
Copper destroys viruses and bacteria; why isn't it everywhere? - pjkundert
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xgqkyw/copper-destroys-viruses-and-bacteria-why-isnt-it-everywhere
======
pjkundert
Copper and Silver appear to have a protective effect vs. bacterial, viral and
fungal infections, while not destroying healthy tissue.

Perhaps we've committed a mistake similar to that of the British Admiralty,
who replaced scurvy-preventing lemon juice with ineffective lime juice in 1860
([https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm](https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm)).

By replacing copper and silver in common use (door-knobs, hand rails,
cutlery), we've inadvertently exposed our populations to increased viral and
bacterial infection.

~~~
guitarbill
but at the same time, there's more anti-bacterial soap, better cleaning
products and methods, improvements in material science for non-porous, easy to
clean surfaces. so overall, it's possible we experience much less exposure,
despite the lack of these metals in our immediate environment.

in any case, it isn't obvious that a (small?) increase in exposure would
necessarily be bad for the immune system and people. there's evidence that
reduced microbial exposures in children leads to an increase in allergies
(e.g.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1838109/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1838109/))

~~~
lm28469
> there's more anti-bacterial soap, better cleaning products and methods,

Metal door knobs and rails are passive, you don't need to think about them for
them to be effective [0]. And you can't hoard metal door knobs as easily as
hand sanitiser and masks.

[0] if they are, I don't have an opinion on that.

~~~
DoreenMichele
They are also preventative in a way that hand washing is not.

I don't know how to effectively express the difference. I've been trying to
think about how because I wish we put more emphasis on "stop touching your
face" than on hand washing.

Hand washing kind of assumes you will continue to be a grubby person,
mindlessly touching your face and everyone you know and all kinds of stuff all
the time. And it's going to be okay because you washed it off, hopefully
before it made you ill and hopefully before you passed it on.

But in reality, it's far better to skew your focus towards stop touching
stuff, etc, than to focus on washing hands so much.

Don't get me wrong. I wash hands a metric fuckton. But I'm also amazingly
careful about not touching stuff.

It's kind of the difference between saying "Free love is totes fine! Just wear
a condom!" And "It's best to only sleep with people you know well in a
committed monogamous relationship. Wear a condom for any exceptions whatsoever
and we actively recommend against orgies. Sorry to be a bummer, but orgies are
never a hygiene best practice."

I'm sorry if I'm making no sense. I'm actively working on trying to figure out
how to say this well cuz Reasons.

That makes this "practice."

Sorry. (But not very.)

------
samizdis
I had no idea about that. Wikipedia entry, "Antimicrobial properties of
copper" was also an eye-opener:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_copper)

~~~
chewz
This is why people used silver and copper for pots, plates and cutlery for
ages.

Overusing silver leads to blue pigmentation - hence 'blue blood' \- as mostly
upper classes used silver plates.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria)

~~~
acheron
“Blue blood” has nothing to do with argyria:
[https://www.etymonline.com/word/blue-
blood](https://www.etymonline.com/word/blue-blood)

------
JoeAltmaier
Not an easy sell. Touch shiny copper once - it tarnishes. Fingerprints,
handprints, smeary looking instantly. Hard to convince folks its clean, or
better than clean, when it looks grody.

------
gshdg
Because it’s expensive and in short supply? There’s a reason why salvagers and
squatters will often rip out any copper wiring and piping they can find in an
abandoned structure.

~~~
thedanbob
This was addressed in the article:

> It doesn't seem like we'll run out of copper in the near future, according
> to the World Copper Factbook from 2019. Copper is one of the most recycled
> of all metals—nearly all copper can be recycled and not lose any of its
> properties.

and

> Even when factoring in how much the copper cost initially, you'd make that
> money back in savings within two months, Schmidt said. And considering that
> the copper never loses its microbial killing abilities—hospitals would
> quickly be saving money (and lives).

~~~
ceejayoz
It's recycled because it's scarce, though.

If we suddenly used it on everything, it'd be even more scarce.

~~~
kwhitefoot
True, but copper is the 26th commonest element in the Earth's crust at between
50 and 100 parts per million with an annual production of nearly 20 million
tonne.

So it seems unlikely that will will run short of it soon, and if we do then we
can simply reuse what we have used on door handles, etc.

It's recycled so much partly because it is easy and cheap to do and because
copper that is contaminated making it unusable for electrical wire is still
useful for other purposes such as plumbing.

------
kwhitefoot
As it seems to be widely agreed that copper or copper alloy surfaces are a
good idea does anyone have any suggestions for methods of applying copper to
existing surfaces such as keyboards, mice, mobile phone cases, gloves, door
handles, etc.

Could powdered copper suspended in some kind of water based lacquer work for
instance?

------
_Microft
As a side note, aquatic life has problems with too high copper concentrations.

[https://www.epa.gov/wqc/aquatic-life-criteria-
copper](https://www.epa.gov/wqc/aquatic-life-criteria-copper)

