Health: Hospitals Fight Infections With - Copper? - wcbstv.com.
It's been recognized as a bacteria-fighting material for thousands of years, and for this study, it's been installed in high-touch areas in hospitals. "Once we put the copper in, we were really pleasantly surprised at how well copper worked and how quickly it brought the levels down. The data were really very convincing," Dr. Michael Schmidt, of the Medical University of South Carolina, says. "We were really shocked, at first, at how many microbes were on surfaces like bed rails, even in spite of the best efforts of our cleaning crews." Copper surfaces reduced the bacteria in the intensive care unit by more than 90 percent, but will that translate into fewer hospital-acquired infections? "It should follow that it, indeed, does," Dr. Schmidt says. "We're studying this issue in the intensive care unit because, while the infection rate in a hospital is one in 20, the infection rate in an ICU room is three out of 10."
