Weighing in on the healing properties of silver and copper

In October I read Melinda Beck's article Metal: Panacea or Placebo published in The Wall Street Journal. I tucked the url inside my not-so-organized favorites because I planned to explore this subject further. Oh... so many back burners pushed further and further back in my favorites. Arghh...

Anyway, Beck wrote an extremely thorough reporting of various metals used for health conditions, both in the past and presently. And, I will admit her article is an informative and interesting read. However, I felt at the time the slant of the article was giving copper (and all metals in general) a bit of a bad rap. So, today, my spirit was rallied when I read about Dana Filoti incorporating the antimicrobial properties of silver and copper to create thin films to help reduce infections rampant in hospital settings.

Filoti is a graduate student in physics at the University of New Hampshire. While researching the hypothesis that a silver and copper might work best in concert to kill bacteria she has reportedly been able to reduce the amount of microbes present on a surface by 99 percent. That's pretty darn impressive! Her findings were presented today (November 12) at a meeting of the scientific society AVS in San Jose.

Last year the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officially registered copper alloys, allowing them to be marketed with the label "kills 99.9% of bacteria within two hours."

Sami Sarkis / Getty Images

_{Source: Physorg.com, ICT (Infectioncontroltoday.com)
Join Me on Facebook | Get My Twitter Updates}