Hospital to be almost germ-free

The City of Hope National Medical Center in Los Angeles is building a hospital with the largest capacity for bone marrow transplantation in the U.S. and will use silver in its ductwork to keep the facilities largely germ-free.

Transplantation techniques are applied to certain cancers and a wide array of other diseases, including auto-immune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and lupus. These procedures must take place in extremely clean environments.

AK Steel of Middletown, Ohio, is donating steel coated with the AgION antimicrobial compound to the 144-bed, 337,000-sq.-ft., $150-million Helford Clinical Research Hospital in Duarte, Calif. The hospital is slated for completion in 2004.

The antimicrobial-coated steels will be used mainly in the facility’s air-handling ductwork but may be expanded to other applications, such as stainless steel door hardware, push plates, and light-switch plates. Ductwork is especially prone to bacteria build-up and becomes critical in a facility that handles patients with auto-immune diseases, where the slightest bacterial intrusion could mean death.

“Antimicrobial-coated steel is a natural fit for our state-of-the-art hospital,” says Gil Schwartzberg, president and chief executive officer of City of Hope. “Patients undergoing treatment for cancer and other life-threatening diseases often have weakened immune systems. Clean environments are of critical importance, and our goal is to create a new standard of cleanliness.”

AgION Technologies, which provides the silver-based antimicrobial compound to AK Steel, is based in Wakefield, Mass.

The AgION product has two key components to suppress the growth of microbes. Zeolite, a naturally occurring mineral, acts as a reservoir to store silver ions. When moisture is in the air, even in small amounts, the zeolite acts as an ion pump, providing controlled release of silver ions into the environment. This controlled release provides continuous antimicrobial protection. The zeolite-silver ion compound is imbedded into steel or other products to provide anti-bacterial abilities.

The preceding is from Silver News, published by the Washington, D.C.-based Silver Institute.

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