Plasma Device Kills Bacteria On Skin In Seconds 237
Ponca City, We love you writes "In medicine, plasma, the fourth state of matter, is already used for sterilizing surgical instruments; plasma works at the atomic level and is able to reach all surfaces, even the interior of hollow needle ends. Now the BBC reports that researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics have demonstrated a plasma device that can rid hands, feet, or even underarms of bacteria, including the hospital superbug MRSA, by creating cold atmospheric plasma that produces a cocktail of chemicals that kills bacteria but is harmless to skin. 'The plasma produces a series of over 200 chemical reactions that involve the oxygen and nitrogen in air plus water vapor — there is a whole concoction of chemical species that can be lethal to bacteria,' says Gregor Morfill. 'It's actually similar to what our own immune system does.' The team says that an exposure to the plasma of only about 12 seconds reduces the incidence of bacteria, viruses, and fungi on hands by a factor of a million — a number that stands in sharp contrast to the several minutes hospital staff can take to wash using traditional soap and water. Morfill says that the approach can be used to kill the bacteria that lead to everything from gum disease to body odor and that the prototype is scalable to any size and can be produced in any shape."
Excessive cleanliness (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you remember the article on /. about how excessive cleanliness isn't all that good for you? Yeah...
Re:Excessive cleanliness (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Excessive cleanliness (Score:5, Funny)
I dated a girl in high school that had excessive godliness
Considering you are posting on Slashdot...was her surname .png?
Re: (Score:2)
Thank You. My sides hurt I was laughing so hard. +55 funny.
Re:Excessive cleanliness (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't know about you kid, but a doc sticking his hand into my insides is one of those situations where I'm willing to forego the 'benefit' of having my immune system stimulated by germs being introduced in the process and ask him to wash up.
Re: (Score:2)
On a future operating room wall: To ensure your hands have been sterilized of all contaminents, please insert arms into this plasma conduit for 10 seconds before beginning any medical procedure.
Re: (Score:2)
And just pray that it's his hands that go under the plasma.
Re: (Score:2)
Or infection control was acknowledged as a more serious problem causing secondary infections due to more thorough analysis in the past century, accompanied by numerous other medical advances.
Or to put it differently;
Fun related fact: infection control became MORE of a problem when cars became common. Something about the emissions and blah blah blah.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Bugs in colon are not the same thing as bugs in my insides. Geometrically speaking the human form is essentially an oddly formed donuts with a hole down the center to pour food and drink. Yes, that is way over simplifying it, but all the same, what that article is talking about doesn't involve surgery and doesn't involve adding anything 'inside' you.
Re:Excessive cleanliness (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you remember that not everything applies to every situation? Because it doesn't.
The article about excessive cleanliness was relating to raising children. Basically, our immune systems are like most things in us in that they need to be used to develop. As such children need to get sick to have a well functioning immune system as adults. You don't want to keep them in a sterile environment or they'll never develop defenses.
However this is for hospitals. There you do want things as clean as possible. You have people who are in weakened states, their ability to fight off disease is less than normal. Also, you are bypassing a lot of their defenses in many cases. Your body is much more difficult to infect via the nose and mouth than directly via an open incision in your chest. As such, maximal clean is desirable.
This is not an all or nothing thing. Being super clean is not always good or always bad, it depends on the situation. You wouldn't want to buy this for home and turn your house in to a sterile cleanroom from which you never let your kid out. They'd have no immune system and be very vulnerable in the world. However you do want this for hospitals to ensure that wounded and sick people aren't made further sick by an infection that they can't fight in a weakened state.
Re: (Score:2)
Could this device be used to kill off bacteria in blood without ruining the blood? If so it could be used in a device somewhat like a unit used for kidney patients to save people with runaway internal infections.
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't read the article but I'm going to guess no. I suspect its alright for external use due to the fact that keratinized skin cells already are dead, just filled with keratin.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. I can remember the explanation, that our whole skin in 100% covered is a layer of bacteria. And that those good bacteria prevent the settling of bad bacterial. Which is an important part of what keeps us healthy.
