FYI Here's an interesting article from Design News:
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AK has high hopes for hygienic steel
By Greg Farnum, Metals Editor
Detroit - Who would want to use steel to kill germs? AK Steel
(Middleton, OH) is hoping that American consumers will, and betting
they will choose its AgION-coated stainless and carbon steels to do it.
AgION, an antimicrobial compound that kills bacteria, mold and fungus,
is blended with an epoxy resin and roll coated or electrostatically
applied to the surface of the steel. It can keep on killing for
decades, depending on the formulation. That sounds like a good idea to
Frigidaire, which will soon begin marketing refrigerators and other
appliances made with AK's AgION-coated steel. Manufacturers of air
conditioning systems, ice-making machines and other products are also
interested, and according to Britain's Financial Times, AK is also
talking with a major fast food company.
How does AgION work? Basically it's a combination of silver, which has
long been known to have antimicrobial properties, and zeolite, a mineral
which for the last two decades has formed the active ingredient in a
variety of household odor and mildew removal products. The primary
compound, silver zeolite, is manufactured by the Sinanen company of
Japan, then formulated into a variety of application-specific compounds
by AgION Technologies LLC of Wakefield, MA. It's a very porous
compound, allowing moisture from the atmosphere to enter the coating and
initiate an ion exchange - that is, silver ions are pulled from the
AgION and replaced with sodium ions from the atmosphere. This ion
exchange takes place in a slow, controlled fashion, and, as mentioned
above, can continue for years.
These silver ions, dancing on the coated surface of the steel, are
poison to microbes, attacking them in three possible ways: after being
ingested by the microbe they can destroy the organism's cell wall;
through an oxidation process, the ions can cause cellular respiration to
be blocked, suffocating the microbe; and the silver ions can bind to
certain locations on the microbe's DNA structure, preventing cell
replication.
Strong stuff. Is it safe? The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
thinks so - it has approved its use, though with more modest claims.
The EPA recognizes AgION as effective in preventing the growth of the
bacteria, mold and fungus that cause odor and stains; they have not yet
signed off on claims that it kills germs that cause illness. The Food
and Drug Administration has approved AgION for use in plastic film used
to wrap food.
Longer range, there is the question of antibiotic resistance, a growing
problem in our new century. Will the spread of AgION-coated material
help make pesky microbes even more resistant to our medicines?
AK Steel and AgION Technologies don't think so. They note that the
antibiotic pills your doctor gives you to fight infection are organic
microbials. These attack one particular "site" on the targeted
organism. Inorganic microbials like AgION's silver zeolite, on the
other hand, attack multiple sites. That's important because, as AK
Steel explains in a backgrounder on the subject, "resistance occurs when
a microorganism develops a mechanism to counteract the mechanism used by
the antimicrobial. For example, resistance to penicillin was caused
when certain strains of bacteria produced an enzyme that clipped the
penicillin molecule in half, rendering it ineffective. The probability
of developing resistance to a single mechanism used by an antimicrobial
is much higher than that of developing resistance to the multiple
mechanisms employed by inorganic antimicrobials."
For more information on AK's new germ-killing steel, visit:
http://article.designnews.com/UM/T.ASP?A13.98.267.2.350715430
To learn more about AgION Technologies, visit:
http://article.designnews.com/UM/T.ASP?A13.98.267.3.350715430
(And remember to wash your hands.)
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