Saturday, April 04, 2020

Disinfecting for the coronavirus

We have a commercial grade disinfectant product that can be used to disinfect benches, door handles, etc. I started to wonder whether or not this disinfectant product was really suitable for coronavirus. I have a science degree (haven't used it) so keep in mind I'm not an expert of any type.

When I went to the website for the product I was actually quite surprised. The product made no mention of being effective at disinfecting against viruses. Yes bacteria and pathogens, but no mention of any of the common virus (such as influenza) so effectively using the product I feel is a waste of time, at least for the coronavirus.

It's important that you just don't go out and purchase products thinking they're helping. Make sure the information on the packaging mentions viruses or you could just be wasting your money or worse, not protecting your family even though you're making the effort.

I found this page which I thought was useful. I'd be reluctant to use bleach (call me a chicken) but I did learn not to use bleach and other household products that are acidic. Phew. Didn't know that.


Basically the page is telling us to use an alcohol based product.

I also found what the airlines were doing quite interesting. 


Certainly you can see they're making the extra effort to deep clean. Now I do understand the plane uses operating theatre grade filters to filter the air, but a plane isn't an operating theatre with a single patient. There's lots of moving people that are around you and going past you and they're breathing and they can get close. The main take from the article however is the type of products they're using.

All I did really was since I had some doubt about the product, was to  perform a search on the product, found the manufacturers website, read the information and there was no mention of the product being suitable for viruses. Keep in mind there may be restrictions on companies by the government in putting such claims on the products, such as extensive testing that isn't worth the time and resources for the company.

Kelvin Eldridge

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