It’s the same thing as in the stomach. No bacteria, no digestion! I once had a bad settlement of a very dominating helicobacter. Man, you’re fucked, if something bad comes along. That little shithead (not even an insult in this case ^^) not only wrecked my whole digestion, but c
Re: (Score:2)
Aside: Heartburn is correct. It's acid-reflux coming from the stomach to the esophageal tube.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
These are not being suggested for in-home or preschool whole body sanitizing. They're suggested for doctors or nurses working on people with infectious diseases and potentially compromised immune systems. The problem of excessive clenliness isn't caused by washing up, it's caused by obsessively slathering your child in sanitizing gel whenever he might have (god forbid) touched something.
Re: (Score:2)
Resistance? (Score:3, Insightful)
So how long until we see bacteria resistant to this device?
Re:Resistance? (Score:5, Insightful)
Never. There is a difference between removing the easy bugs, and complete annihilation of all bacteria it come into contact with. Its like saying the if we had enough super novas humans would become resistant to them.
Resistance is Useless (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A more apt analogy would be to say that out of all the intelligent species in the universe, there is bound to be some that know how to evade or cope with a supernovae.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It will denature any protein at all. It doesn't harm the surface of your skin only because that is already composed of dead cells. Bacteria are about as likely to evolve resistance to fire or concentrated nitric acid.
Re: (Score:2)
Upper layer of human skin is filled with Keratin. You could break the damn membrane and that shit still would be fine I'm sure.
Re: (Score:2)
Only matters if the "sterilised of all other life" environment is one that persists for long enough to be worth living in. You also have to consider exactly what would be necessary for an organism to survive this treatment, and how likely it is that such a thing exists anywhere, or would be able to develop by small, incremental, beneficial steps.
If you just sterilise for long enough to do surgery, then it goes back to non-sterile, and it's really hard to survive it, and it's rather hard to evolve resistanc
Re:Resistance? (Score:5, Informative)
In order to grow resistance, you have to leave a few alive and they have to have been left alive due in some part to something in their makeup causing them to be less vulnerable to the 'weapon'.
In other words, something that lived only because it was never touched isn't going to evolve into the superbug.
This eradicates the germs, they aren't being poisoned or having their chemical processes blocked (which is what most antibiotics do), it's ripping the germs apart at the atomic level. You don't develop a resistance to that.
Re:Resistance? (Score:4, Informative)
Your first sentence is true, the second is false. Position _can_ be a genetic advantage. "Something that lived only because it was never touched" happens all the time in biology, where the positional behaviour can be driven by genetics.
Birds avoid high altitude, herds don't generally jump off cliffs, etc. The same happens on a more primitive level, too. People think about genetics and think it's like a human arms race or something, but all natural selection needs is surviving members of a species and it will encode _whatever_ information made them survive. Please remember, we're not talking about single instances of plasma sterilization processes, but basically waiting for a mutation to come along that happens to encode the information which in turn makes a significant contribution to the survival of the bacteria. It might not happen often, but if it happens a few times, then that strain will spread.
Re: (Score:2)
If all the harmful bacteria evolves to avoid the human body then the problem is solved!
biological parallel to "with a big enough hammer" (Score:2)
This eradicates the germs, they aren't being poisoned or having their chemical processes blocked (which is what most antibiotics do), it's ripping the germs apart at the atomic level. You don't develop a resistance to that.
I'm sure similar thoughts were said about radiation, bleach, alcohol, and autoclaves. Turns out there are various critters resistant or immune to each.
However, if this manages to blow away prions (which aren't zapped by a number of things, including normal autoclaves), it'll be grea
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure similar thoughts were said about radiation, bleach, alcohol, and autoclaves. Turns out there are various critters resistant or immune to each.
None of which are harmful to us. They had to become so different in order to survive those things that our bodies no longer make a good habitat for them.
