
Respiratory virus pathogens on frequently touched surfaces at airports - uptown
https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-018-3150-5
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wahern
Steel is one of the worst surfaces when it comes to harboring pathogens. AFAIU
silver and copper are the best. Brass and bronze come in a distant 2nd (in
absolute terms) but still significantly better than steel, where pathogens
linger subject only to the external environment. See, e.g.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligodynamic_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligodynamic_effect)
and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_copper)
and
[http://www.academicjournals.org/article/article1380626432_Va...](http://www.academicjournals.org/article/article1380626432_Varkey.pdf)

I wish hospitals, airports, and other shared spaces would use brass hardware
or other alternatives rather than steel, particularly on door knobs and other
highly trafficked surfaces. I always wondered if there'd be a market for
selling such biocidal and viricidal hardware, either passive hardware using
special alloys or surfaces (e.g. untreated wood performs well by locking
pathogens in pores so they don't transfer readily); or active hardware that,
e.g., ran a small current across the surface.

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sethbannon
Unfortunately this feels like situation where the free market will fail to
incentivize the best solution. The airport itself does not feel the economic
pain from its travelers getting sick from touching its steel surfaces. The
passengers likely aren't even aware this choice might have caused their
sickness. So airports will always choose steel over copper/silver/brass so
long as steel is cheaper.

This seems like a reasonable place for regulators to step in.

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swebs
There is no free market, airports are owned and operated by the government.
Regulations are not necessary. If the government wants copper fittings, they
simply need to order them.

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newhere420
Although the vast majority of major airports are state owned, some aren't.
Notably, most major airports in the UK (including Heathrow and Gatwick) are
privately owned and operated.

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ptero
I might have missed it, but I do not know if they tested for significant
quantities instead of just presence. A presence of all sorts of pathogens is
pretty common everywhere (you can find all sorts of stuff under kids nails),
it is the concentration above certain thresholds that significantly increases
disease risk.

I would be interested in how _concentrations_ of different pathogens compare
between, say an airport, supermarket and hospital ER reception. My 2c.

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notacoward
Those plastic bins at security were apparently the worst. I go through
airports quite a bit, but never really thought about that particular vector.
It's especially bad because the very first thing a lot of people do after
security is find some food. Instead, it would be a good idea to find a
restroom and wash your hands, _then_ find food.

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Fomite
From an epidemiological standpoint, you should _always_ find a washroom and
wash your hands before eating, pretty much regardless of setting.

~~~
notacoward
True, and I'm sure you'll say you do that, but the fact is that most people
are more selective. It's useful to know when it's particularly critical.

~~~
Fomite
I'm just saying - the phrase "fecal patina" gets used a _lot_ in my field...

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notacoward
I'm going to start using that phrase to describe some of the software I work
with. Maybe it'll catch on.

Having recently been through a real live measles-containment exercise (don't
ask) I've gained a much greater appreciation of what epidemiologists and other
public-health professionals do. People just don't realize how they're being
protected every day. I hope some of your colleagues are talking to TSA and
airport management about these findings.

~~~
Fomite
Some of us are distracted by the quarantined Emirates flight, but yeah, this
has been met with considerable interest.

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21
One interesting thing I've read, is that frequent disinfection (like in
hospitals) actually increases the prevalence of highly resistant strains.

One reason is obvious - those better adapted survive and pass on resistence
genes.

But the second reason is more interesting - the disinfection will kill the
lesser resistant bacterias, so the resistent ones have less competition to
worry about, thus they can concentrate their evolution efforts towards
resisting the disinfection. Each extra gene a bacteria carries has big costs
on it's fitness, so removing the competition increases the available budget
for resistance genes.

I know the article is about viruses, I don't know if viruses compete between
themselves in the environment.

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patejam
What about just cleaning? i.e. wiping down with non-antibacterial soap.

I know viruses are not bacteria, so I'm a bit off topic, but still interested.

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Fomite
Cleaning removes things pretty uniformly, but also doesn't result in a sterile
(or even really quasi-sterile) surface. Disinfection is a pretty important
next step after cleaning.

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namibj
There are ways to clean that are so effective that even endospores will be
removed, though strong oxidative disinfectants seem to generally be more
effective. Something like strong UV-C irradiation or a wash with ethylene
oxide should result in the destruction of all life remaining on a washed
surface.

~~~
Fomite
UV-C irradiation generally falls under "disinfection" because if you haven't
cleaned the surface of gross contaminants first, it doesn't work very well.

~~~
namibj
But it should be sufficient to have it be visually non-dirty. UV-C get's
through a thin oily film or such non-thick coverage...

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leptoniscool
There should be more hand sanitizer dispenses in these places

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AWildC182
I've kinda suspected this for a while so I generally make a point of going to
the nearest bathroom and washing my hands after getting through security,
especially if I'm eating something before boarding.

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myself248
Yup, and I've developed some pretty effective habits of unwrapping other food
in the style of a banana, so my hands touch only the wrapper, and
advance/expose the food so it's touched only with my mouth.

Treat everything like a push-pop, basically.

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Symmetry
A good reason to wash your hands frequently.

~~~
samstave
I wonder if there were UV hand "washers" all over the place if that would
help.

If they had the UV hand driers in the restrooms as well as UV baths around the
entrances to the xray scanners, such that everyones plastic tub that entered
the xray machine was also UV'd as it went through... (Although I dont know how
long it would have to be under UV to impact....)

~~~
namibj
You should be able to cut the UV time down to a second or two, before you get
problems with the stuff starting to melt from the radiative heat, even if you
use a strong fan to cool the surface. This is worst-case, and I do think you
can get away without a fan, but there might be edge cases.