------
pontifier
Welcome to the future... I hope you like steampunk!

~~~
travisporter
Man... you just made me dust off my copy of Dishonored 2!

------
doodlebugging
I noticed something interesting on the Reuters map of Covid-19 cases [0]. The
map uses calibrated dots for each county that has reported a positive Covid-19
case. Some reports have not made it to the map and the NYC numbers haven't
been updated since yesterday morning but the map is still informative.

I noticed a strong correlation between counties with reported infections and
the route of interstate highways.

Take Texas, where I live - From Laredo all the way to DFW there are counties
reporting outbreaks. Indeed, one can trace I-35 all the way across Oklahoma,
Kansas, and on to Minnesota by the fairly regularly spaced county reports.

You can also trace the route of I-10 from San Antonio to Houston and all the
way along the Gulf Coast to Florida. I-10 to the west of San Antonio crosses a
lot of rural area and then the Permian Basin where all the oil and gas
production activity is occurring. There are no reported outbreaks there yet.
The Lubbock County cases north of the route of I-20 appeared yesterday. I
think the blank spot in the Permian Basin area exists because anyone who has a
job out there today will go to work if they still have a job whether they are
sick or not. Many of the people working there are young and healthy too. I do
expect to see cases pop up there over the next few days since spring breakers
from the schools and colleges will be passing through or returning home from
affected areas.

No matter where you look on the map, you can correlate counties affected with
well-traveled highways and interstates.

I have been watching this map for days and it has been interesting. It is
almost as if those people who became worried about Covid-19 elected to drive
instead of fly and some of them were already infected or possibly that some
people infected on a flight left the airports and headed home. As they
traveled they were dispensing gasoline, grabbing burgers or burritos or
chicken sandwiches, making a pit stop or just stretching their legs.

How does that tie into this article?

Since an infected person who doesn't know that they are infected will grab
door handles, push buttons on ATMs and gas pump card readers, pump gas, open
and close cooler doors to get refreshments, or handle cup lids after they
dispense their drinks it is unlikely that all the transmission points could
have been effectively sanitized especially since a lot of this travel probably
occurred before officials were prepared to warn people about Covid-19.

If copper plating had been used for door handles, countertops, etc then some
of this easy transmission could've prevented before it had a chance to start.
Hospitals certainly have a well-documented history of being a great place to
get more than you bargained for but the main threat to the average person
appears to involve simply going on about your business and inadvertently
coming into contact with something that an infected person touched.

Right now, we get to see what unchecked spread looks like when you have
unrestricted travel.

I picture interstate truckers, spring breakers, business travelers who elected
to rent a car and drive instead of flying as being significant vectors. The
spacing of the counties in many cases is the spacing that one would see if a
single infected traveler stopped every hour and a half for fuel or bathroom
break.

Just something I noticed. What do y'all think? [0]
[https://www.reuters.com/](https://www.reuters.com/)

~~~
positr0n
I think a more likely explanation is that a heatmap of covid-19 cases will
roughly mirror a heatmap of population density and interstate highways are
built between populated areas almost by definition.

[https://xkcd.com/1138/](https://xkcd.com/1138/)

~~~
doodlebugging
This is quite true about a map of the distribution of the cases will, over
time, mirror a heat map of the population density.

I was not very clear about the point that I was trying to convey and I
apologize for that.

I was attempting to make the point that the evolution of the map, with the
daily updates, lends credence to the idea that a single infected person could
be the source of the cases in multiple scattered areas and across several
state lines.

I have followed this map and the updates since it was first added to the
Reuters site. As expected, the first cases appeared very isolated and confined
to the immediate area around King County, WA involving, I think, the care
worker at the nursing home.

As the map evolved, other hot spots appeared.

In the last 4 or 5 days it has really begun to fill out to the point where the
east coast has many contiguous counties with cases, the west coast also has
filled out and the mid-continent likewise.

It was possible, if one followed the progression to see counties report cases
that connected larger outbreaks with each other as the smaller cities between
suddenly had something to report.

Today was a great example of that. This morning there were cases in western
New Mexico in one county. This afternoon, we can suddenly see I-40 highlighted
east-west and I-25 highlighted south-north into Colorado.

I realize that testing in every state is ramping up now so it is likely that
none of those counties had any cases to report previously because they had run
no tests and now they all received test results at the same time.

The interesting thing, having driven many of these highways myself over the
years and some of them recently is that te spacing of the cases (new counties
reporting) matches the approximate distance one would drive before needing a
break for food, a restroom, or just a chance to stretch one's legs. When a
connection appears between two larger cities in a way that fills in a case for
each potential pit stop then it might be plausible that one traveler is
responsible for that connection.

For example: Covid Mary starts in Dallas - destination Omaha. It's about a 10
hour drive most of which can be made on I-35. They may need a stretch just
before or just after they roll into Oklahoma. Then the stops are Oklahoma City
area; Wichita, Kansas; Emporia, Kansas; Topeka, Kansas; Omaha, Nebraska.

At each stop Mary gets gas, goes inside the store for a restroom break, goes
in for a greasy taco or burger. Each time she goes in she grabs a door handle,
a pump handle, a cooler handle, etc that has had hundreds of hands on it since
the last cleaning and will have hundreds more until the next one. She isn't
feeling particularly sick, yet anyway, but she has been coughing a bit into
her hands as she drives.

Some random person who was unlucky enough to stop after she stopped at the
various businesses grabs these handles or items that she has touched and then
becomes a spreader. For them, the clock has just started before they get sick
or before someone they contact gets sick. In a matter of days, some of these
people grabbed the viral load from Mary's handle and carried it around to
their families. Eventually one or more of them became sick enough to seek
help.

When test results are posted, they highlight this travel path.

All the spread could've been mitigated if materials known to have anti-viral
or anti-bacterial qualities had been used in the design and construction of
the facilities visited by Covid Mary.

It was just a thought.

EDIT: The main idea was that Covid Mary took a trip between two larger cities.
The journey involved multiple stops. In each town where she stopped someone
became a carrier. That carrier spread to others in the small towns of the
area. Once tests were available it was possible to see the route Mary - a
single ill traveler on a long day's journey, traversed between where she was
and where she wanted to be. Since the time of infection was similar for all of
them they all appeared on the map at the same time. You know, this sounds dumb
and I'm tired now. Thanks for reading if you made it this far.