Re: (Score:2)
Hence why the alcohol hand washes don't create superbugs either - it just kills them wholesale, and developing an immunity to it is highly unlikely.
Now, if they could just do something like this that would kill viruses. We all know someone using Purel like it's going out of fashion because they think it's protecting them against H1N1... What if we actually had something that could (aside from hand-washing, of course)?
Re: (Score:2)
...and the worst part is... I never learned to reeeaaaddd!!!
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder why nobody came up with the idea of selling proper bacterial cultures to apply to the skin after killing everything there. or to eat after antibiotics. That would be a gigantic business!!
Perhaps because it already exists, and is called yogurt (with living cultures), or a proper and fresh sour-dough starter culture (as opposed to the cultures/starters that have gone bad for years, but still are used by bakeries). :)
But hmm... if I just search around for really nice starter cultures, and let a microb
Re: (Score:2)
Also: Why use such a high-tech device, wen you can just apply a iodine solution to your skin? Kills everything. bacterial, viruses, funguses, parasites. Of course you can never put it in your mouth or something, because it can just as well kill you (or at least make you very sick). But for the skin, what reasons are there not to use it?
It stains skin yellow, it's a bit of an irritant, and a small amount will be absorbed into your blood stream. Not a problem if you just want to sterilise a wound the wrap a bandage over it, but for general use hand-washing... well, people will be more inclined to use it if it leaves their skin the same colour as they started with.
Hmm... maybe you could use the staining in a hospital to make it easy to see who's washed their hands...
Re: (Score:2)
True Fact - Chuck Norris actually has a rather weak immune system due to a lack of simulation. Even viruses know not to mess with Chuck.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So how long until we see bacteria resistant to this device?
About 20 years after we see bacteria resistant to current gamma ray and UV sterilization techniques. Don't hold your breath. Sterilize means no bacteria or spores survive. Do you think they chose 12 seconds "at random" or because "it sounds cool"? No, 12 seconds is the time (with a probably safety margin built in) at which cultures have shown repeatedly that all bacteria are dead.
sweet (Score:3, Funny)
Re:sweet (Score:4, Insightful)
A plasma bathtub would be good but what *I* really want is a plasma TOOTHBRUSH...
Re:sweet (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I want plasma bog roll.
FINALLY (Score:2)
Kick-ass for hospitals (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Wouldn't you still need to wash hands to remove the larger bit of stuff stuck to your hands? Bacteria is the primary reason why you need to wash your hands all the time, but not the only one.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Removing bulk material is comparatively easy, when needed. Washing to decontaminate, as is required frequently in hospitals, is a much more arduous task.
as a nurse, you should know better (Score:2)
As a nurse I would welcome this as I have to wash and disinfect my hands several times a day.
As a nurse, I'd hope you would remember the same lecture on hand-washing I got when I started working for a hospital. Namely, that your nails are equally if not more important. What does this do for dirt under nails? Uh huh.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There’s this thing called “gloves”, you know. Just use the condom-like types, that don’t look as if you don’t want to touch the patient, and a bit of self-confidence to overcome stupid comments from stupid people, and you’re good. :)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Gets rid of body odor? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They're expensive; don't give them away. Just holster one on your belt and blast any smelly coworkers with your plasma gun.
Good bacteria? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good bacteria? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good bacteria? (Score:4, Informative)
The same thing that happens to them when you wash with antibacterial soap.
One of the most overrated products in the world. Everyone thinks they're getting "anti-bacterial" protection.
If you want "clean hands" while washing with antibacterial soap, make sure you do like we surgeons and wash each hand for 15 minutes. Even then you'll have critters living in your sweat glands... but your bacterial count will be very very low. For the regular "less time than it takes to sing the the birthday song" hand washing, anti-bacterial soap offers virtually no advantage over regular soap.
Now hands up who spends 30 mins washing their hands every time they touch something.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
being able to fairly safely eat a sandwich with your hands?
You have your own blend of bacteria, and shouldn't have trouble with a sandwich even if you haven't washed your hands. After all, those Peyer's patches [wikipedia.org] should count for something in identifying and producing antibodies for your home blend of bacteria.
