Copper as an Antimicrobial – Clinical Trials (Part 3 of 3)
By Harold Michels, Copper Development Association Senior Vice President of Technology and Technical Services
Harold Michels, PhD, senior vice president of technology and technical services for the Copper Development Association, spearheaded the effort to get EPA registration of copper alloys as an antimicrobial. The EPA registration became official in 2008. Clinical trials focusing on the ability of copper metals to kill deadly pathogens, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) on touch surfaces are being carried out at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, the Medical University of South Carolina and the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center, both in Charleston, S.C. Dr. Michels gives an update.
We’re at a critical point in this project. We started using copper components in hospital rooms in late September 2009. Before that, our time was spent developing and approving protocols, measuring the amount of bacteria in the rooms and fabricating the copper components to be installed there. We hope to demonstrate – and I’m confident we will – a reduction in bioload on the copper vs. the non-copper surfaces. The doctors leading our clinical trials will also look at changes in infection rates in the next phase of the trials. Apparently no one ever demonstrated a reduction in infection rates as a consequence of a reduction in surface bioload. So this would be a first, but they feel the database should be robust enough to do it.
What we need now is to get the people who can make these components out of copper alloys to do it and believe it is a worthwhile business endeavor. We could use copper alloys for hospital beds, IV poles or even the mundane items, like rails along the hallway, chairs in the visitor waiting rooms, bathroom fixtures and elevator buttons. There’s also potential for a retrofit market, where we can substitute copper items for things like doorknobs, for example.
We have a public health registration. We can say we killed within two hours 99.9 % of the five bacteria we tested, including MRSA. To our knowledge it’s the only time they ever granted a public health registration to a solid or coating. So this is landmark. Our competitors don’t have this public health registration, but I’m sure they’re trying to get it.
If you manufacture copper alloys and would like to like to learn more about what we’re doing, you can contact me: hmichels@cda.copper.org. I especially want to hear from component makers. I’d like to talk to you about the unique antimicrobial properties of copper.
Within the last year; I have had new requests from the Health and Dental fields for information and copper products for use in labs and offices. I like the idea of arm rests on chairs fitted with copper. Counters have been the most requested product, with its antimicrobial properties, it makes sense to protect work surfaces naturally without chemicals etc.