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[Copper] does this by leaching electrons from bacteria, which causes a charge to build up inside the cell which ultimately leads to free radical formation and cell death. Many studies have now shows that the microbial burden on copper surfaces is reduced by 80% compared to traditional surfaces. When used on frequently touched surfaces in hospitals, this can significantly reduce the amount of bacteria hanging around. Another study showed that the total reduction in bacteria from a copper alloy surface was 99.9% (compared to baseline, not to control surfaces). In controlled studies, copper surfaces work as advertised – they kill bacteria and viruses.
But does this actually reduce the incidence of hospital acquired infections (HAIs, also called health care associated infections)? The answer is yes. A 2017 systematic review of studies found that introducing copper surface in the hospital reduced HAIs by 25%.
[...] This will require a significant investment by hospitals – replacing beds, serving trays, tables, rails, door handles, and other high-touch surfaces. [...] The estimated cost of the most common HAIs is around $10 billion per year in the US. This cost is often absorbed by the hospital. This is because reimbursement for hospital stays is often determined by DRGs – diagnostic related groups. Hospitals are paid by insurance companies based upon the patient's diagnosis. If a patient is admitted for pneumonia, the hospital gets paid a fixed amount which represents the average cost of treating pneumonia. If the patient does well and is discharged quickly, the hospital makes money. If they do not do well and have complications and a prolonged stay, the hospital loses money. This provides a good financial incentive for hospitals to provide efficient and effective care, and minimize complications.
Previously:
(2020-07-19) Laser-Textured Metal Surfaces Kill Bacteria Faster
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2020, @05:26AM (24 children)
This used to be usual but people stole all the copper so they stopped. Just the fact it isn't common knowledge anymore that copper, silver, gold are antimicrobial shows how dumbed down people are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2020, @06:15AM (2 children)
We can asteroid mine to get $1 quadrillion of copper for every human.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2020, @06:36AM (1 child)
Not fore the foreseeable future. The cost of retrieving material from asteroids and bringing it back to Earth currently exceeds the value of the material, probably by a few orders of magnitude. Precious metals like gold, platinum and uranium would be the first economic items and we're nowhere near that. Iron and nickel are probably quite common up there, but would be more useful in space.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday July 31 2020, @02:44PM
I assume, crashing an asteroid full of Uranium on Earth wouldn't be enough to cause major problems. Would need to be refined, etc. to turn it into a bomb / also wouldn't spread a bunch of dirty uranium in the atmosphere?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by janrinok on Friday July 31 2020, @06:35AM (20 children)
You are correct. I recall hospitals having large brass door handles and push plates to help reduce the transmission of bacteria. In addition to the theft of brass/copper leading to its removal from many locations there was also the problem of polishing the brass work each day. The number of man hours lost when, traditionally, newly qualified nurses spent far more time cleaning than nursing was clearly a waste of their training and expertise, rather than using their skills in a more targetted way as is common today.
Whether the cleaning was essential to the efficacy of copper/brass in reducing bacteria was justified is uncertain - but if it didn't look shiny and clean it was deemed to be dirty, even if it still did its job at reducing bacteria.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday July 31 2020, @06:45AM (3 children)
There's an easy solution to the problem of wasting nurse time: Have the cleaning done by cleaning staff instead of nurses.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Friday July 31 2020, @07:11AM (2 children)
Which is exactly what happened - we are talking 60 years ago! But cleaning staff are also expensive, so they don't want to use them to polish door handles. Solution: get rid of the door handles and replace them with plastic and a cleaning spray.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Friday July 31 2020, @02:10PM
Automatic doors.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday July 31 2020, @05:34PM
> Solution: get rid of the door handles and replace them with plastic and a cleaning spray.
...And now you're right back to requiring cleaning staff to clean all the surfaces regularly - except now they have to clean them far MORE regularly in order to slow the spread of infection by the same amount.
An alternate solution - don't worry about polishing the fixtures beyond whatever is necessary to maintain the anti-microbial properties, eliminating tarnish is useless vanity. Maybe polish the high-traffic areas that impart a first impression if you really care - most the hospitals I've been in get fairly ugly and sterile beyond that point anyway.
As for theft, that's also easy to reduce - don't use solid copper. Electroplated steel should be just as antimicrobial, and have a scrap value approximately equal to plain steel. Yeah, it'll start corroding once the electroplating gets worn through, but the cost of occasionally replacing worn fixtures should be negligible.
(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Friday July 31 2020, @07:40AM (9 children)
Beat me to it. People didn't "steal the copper" because it was never there in the first place, what was used was brass furniture, and it was replaced with stainless steel because brass was too much of a pain to maintain.