The trouble is when a) someone prepares your sandwich without washing their hands, thus inoculating you with strange bacteria and b) when you touch other peop
Re: (Score:2)
Not at all should be good enough, as long as you haven't been handling raw meat or dirt, and your immune system is functioning at all.
Re: (Score:2)
I routinely eat stuff I drop on the floor, touch doorknobs and car doors, eat from other people's forks, drink from their straws, shake their sweaty hands, eat moldy bread and squishy apples, and I'm NEVER sick.
Re:Good bacteria? (Score:4, Insightful)
Its about time we have a decent solution instead of 15 mins of washing, where are the scientists on this one, 15 mins * few times a day * 1000000 surgens at their salary levels = billions of dollars wasted time.
There's a problem with your accounting: you're forgetting to offset this by the cost of millions of infected patients staying longer at the hospital, the antibiotics used, and the inevitable fatalities.
The standard infection rate for most wounds is around 10% in nature. Aseptic procedure (hand washing, sterile equipment, etc) has brought this down to under 1%. So tack on a week or so in the hospital (plus the fatalities) for 9% of all surgeries performed in the world, then compare it to hand washing.
Not to mention the ethical side. We wash our hands because it's part of our "do no harm" credo.
Re: (Score:2)
More importantly, how to replenish your good bacteria?
The same problem exists with antibacterial soap, after using it and making yourself more vulnerable to harmful bacteria, how do you replace the good defensive bacteria you had in the first place that keeps you healthy? (Since you've just created an environment ripe for harmful bacteria to flourish.)
Obviously this new process also affects viruses and fungi, although it makes no mention of any impact to fungal spores in TFA.
Re: (Score:2)
Plasma knows neither good nor evil, it kills them all the same. Further, these plasmas probably destroy a good deal of the oils in your skin as well. Which probably means that if you sterilized your hands too much using non-equilibrium plasma you are more likely to have dry, rough skin.
Mechanism (Score:2)
Whereas an autoclave, which sterilizes using heat, only works on the proton, quark, and meringue pie levels?
Re: (Score:2)
No, but wouldn't regular anti-bacterial soap work on the molecular level?
If you could get all health-care workers to regularly put their hands in an autoclave, then maybe that would be a better solution.
Babylon 5 showed something like ths (Score:3, Interesting)
Funny how you can often find references in fiction to things that later become reality...
Of course... (Score:2)
The big question is, how soon can we turn this into some sort of weapon?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The big question is, how soon can we turn this into some sort of weapon?
The device does look like an oven...
You know who else loved ovens?
I'll bite (Score:4, Funny)
Rachael Ray [freakingnews.com]?
Re: (Score:2)
Rachael Ray [freakingnews.com]?
So you're proposing we call the weaponized form of this device a Rachael Ray? ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
a true "wtf" (Score:2, Interesting)
this belongs on the science equivalent of www.thedailywtf.com
plasma = uncontrolled mix of highly reactive chemicals
highly reactive chemicals = damage to skin at some level
thus we have that old item, the therapeutic index roughy ratio of harm to good
however,
highly reactive chemcials = bugs getting resistant
how ? learning to live deeper in the skin (bad for you)
learning to make enzymes that deto the highly reactive chemicals (radical quenchers like SOD)
learning to elaborte low molecular weight or high molecu
Is harmless to skin? (Score:2)
So was phenol, for that matter. If it kills bacteria in 12 seconds, it's "not nice stuff". Oh yeah maybe the keratin on your skin will prevent it from penetrating. What if it gets in your sweat glands. What if your skin has a lesion, and the keratin is interrupted...
This one gets filed in the "call me when we've been using it safely for 20 years" category. Until then I will stick to soap and water.
Re: (Score:2)
What if your skin has a lesion, and the keratin is interrupted...
then your hands melt
Re: (Score:2)
It's a matter of the amounts. Phenol can get past your skin and in to general circulation quite easily. There's a lot more phenol molecules in a liquid cleaner than there will be free radicals in the plasma. The free radicals will also neutralize themselves quickly as they contact proteins.
