Healthcare Facilities Take Aim to Stop Spread of Disease

There exists another world parallel to our own. And while we may not be able to see its occupants, we can feel their presence. This is not some alternate universe, or ethereal spirit realm, but the very real world of germs, mold, fungi and other microbes – and keeping them from spreading can be tough. According to physicians the key to stopping the spread of disease is to control or prevent cross contamination of bacteria, viruses, fungi and now there is concern about prions which are kind of microbe linked to some really nasty diseases like Mad Cow, which are none of the previous three. The objective is to try to prevent the pathogenic growth and transfer of organisms that are on surfaces or on hands. Basically the goal is to kill the bugs, kill the organisms that can cause disease and make sure that they don’t get transferred from one patient to another.

Minimizing our exposure to potentially harmful microorganisms has always been challenging. Especially in areas were they tend to concentrate such as hospitals, medical offices, and animal care facilities. Because of the nature of the equipment used and type of treatments performed, dental offices have proven to be particularly susceptible to microbial infestations. Dentist Sam Dominick, “”The human mouth is a pretty vulgar place to be. There’s a lot of bacteria and bugs living inside there. And between the transfer of those either on hands, or via aerosol it spreads pretty rapidly and a pretty good distance out of the mouth and you need to make sure you keep control of that. Touching surfaces is an issue for us in dentistry because we tend to what we call finger paint a lot while we’re treating our patients. The challenge in a dental practice is to perform a procedure and not take our hands that have been inside a patients mouth that have been contaminated and spread what is on our hands about the treatment room.”

To provide the patients and employees with as safe an environment as possible the staff of many dental practices and other healthcare facilities are using a line of anti-microbial and disinfectant products developed by chemists and physicians with a company called Micrylium. These are not your typical household or even industrial grade antibacterial cleaners. The various formulations have been designed to be safely applied to surfaces, impression materials, X-rays, and even hands. In laboratory tests, the solutions have been shown to kill common bacteria and viruses quicker and more efficiently than others on the market. The effectiveness of the products is based on a patented technology known as “Surf-alls”. Dean Swift with Mycrilium explains, Surf-alls are collections of polymers which create what we call an osmotic gradient across the cell membrane this enables our chemistry to desiccate and to draw the mineral and vitamin elements of the bacteria out of its wall causing rapid death. For many years really the fastest kill times available for office based practitioners and clinicians that had to work with some type of chemistry, the times were in the range of 10 minutes against tuberculosis or many of the viruses. Tuberculosis is known as the benchmark organism for microbiologists, if you manage to kill the tuberculosis organism then definitely you will kill the others such salmonella, e-coli and easier bacteria to kill, with the surf-all technology we’ve been able to reduce kill times from the ten minutes which was the norm down to 50 seconds against both the tuberculoses and the non-enveloped viruses”. That is a significant difference that has been documented in peer-reviewed journals. And while the “biological” approach taken by these next generation anti-microbials is deadly to the little beasties, the lack of harsh chemicals make them safer for the environment and the humans who use them. If you can picture a professional environment whether that’s a veterinary office, a tattoo studio, an esthetician, a dentist, a medical doctor – all of these situations require cleaning and disinfecting perhaps twelve to twenty times a day. Now the user the person who’s actually disinfecting and cleaning traditionally is exposed to, for the most part very harsh and toxic chemicals. This is a much more targeted approach if you will that kills the bugs and minimizes “collateral damage” so to speak.

Part of the practice or maintaining good health means protecting ourselves from potential harm. In a world where even obvious hazards are sometimes unavoidable, it can be comforting to know there are professionals dedicated to providing some defense against the unseen toxins all around us.