The EPA has registered about 400 copper surfaces as antimicrobial. What the ancients knew, modern scientists and organizations such as the Environmental Protection Agency have confirmed. The contrast between the refurbished copper installed in 2010 and the green color of the original 1894 copper is clearly seen. The East Tower of the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. "This stuff is durable and the anti-microbial effect doesn't go away." "The copper is still working just like it did the day it was put in over 100 years ago," he says. Keevil’s team checked the old railings at New York City’s Grand Central Terminal a few years ago. "You don't need a medical degree to diagnose diarrhea," Schmidt says.Īnd copper’s power lasts. For thousands of years, women have known that their children didn't get diarrhea as frequently when they drank from copper vessels and passed on this knowledge to subsequent generations. The sea-faring Phoenicians inserted shavings from their bronze swords into battle wounds to prevent infection. Egyptians designated the ankh symbol, representing eternal life, to denote copper in hieroglyphs.Īs far back as 1,600 B.C., the Chinese used copper coins as medication to treat heart and stomach pain as well as bladder diseases. but is based on information that dates back as far as 3200 B.C. The information therein has been ascribed to an Egyptian doctor circa 1700 B.C. The first recorded use of copper as an infection-killing agent comes from Smith's Papyrus, the oldest-known medical document in history. Schmidt, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina who researches copper in healthcare settings. "Copper is truly a gift from Mother Nature in that the human race has been using it for over eight millennia," says Michael G. For thousands of years, long before they knew about germs or viruses, people have known of copper’s disinfectant powers. Keevil’s work is a modern confirmation of an ancient remedy. “But then the argument is how often do you clean? We don’t clean often enough.” Copper, by contrast, disinfects merely by being there. “One of the ironies is, people stainless steel because it seems clean and in a way, it is,” he says, noting the material’s ubiquity in public places. Once again, copper zapped the virus within minutes while it remained infectious for five days on surfaces such as stainless steel or glass. In 2015, Keevil turned his attention to Coronavirus 229E, a relative of the COVID-19 virus that causes the common cold and pneumonia. In each case, copper contact killed the pathogen within minutes. He tested viruses that caused worldwide health scares such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and the Swine Flu (H1N1) pandemic of 2009. He began with the bacteria that causes Legionnaire's Disease and then turned to drug-resistant killer infections like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). He has watched in his laboratory as the simple metal slew one bad bug after another. Keevil, a microbiology researcher at the University of Southampton in England, has studied the antimicrobial effects of copper for more than two decades. When researchers reported last month that the novel coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic survives for days on glass and stainless steel but dies within hours after landing on copper, the only thing that surprised Bill Keevil was that the pathogen lasted so long on copper.
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