The COVID-19 pandemic had highlighted important social disparities contributing to disproportionate disease burden. In New York City (NYC), the Latinx population had experienced nearly twice the COVID-19 death rate compared to the white population and disproportionately faced crowded housing, inadequate access to health care, and employment in precarious jobs without the option of working from home. The parent project had studied environmental health disparities in one such population, Latinx domestic cleaners. "Safe and Just Cleaners: Reducing Exposure to Toxic Cleaning Chemical Products Among Low Wage Immigrant Latino Community Members" (R01ES027890) had been a community-based participatory research (CBPR) project with the goal of quantifying exposures to chemical compounds in household cleaning and disinfecting products and developing guidelines, approaches, and campaign materials to reduce hazardous exposures.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the project's evolving education campaign, consistent with the work of other environmental groups, had discouraged the routine use of potentially hazardous disinfecting products, as under common conditions, disinfection of residential surfaces had not been routinely indicated. Current guidance on effective cleaning and disinfecting for SARS-CoV-2, however, had complicated these recommendations. Poison control centers had reported increases in poisonings due to cleaning and disinfecting products.

It had been hypothesized that the COVID-19 pandemic would lead to enduring changes in residential cleaning practices, including the increased use of potentially harmful cleaning and disinfecting products. The study population especially had needed guidance, in addition to the public in general, on how to both clean and disinfect to effectively eliminate SARS-CoV-2 without jeopardizing their health.