Making Medical Clothing That Kills Bugs (economist.com) 49
Many doctors now are likely to wear everyday clothes, or blue or green "scrubs", which are said to reduce eye strain in brightly-lit operating theatres. White coats are reckoned to be capable of spreading diseases as easily as clothing of any other colour, especially when long sleeves brush against multiple surfaces. Many clinics and hospitals now have a "bare below the elbows" policy for staff, whether in uniform or their own clothes. This is also supposed to encourage more thorough handwashing. What, though, if the clothes worn by medical staff could actively help prevent bugs being passed around? From a report: Some metals, such as gold and silver, have natural antibacterial properties and are used to coat certain solid items, such as medical implants. But putting metallic coatings onto stretchy and foldable fabrics is tricky, and those coatings can quickly be swept away in a washing machine. What is needed, reckons Liu Xuqing of the University of Manchester, in England, is a way to make antibacterial coatings for fabrics that, quite literally, hold tight.
Instead of gold or silver, Dr Liu's metal of choice is copper. This exhibits the same bug-killing properties but has the benefit of being an awful lot cheaper than those two precious metals, making a commercial coating process easier to devise. Working with colleagues from two Chinese institutions, Northwest Minzu University in Lanzhou and Southwest University in Chongqing, Dr Liu has been treating samples of fabric with a chemical process that grafts what is called a "polymer brush" onto their surfaces. As the name suggests, when viewed at a resolution of a few nanometres (billionths of a metre) through an electron microscope, the polymer strands look like tiny protruding bristles. That done they use a second chemical procedure to coat the bristles with a catalyst.
After this, they immerse the fabric in a copper-containing solution from which the catalyst causes the metal to precipitate and form tiny particles that anchor themselves to the polymer brush. Indeed, they bond so tightly that Dr Liu compares the resulting coating to reinforced concrete. Yet the process takes place at such a minute scale on the surface of the fabric that it should not affect the feel or quality of the finished material.
Instead of gold or silver, Dr Liu's metal of choice is copper. This exhibits the same bug-killing properties but has the benefit of being an awful lot cheaper than those two precious metals, making a commercial coating process easier to devise. Working with colleagues from two Chinese institutions, Northwest Minzu University in Lanzhou and Southwest University in Chongqing, Dr Liu has been treating samples of fabric with a chemical process that grafts what is called a "polymer brush" onto their surfaces. As the name suggests, when viewed at a resolution of a few nanometres (billionths of a metre) through an electron microscope, the polymer strands look like tiny protruding bristles. That done they use a second chemical procedure to coat the bristles with a catalyst.
After this, they immerse the fabric in a copper-containing solution from which the catalyst causes the metal to precipitate and form tiny particles that anchor themselves to the polymer brush. Indeed, they bond so tightly that Dr Liu compares the resulting coating to reinforced concrete. Yet the process takes place at such a minute scale on the surface of the fabric that it should not affect the feel or quality of the finished material.
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Not all of us who have been doing it for millennia, not all... ;-/
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Utensils are macro-scale copper, not nano-scale.
Looking at the can of spray-on electroplating compound I have, it explicitly says "These nano-particles of metal can cause respiratory damage. Always wear proper respiratory gear and use this product in a well-ventilated area."
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Green Surgical Scrubs (Score:4, Informative)
Green surgical scrubs are for more than just reducing eye strain. Green is the opposite of red in the opponent process [wikipedia.org] of how the human visual system works. Our blood is red, due to the iron content, so green scrubs provide the best contrast and thus ensure blood is most visible.
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I guess it is a good thing most Med School Grads are Women, Red Green Colorblindness is much more common with males.
Wearable Faraday cage (Score:4, Funny)
"Bugs", and no, it would barely matter (Score:3)
First, please stop talking to us like we are stoned high schoolers. "Bugs" -> bacteria/viruses? "What, though, if" -> "Imagine if"
Second, no, having antibacterial threads would make almost no difference in the average medical facility. Just think of what gets tracked in on visitor shoes, lands on medical personnel's socks or skin after trips to the bathroom, trips between sick patients and between hand washings, and is festering in seldom-cleaned corners/ducts/etc.
Re: "Bugs", and no, it would barely matter (Score:1)
Well I agree it would seem that this ought to be the case, but actually it is rather more complicated than that.
Bacteria are easy to destroy on floors, surfaces mostly clean easily, shoes are easily covered when moving in critical areas, hands and face wash easily. But what causes the regrowth of bacteria in a hospital context is reservoirs; places where those cleaning processes donâ(TM)t get to. And actually clothing is one of those areas; consultants wear the same suits regularly, the same trousers,
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places where those cleaning processes donâ(TM)t get to.
In the UK NHS one of the things theyâ(TM)ve done to stop this is to urge consultants not to wear ordinary ties, because ties are rarely washed but they are regularly handled. It turns out that a consultantâ(TM)s tie is one of the most likely reservoirs for persistent hospital infections.
Here's a nickel, kid, go get yourself a proper keyboard...
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Re: "Bugs", and no, it would barely matter (Score:4, Insightful)
"advertise antibacterial tie line"
How 19th century.
Nowadays, you contribute $50000 to your representative's campaign fund, and he or she conjures up a law REQUIRING individuals in medical facilities to wear antibacterial ties.
Thank god the language police are here! (Score:2)
It's so great the language police is here to protect us. What a horror it is for some one to refer to bacteria as "bugs"!
Uh, on... (Score:1)
Best practices. (Score:3)
Normally hospitals will follow best practices to reduce infections. When they pay attention to them and enforce these rules hard, infection rate on patients go way down. The biggest concern with this technology is the fact it is a lot of money for a marginal benefit, and could give organizations a false sense of security and be more lax on their practices.
Japanese Indigo (Score:2)
Not exactly sure why they'd go through some crazy process to put copper in fabric. The Japanese Indigo plant has long exhibited antibacterial properties. Why not just dye scrubs with that?
https://link.springer.com/arti... [springer.com]
There's a reason to use silver (Score:2)
Instead of gold or silver, Dr Liu's metal of choice is copper. This exhibits the same bug-killing properties but has the benefit of being an awful lot cheaper than those two precious metals
But doesn't copper tarnish/oxidize more easily? Sure it would work great while it's pure copper. But wash it a few times and I doubt it will do any good.
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Brass doesn't tarnish so easily. Copper does.
Nurses get sporty (Score:3)
Sports clothes manufacturers have produced silver based bug killing garments for years, albeit their only interest was to kill the bacteria eating your sweat and creating the ominous BO stink.
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Yes, and those polyester garments still stink as hell. Compared to cotton, which doesn't start stinking nearly as fast. Of course cotton clothing sucks for sports for other reasons.
What kills me... (Score:4, Insightful)
What kills me is how often I see medical staff wearing their scrubs out in public. I'm a long ways from a germophobe but a very significant part of their job is working with people with all sorts of infections and diseases, there could be anything on those things. It's great they can just walk out of work without changing but I'd rather not get a staff infection because a nurse brushed up against me while I was waiting in line for a sandwich at lunch time.
A little off topic I know but if scrubs were able to "prevent bugs being passed around" I'd feel a little better standing by these people.
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By the way, if you think that's scary, you know who was responsible for cleaning all the surfaces in the OR before and after each operation? Me, when I was a mere volunteer still in high school. Which wasn't nearly as fun as what I got to do
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Ha! "staff infection"! You kill me.
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Hahaha. I didn't even notice I did that.
staph infection
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I thought it appropriate for the posting. With your permission, I plan on using that spelling whenever talking about hospital germs :)
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Why worry about that when you can worry about every fourth person [webmd.com] around you? Your staff has staph, their staff has staph, the lunch staff has staph...
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"Why worry about rubbing against people who's job it is to work with the diseased and can't even be bothered to change their clothes." is what you're telling me here.
"Yes, because "everything must be sterile""
Congratulations, that's you just making shit up. I never insisted on such.
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Hypocrite. Congratulations, that's you just making shit up. I never wrote such.
hardly. [vox.com] And whether you insisted on it is not relevant to the argumen
DDT is good for me~~ (Score:1)