Metallic copper surfaces kill microbes on contact, decimating their populations, according to a paper in the February 2011 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. They do so literally in minutes, by causing massive membrane damage after about a minute's exposure, says the study's corresponding author, Gregor Grass of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This is the first study to demonstrate this mechanism of bacteriocide.
"When microbes were exposed to copper surfaces, we observed contact killing to take place at the rate of tens to hundreds of millions of bacterial cells within minutes," says Grass. "This means that usually no live microorganisms can be recovered from copper surfaces after exposure."
Thus, such surfaces could provide a critical passive defense against pathogens in hospitals, where hospital-acquired infections are becoming increasingly common and costly.
It is important to note that only dry copper surfaces are amazingly lethal to bacteria. The difference between dry and wet surfaces, such as copper pipes, is that only dry surfaces are inhospitable environments for bacterial growth. Bacteria can easily grow and reproduce in wet environments, and in so doing, they can develop resistance to copper. Resistance has not been observed to develop on dry copper surfaces.
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