Abstract
Environmental disinfection in a health care setting is an important aspect of infection control. Recently, there has been interest in the use of vapor- and gas-based treatments for decontamination of surfaces and rooms. We describe preliminary results for an ozone-based decontamination of surfaces seeded with a range of vegetative cells and spores of bacteria of clinical relevance. The efficacy of the approach for room sanitization was also assessed. The protocol included use of a quenching agent to rapidly reduce ozone concentrations to safe levels allowing treatment times of less than 1 h for the majority of organisms tested. Using bacteria seeded onto agar plates and solid surfaces, reductions in bacterial load of greater than 3 log values were recorded for a number of organisms including Escherichia coli and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Application of the process in a 30 m3 room showed similar reductions in viable counts for these organisms and for Clostridium difficile spores. We suggest that the potential of this ozone-quench approach should be further evaluated for disinfection or decontamination of healthcare environments.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 928-933 |
Number of pages | 0 |
Journal | Can J Microbiol |
Volume | 55 |
Issue number | 8 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Aug 2009 |
Keywords
- Decontamination
- Environmental Microbiology
- Infection Control
- Microbial Viability
- Ozone