If you are putting a cleanup vendor on an approved list, you will be handed a license number and told it is all in order. Here is what that number actually certifies in Georgia, and — more usefully — what it does not.
The license follows the event, not the building
Georgia regulates what it calls trauma scene waste management, and it defines a trauma scene by what happened: a homicide, a suicide, or a death involving advanced decomposition. Nothing in that definition mentions the type of property.
That has a consequence people get backwards in both directions. A death in your warehouse, office or hotel room is squarely inside the definition and requires a registered practitioner. A serious injury on the same floor, with the same amount of blood, is not.
What the registration does and does not reach
- Covered. A homicide, a suicide, or a death where decomposition has advanced — on any premises, residential or commercial.
- Not covered by this statute. Workplace injuries, industrial accidents, sewage failures, mold, infectious material generally, and — named explicitly in the law — motor vehicle accident scenes.
- Never covered by anything. There is no state or federal certification that makes a company “OSHA compliant”. Those regulations bind employers. A vendor selling you a badge for them is describing something that does not exist.
None of that means unregulated work is unregulated in every sense — waste handling, transport and disposal rules still apply to all of it. It means the trauma registration is not the credential governing it, and a vendor who implies otherwise is either confused or hoping you are.
Why the distinction is worth your time
Two provisions give it teeth. Performing — or merely offering to perform — regulated trauma scene cleanup without registering carries a civil penalty of up to $5,000. And an unregistered operator cannot lawfully recover the cost of that cleanup from the property owner.
For a business that matters twice over. You may be paying an invoice that could not have been enforced against you, and if the incident is ever examined, the question of who you engaged and what they were licensed to do is a question you want a clean answer to.
What to ask a vendor, in order
- What is your Georgia trauma scene registration number? Then check it against the Secretary of State's register yourself rather than taking the certificate.
- Which of the services on your price list does that registration actually cover? A straight answer here tells you a great deal about the company.
- Where does the regulated waste go, and will I get the documentation? If they cannot name the facility, they are subcontracting it and you should know that.
- What will I be given at the end — a written record of what was removed and decontaminated, or an invoice?
- Are your own technicians trained and vaccinated for bloodborne pathogen exposure? That is their duty to their staff, and it is a fair question to ask of anyone you let on site.
Be wary of anything described as “city licensed”. Registration in Georgia sits with the Secretary of State, and no county or municipal government may require its own — so a local permit for this work is not a higher standard, it is a different thing being presented as one.
Our position, stated plainly
Novel Bio Recovery holds Georgia Trauma Scene Waste Management Practitioner (Company) license TSWM-CO000067. That covers the regulated category of work. For everything else we do — a sewage failure, an infectious clean, an industrial spill — the license is not the credential, the waste rules and our own training are, and we would rather tell you that than let one number do work it was not issued for.
The work itself: Biohazard cleanup.
