Dry Copper Kills Bacteria on Contact
Date: 23.2.2011
Metallic copper surfaces kill microbes on contact, decimating their populations, according to a paper in the February 2011 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. They do so literally in minutes, by causing massive membrane damage after about a minute's exposure, says the study's corresponding author, Gregor Grass of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This is the first study to demonstrate this mechanism of bacteriocide.
It is important to note that only dry copper surfaces are amazingly lethal to bacteria. The difference between dry and wet surfaces, such as copper pipes, is that only dry surfaces are inhospitable environments for bacterial growth. Bacteria can easily grow and reproduce in wet environments, and in so doing, they can develop resistance to copper. Resistance has not been observed to develop on dry copper surfaces.
Source:
Original Paper:
C. E. Santo, E. W. Lam, C. G. Elowsky, D. Quaranta, D. W. Domaille, C. J. Chang, G. Grass. Bacterial Killing by Dry Metallic Copper Surfaces. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 2010; 77 (3): 794 DOI: 10.1128/AEM.01599-10
