Bacteria-killing Pencil

kahrytan writes "Mounir Laroussi, a researcher at Old Dominion University has invented a hand-held device that is dubbed a plasma pencil. The pencil generates a "cold plasma," which can be used to kill germs that contaminate surfaces, infect wounds and rot your teeth. In the future, it might be used to destroy tumors without damaging surrounding tissue. When he turns the pencil on, it blows a high pitched whistle as a glowing, blue-violet beam about 2 inches long instantly appears at one end. Stick your finger in its path and you only feel a cool breeze, but the beam is powerful enough to blast apart bacteria that's crawling on your skin. Such a device if patented, tested and mass produced could end up doing a lot of good. Disinfecting surgery tools, keeping open wounds open in hospitals, destroying tumors in hard to operate areas like brains, and even treating that simple paper cut. The story can be read at dailypress and old dominion university."

How come it only hurts the bacteria?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand how this can blow apart bacteria but not blow apart your skin cells. Can anyone explain? Also, why call it a pencil? It doesn't write anything. Might as well call it a stick, rod, or magic wand perhaps.

Re: Bacteria-killing Pencil

[cowscows]

"Killing something dead" is completely redundant. That's one of the things that makes it such a great slogan for advertisments.

But overall, you're definitely right. My old roommate would eat just about anything off the floor, and our kitchen floor was not anything resembling clean. It was pretty gross to watch him eat that stuff, but his immune system must be close to bulletproof by now. He and his girlfriend had their house flooded during Katrina. When they went in to check it out, the house was trashed, mold everywhere, etc. Every time they've gone there since the flooding, the girlfriend has spent the next couple days sick as all hell, while he was no worse for wear.

Although it's easy to take it too far, the saying "whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger" has some truth in it.

Re: Bacteria-killing Pencil

[baryon351]

but more importantly it does mean that it's not a big deal if your child (God forbid) plays outside, scrapes their knee or rolls in the mud

I'm reminded of an aunt & uncle of mine who were beyond neat freaks, but were absolute germaholics going back to when they had their son in the late 1960s. Neither of their kids was allowed outside otherwise they'd get dirty, and everything in the house was regularly bleached, dry cleaned, vacuumed or just renewed if it had even the hint of dirt. It was a pain going to their house, both of them as OCD as you could get. Last time I was there the toilet was bleached by my aunt after I used it. If there was even a hint of illness at school, both cousins just simply weren't allowed to go until it was all-clear.

In the end one cousin did get gravel rash on the elbow running out the school gate when he was 10, and had to be hospitalised for weeks, because he near died from the resulting infection. The first flu that his sister got when she was 13 also almost killed her. Both now (in their 30s) have the most intense asthma, find difficulty putting on normal weight and have regularly come down with weeks-long illnesses needing hospital stays from things that would give a normal person the sniffles & sneezes for a couple of days.

Not necessarily

[Kris Warkentin]

The difference is, antibiotics kill the weakest germs first so if you stop too soon, you're breeding stronger germs.

This would most likely kill the most accessible germs first or if nothing else, just kill the ones it was used on. ("Hey Doc, I think you missed a spot"). I suppose it's also possible that germs with stronger outsides might be given an advantage but it doesn't seem quite as obvious as with drugs.

cheers,

Kris

The American Antibiotic Addicts

[MarcQuadra]

I'm really scared by America's 'antibiotic culture'. In my office alone (twelve people), there are seven currently taking antibiotics, most for non-bacterial or non-serious conditions. Some are taking them for what I know are allergies, some to 'prevent' getting sick, some because they have a viral cold, and one for a sinus infection that I know is fungal in nature.

Three people have 'stockpiles' of antibiotics they keep from when they get prescriptions in their desk, and they share their different meds with each other.

Doctors prescribe antibiotics as a cure-all to get whining patients out of the office, and if they do try to suggest real cures that are less appealing to their patients they can kiss their revenue stream goodbye.

I stopped going to my doctor when he prescribed me Arithromycin(sp?) for a fungal ear and sinus infection. Any idiot who knows some biology knows that you can't fix a fungal problem with antibacterial agents, it will hurt more than it helps. American patients won't stand for 'eat a healthy low-carb diet for a week and get plenty of rest' when they can go next door and get 'take these antibiotics and call me if it gets worse, we'll give you a CAT scan and suggest surgery.' Your body's indigenous bacteria are a tremendously important part of your digestive and immune systems, killing them only clears the path for viral and fungal agents.

I gave up antibiotics about eight years ago, and my immune system is rock-solid. Sure, I get the occasional sinus infection or cold, but I change my diet and pamper my immune system and it usually clears up in a day or so. Every start-of-school the whole office gets sick, most people were totally out-of-commission for a week; I was sick for only two nights. I had a fever, so I drank an assload of salty chicken soup and wrapped myself up in a bigass blanket to 'burn off' for the night.

What REALLY burns me, besides that my friends and coworkers are happily skipping down the path to superbugs, is that the whole thing is subsidised by my health insurance payment. There's nothing like paying $350/month for everyone around you to abuse the system while you never need a doctor.

Re:Overly optimistic

[EriktheGreen]

We already have devices that sterilize inert medical instruments quite efficiently-way more efficiently than waving a tiny beam across their entire surface area. It may have a niche for sterilizing items that are temperature sensitive (and not overly sensitive to highly reactive charged particles). But it clearly won't be a "miracle beam" that can kill bacteria in a wound while leaving healthy tissue unaffected.

I dunno about other applications, but if they can make this efficiently clean larger areas, my employer would probably employ them for the rest of their lives to do nothing but make these things. You see, we make medical devices, implants. They have to be made carefully for a bazillion reasons, but each added bit of care drives up the cost. A big engineering constraint on their design is the fact that they must be able to withstand heat, fully assembled, for long enough to be permanently sterilized. If you can sterilize them cold, not only can you make designing them easier, but you can use a whole set of materials that actually works BETTER than what we use now... we just couldn't use them before because they couldn't be sterilized.

So despite what you may think about cold sterilization not being an improvement, it is. A big one.

Erik

PS: Malda, get Kupu.

Re: Bacteria-killing Pencil

[Jinxyjeanes]

I had to reply to this as it makes absolute sense to me. Years ago I did a basic food handlers course, the instructor asked for our opinions as to why cases of food poisoning were on the increase. At a time when food hygeane regulations and enforcement were on the increase. My reply was that our natural ability to resist infection was being eroded. I passed the course but got rogered by the instuctor for my reply.