Becoming A Biohazard Technician To Clean Up After Crime Scenes Is Actually Pretty Lucrative

We say it all the time: people die. And death is all around us.

Well, what a better time than now to become a crime-scene cleaner?

Crime scene cleaners don’t just clean up after bodies. They’re called when normal clean-up crews don’t accept a call.

From hoarders to homicides, these men and women with stomachs of steel enter rooms filled with the stench of death to clean them up.

Their outfits cover them from head to toe — literally — to protect against potentially harmful biowaste from touching skin. (It’s also gross to get someone’s blood on you too.)

From The Atlantic:

Crime-scene cleaning is not a glamorous profession, but it is a lucrative one. Last year there were 333 murders in New York City alone. Considering that companies like Island Trauma clean up crime scenes, natural deaths, and hoarder homes in the entire Tri-State area, they tend to keep busy throughout the year. In 2013, the company, which employs approximately 30 people (some of whom work part-time), made more than $500,000 in profit.* An individual working full-time as a biohazard technician can make between $35,000 to $80,000 a year depending on what biohazards they’re trained to work with, according to a 2012 industry report.

The hardest part of the job isn’t the blood and gore, though. It’s the artifacts left behind by the deceased that reminds the cleanup crew that whoever died there used to have a life before this.

Read more on The Atlantic.