A Copper Bedrail Could Cut Back On Infections For Hospital Patients

NPR reports A Copper Bedrail Could Cut Back On Infections For Hospital Patients

"Hospital bed safety railings are a major source of these infections. That's what Constanza Correa, 33, and her colleagues have found in their research in Santiago, Chile. They've taken on the problem by replacing them, since 2013, with railings made of copper, an anti-microbial element.

Copper definitely wipes out microbes. 'Bacteria, yeasts and viruses are rapidly killed on metallic copper surfaces, and the term 'contact killing' has been coined for this process,' wrote the authors of an article on copper in Applied and Environmental Microbiology. That knowledge has been around a very long time. The journal article cites an Egyptian medical text, written around 2600-2000 B.C., that cites the use of copper to sterilize chest wounds and drinking water."

That's surprising and kind of clever, but I suspect that if this was deployed widely we would start to see a rash of hospital bed railing theft the way we're seeing one for copper pipes and wiring. I also wonder how often they'd need to polish them to avoid tarnish.