product at around 10,000 ppm available chlorine or use a spill kit.
- Sharps go into a yellow, UN-approved sharps container; clinical waste goes in orange or yellow bags; chemical waste such as solvents, wax and unused tints follows the manufacturer and local authority route.
- COSHH requires current safety data sheets, labelled decanted containers and risk assessments for every product used.
Worked example
A metal cuticle nipper is dropped and contaminated with blood. It is not simply sprayed and reused. The technician wears PPE, removes visible soil with detergent and a brush, dries it, disinfects, then autoclaves it in a validated pouch. If the item were a disposable blade it would go straight into the sharps container. The reasoning is that disinfection is not sterilisation and blood-borne viruses require a validated sterilisation cycle.
Traps
Calling UV cabinets or barbicide sterilisation; topping up half-empty disinfectant bottles; wearing gloves as a substitute for handwashing; putting wax or solvents into general waste.