The optimisation of infection control is high on the agenda of all involved in health care; by achieving it, the health and wellbeing of patients as well as staff and visitors is positively affected. However, maintaining bacterial and viral free surfaces is challenging, as every human touch transfers microorganisms to and from surfaces to the next point of contact. Signo Nanocare UK’s wipe-on self-disinfection surface coating, Liquid Guard®, delivers a new constant method of killing and preventing the transfer of transient microorganisms between hands and surfaces. The key to a spray-wipe and air-cure application being able to deliver permanent, long-term anti-bac / viral performance is nano-scale coating technology.
What are nano coatings?
A nano coatings or a nano ceramic coating, in simple terms, is a liquid layer of silicon Si02 (sand) approximately 100 nm thick, that when applied to a substrate, will bond with it forming a ‘glass-like’ barrier. The coating becomes part of the substrate – enhancing performance and delivering new functionality to the substrate.
Under the radar, nano coatings have already become part of everyday life and can be easily overlooked. For example, they’re used to produce the long-term beading and easy clean properties of shower glass, windscreens and windows, as well as for the water repellence of coats and stain resistance of carpets.
Liquid Guard® is a nano coating that combines new anti-bac technology, which, when applied to hard and absorbent surfaces provides a long-term, permanently bonded layer that physically ‘kills’ microorganisms on contact. The combination of nano technology and the anti-bac leaves the surface with a layer of invisible microscopic ‘spikes’. These puncture the cell wall of any microorganisms that land on the surface, killing the cell on contact. This method of physical kill on surface contact provides the critical performance benefit of “non-mutation”.
In contrast, the effectiveness of the chemical kill action of everyday anti-bac cleaning liquids can be affected by the strength of the chemical mix, the quantities applied, and how evenly it is spread. This can leave areas where microorganisms such as Influenza A, MRSA, E-coli, may not be killed outright – consequently allowing them to mutate and become increasingly resistant to the anti-bac chemical, and consequently increasing the risk of infection.
Liquid Guard doesn’t allow ‘pools’ of bacteria to develop, because every cell is ‘killed’ on contact with the coated surface, prohibiting the mutation of organisms and preventing the vicious cycle of increasingly antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Applying Liquid Guard coating as part of a deep clean will replace the need to use transient anti-bac cleaners which only perform for a moment in time – leaving the surface prone to being contaminated in the next instant. Without this protection, bacterial viral and fungal infections are constantly transferred to the surface through hourly and daily contact from hands, pens, bags etc- in-between cleaning. Simon Mercer, MD of Signo Nanocare UK, clarified : “Due to bacteria being constantly killed between cleans, Liquid Guard surfaces don’t become a ‘hot bed’ of microorganisms that are transferred to and from other surfaces during the everyday movement of people between areas; it also makes surfaces easy to clean.”
Liquid Guard provides all care home managers, proprietors and workers a year-long independently certified reassurance that hand-surface-hand transfer of MRSA , E.coli , Salmonella, Influenza A (et al) will be eliminated from reception to communal areas to individual bedrooms – and all the door handles and light switches in between!!