During the first traumatic Covid shutdowns in the spring, a lot of people were out of work, with nothing to do. Jessie Tait was one of them.
“I had to shut my company down,” says Tait, a home inspector and military veteran. “We were deemed nonessential.”
Tait slid into a funk and tried to get out of it. Helping others seemed like a good strategy. “I took some of the tools that I had through my home inspection business and I started volunteering at the local police department sanitizing vehicles of first responders who were exposed to Covid.”
Soon, she started getting calls for help. That led her to launch a new company called Enspra.
While researching the best practices for sanitizing everything, Tait discovered that sanitizing surfaces has one flaw — and it’s a big one.
“How long does it last?” says Tait, who was fielding the question often. Her response, which she didn’t like, was, “Until the next person touches it. I thought, there has to be a better way.”
Further research led her to a new, Texas-based company called NanoVapor Biotech. Their Omnisol products disinfect and protect surfaces from viruses for up to 90 days.
It’s applied with a spray and becomes an invisible coating that forms a protective layer on a surface, mimicking the natural antimicrobial surfaces on the wings of dragonflies or cicadas.
“On the surface, it actually creates a nanospike barrier, which is about three to four microns in size,” explains Tait. A hair is around 1,000 microns wide.
“We’ve all now seen the coronavirus microbe (illustrations) that has all the little spikes on it. When that lands on the surface, what those nanospikes do is, they actually pierce the membrane and kill it on contact.”
Enspra is now an exclusive distributor for NanoVapor’s products throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland and soon, North Carolina.
Tait’s company has clients ranging from restaurants to gyms to buses, including the Franklin Park Borough Police Department, Ohio Township Police Department, Allie Alligator Learning Center and Monte Cello’s restaurant in Cranberry.
“We come in and we do a full disinfection and protection, not just for existing homes where people live, but in new construction as well,” says Tait, who points out that new construction doesn’t mean it’s clean.
The safety of the products is a major selling point.
“The processes that we use are EPA-approved,” explains Tait. “We are CDC recommended, and it is FDA-certified food safe.”
There are a lot of companies with cleaning products that are not meant to be vaporized or inhaled and could cause lung damage.
“With our product, we don’t have to be out of the building. It’s fine to be in the air; it’s fine to ingest. It’s zero irritant on skin, eyes and lungs.”
Enspra is based in Ross Township and employs three full-time and several part-time employees. Tait has some new contracts coming up, which will mean hiring new applicators, who start at $16 an hour.
