“Copper kills coronavirus. Why aren’t our surfaces covered in it?” [Fast Company]. “When influenzas, bacteria like E. coli, superbugs like MRSA, or even coronaviruses land on most hard surfaces, they can live for up to four to five days. But when they land on copper, and copper alloys like brass, they die within minutes. “We’ve seen viruses just blow apart,” says Bill Keevil, professor of environmental healthcare at the University of Southampton. ‘They land on copper and it just degrades them.’ No wonder that in India, people have been drinking out of copper cups for millennia. Even here in the United States, a copper line brings in your drinking water. Copper is a natural, passive, antimicrobial material. It can self-sterilize its surface without the need for electricity or bleach… In the face of an unavoidable future full of global pandemics, we should be using copper in healthcare, public transit, and even our homes. And while it’s too late to stop COVID-19, it’s not too early to think about our next pandemic.”

During the active period of this investigation, samples of the water passing to the filter and the effluent of the filter were taken daily for bacterial examination. The bacterial results obtained from the filter during this experiment, when compared with those obtained during the year previous to the application of copper sulphate to the raw water, show no gain in acterial removal on account of the use of the copper sulphate—rather the reverse. During the year previous to the use of copper sulphate, the raw water contained 8,300 bacteria per c.c. and he effluent, 73 bacteria per c.c.—or a bacterial efficiency of 99.12 per cent. During the year of copper sulphate treatment, the raw water contained 7.400 bacteria per c.c., and the effluent of the filter, 114 per c.c.—a bacterial efficiency of 98.5 per cent, o.62 of I per cent less than during the previous year. During both years practically every cubic centimeter sample of the raw water that was tested contained B. coli. The effluent of the filter during the year before the copper treatment contained B. coli in 13.5 per cent of the cubic centimeter samples examined, and during the year of copper treatment it was found in 26 per cent of the cubic centimeter samples examined.

In the experiments in which the waters have been exposed to metallic copper, about 15 liters of water were used in every case, except in the experiments in which a number of metals were under comparison, in which case the volume of water used was about 1,000 c.c." -The containers in the metal experiments have in some cases been of copper, with the control in enameled ware or in glazed stoneware, and in others the waters have been placed in glass and the metals inserted as thin sheets.

The removal of bacteria, B. coli and B. typhosus, by allowing a water to stand in copper vessels for short periods, while occasionally effective, is not sure, and the time necessary to accomplish complete sterilization is so long that the method would be of no practical value to the ordinary user. Furthermore, metallic copper seems to have little more germicidal power than iron, tin, zinc, or aluminum.

Labels: Answered better than asked

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