Aside from that it's also quite soft, as are most copper alloys, which means they're not well-suited for a range of applications where SS displaced them.
Not arguing against the use of brass, just pointing out why it fell into disfavour.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday July 31 2020, @01:53PM (8 children)
So would stainless steel be equally effective? It *is* electrically conductive, so if it wouldn't be effective, it seems as if a different explanation is needed.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2020, @03:32PM
No. We have stainless steel everywhere and that's how you get MRSA and other crap moved around - on these stainless steel surfaces. Plastic is the same, except lighter.
Which has nothing to do with killing bacteria. Otherwise might as well make stuff out of cast iron.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2020, @04:47PM (6 children)
The trouble is actually in the "stainlessness" of the steel. The thing that makes stainless steel stainless is that it is an alloy with another material (aluminum?) that oxidizes very quickly, but also clear. This creates a clear layer of oxide between the iron in the steel and the oxygen in the air, (bonus when cut it will instantly create a new layer as the other material is throughout the steel).
This layer that prevents oxidization that protects the metal from air, would likewise protect the bacteria from the metal. Stainless is used for food/medicine because it doesn't leach into the food (affecting taste), it is easily cleaned and sanitized (but requires external chemicals to do so) and, importantly, it looks clean*.
*it doesn't tarnish, which any metal that kills like copper would, necessarily.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2020, @06:24PM
Yeah! Aluminium! That's what makes Stainless stainless, since they both are silver colored. The level of metallurgical ignorance here on SoylentNews truly astounds me. No wonder we have anti-vaxxers and anti-masxxers and all manner of anti-science stupidity. Here, have some Hydroxychlorinequinine Sulfate. It's got zinc in it, and zinc is good 'cause it's like copper!!
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday August 01 2020, @12:25AM (4 children)
Last I heard, stainless steel was made with nickel. Perhaps times have changed?
(Score: 2, Informative) by fakefuck39 on Saturday August 01 2020, @12:42AM (2 children)
it is, but while lotion is made with water, water is not what makes it lotion.
chromium is the answer you're looking for. and stainless steel is sometimes made without nickel. it is never made without chromium. not sure what the nickel is for though.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday August 01 2020, @03:09PM
Thank you for the correction.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday August 02 2020, @03:15AM
Nickel helps with weldability and ductility, not just in SS but in all steels. It's used in the vast majority of SS's. The magic ingredient through is chromium, nickel just makes it easier to work with.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 01 2020, @06:54PM
No, that is nickel steel. Stainless steel is an alloy of iron and unstainium. That's why it's stainless. (We have gotten to the point where the ignorance is so thick that no one even attempts to educate Soylentils anymore. )
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday July 31 2020, @01:51PM (3 children)
Given the explanation, the polishing probably was necessary. Copper oxide isn't electrically conductive. This may be why aluminum doesn't work.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2020, @07:10PM
But what about the copper sulfates (blue vitrol)? And sulfides (copper glance). Copper carbonate (Verdigris)? Copper nitrite, and nitrate, and nitride? Copper chloride (Resin of copper)? Who started this idea that the anti-bacterial properties have anything to do with electrical conductivity?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fakefuck39 on Saturday August 01 2020, @12:48AM (1 child)
this is correct. copper oxide does not conduct electricity.
thankfully, we're trying to kill microbes, not conduct electricity. and copper oxide kills microbes the same as copper. the polishing is because people like things pretty and shiny. so hospitals clean them and wear them continuously, at high cost. then get rid of them completely because of this cost, exposing us to infection.
doctors are science-smart. hospital administrators are dumb greedy unethical corporate america - just like in any other corporation. they want cash, they don't care if it kills you.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday August 01 2020, @02:07PM
The explanation as to why copper was effective implied that it was the electrical conductivity that was the effective method. This implies that a non-conductive surface would stop working. Now perhaps the explanation was wrong, but if not, then it needed to be kept polished.
OTOH, that same explanation would seem to imply that stainless steel would work. Perhaps not quite as well because it isn't quite as conductive, but it wouldn't need to be polished.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday July 31 2020, @04:23PM (1 child)
My small local hospital still has brass handles on doors in the older parts of the building, as well as brass door plaques of a few doors. As well as the practicalities raised (maybe not the door plaques), they look really nice too: adds a bit of class to the area.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday August 02 2020, @03:17AM
My small local hospital has brass handles on the tanks where the breed the leeches, and I believe the bloodletting tools are brass too. The cauldrons are still made of cast iron though.
They've been arguing about modernizing for awhile now, but I say if it's worked in the past...