Soap and water are just fine though so unless you're a doctor or nurse you will probably want to stay with those anyway for simple practicality.
Re: (Score:2)
So was phenol, for that matter. If it kills bacteria in 12 seconds, it's "not nice stuff". Oh yeah maybe the keratin on your skin will prevent it from penetrating. What if it gets in your sweat glands. What if your skin has a lesion, and the keratin is interrupted...
Well, soap and water is "not nice stuff" too, if you need to wash your hands all the time, like doctors and nurses should do between meeting patients.
This one gets filed in the "call me when we've been using it safely for 20 years" category. Until then I will stick to soap and water.
It's also worth noting that this does not remove any bacteria, it just kills them... And also it probably doesn't work as well on dirty hands, the dirt would probably protect the bacteria from plasma reactions. So soap isn't obsolete yet.
What? (Score:2)
Plasma Device Kills ... Skin In Seconds
Sorry, but I always read it as this. And TFS is just a big bunch of white noise after this...
Psoriasis (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If it's germ free and not large enough to be visible, does it matter?
Re:Surface only, though? (Score:5, Interesting)
If it's germ free and not large enough to be visible, does it matter?
It does if you're a surgeon. There's something called the foreign body response [wikipedia.org], and we've seen it happen even with particles of the STERILE talc they line some surgical gloves with to make them easier to put on. Problems aren't only caused by bacteria. Depending on the person's immune response, virtually anything can cause a life-threatening reaction to normally "inert" things like nylon suture or titanium rods/sutures. Things like dirt and human hair are more likely to provoke a reaction.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Okay, I know this is off-topic... (Score:5, Funny)
That's just coincidental. Besides there were FIVE elements; Fire, water, earth, air and orange haired Ukrainian chick.
Re: (Score:2)
No, the fifth element was gold, not Gauldi.
Re:Okay, I know this is off-topic... (Score:5, Informative)
That's just coincidental. Besides there were FIVE elements; Fire, water, earth, air and orange haired Ukrainian chick.
Everyone knows that the fifth element is Heart and is represented by a South American with a monkey. Source [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Okay, I know this is off-topic... (Score:5, Funny)
Ninety seconds? Look at who thinks he's a bigshot, Mr. "I'm not a minute-man anymore". Now to click "post anonymously" to protect myself from embarrassment.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Um, guys? The Fifth Element was LOVE? HELLOOOOOO?
What, and you don't consider "Milla Jovovich" and "love" to be interchangeable?
Re: (Score:2)
They do actually correspond pretty well, but that is only when you ignore the states of matter that occur at very low temperatures (superfluids, superconductors, Bose-Einstein condensates) and at very high temperatures (quark-gluon plasma).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And four compass directions: North, South, East, and West. The bible mentions the four corners of the (flat, square) Earth too. All these references to four! Before you know it, your post will get modded to Score: 4, Interesting.
Re: (Score:2)
Only in Western tradition. In China, there were five - Fire, Earth, Water, Metal, and Wood. They're also associated with points of the compass, which in theory ought to make it easier to navigate the gigantic Elements mall in Hong Kong, but in my experience you just wind up wandering in circles, wondering how the hell you wound up back in the 'Metal' section yet again when all you want is a coffee at Starbucks.
Apparently 'you are here' marks on maps are not a part of Eastern tradition.
Re: (Score:2)
But what about heart? Without heart you don't get Captain Planet!
Re: (Score:2)
But I find it interesting that according to ancient alchemy there were four "elements" (fire, water, earth, and air), and according to modern science there are four "states of matter" (plasma, liquid, solid, and gaseous).
They fit too (plasma = fire, water = liquid, etc), but just to throw a monkey wrench in your "wisdom of the ancient" musings, the Asian alchemists had 5 elements (metal and wood instead of earth, IIRC).
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go re-read Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle.