The Comeback of Copper: It Kills Germs Within Minutes!

Scientists have been able to demonstrate that not only does copper kill bacteria, but it also kills viruses – within merely a few minutes. As a result, they are looking into introducing copper again to society and hospitals.

Medical researcher Phyllis J. Kuhn wrote the first critique in 1983 of the disappearance of copper she’d noticed in hospitals and how its stainless steel rival does little to kill bacteria in comparison. Decades later, Bill Keevil, professor of environmental healthcare at the University of Southampton, received funding from the Copper Development Association in the U.S. and worked in his lab to further push Kuhn’s research.

“We’ve seen viruses just blow apart,” says Bill Keevil, professor of environmental healthcare at the University of Southampton. “They land on copper and it just degrades them.”

While copper is still heavily used in power networks, it has been pushed out of other building applications because of plastics, tempered glass, aluminum and stainless steel taking over in the 20^th century. But now Keevil says it’s time to bring copper back in public spaces, and other researchers have additionally been testing the effectiveness of copper in real life medical contexts. In 2015, for example, researchers found that infection rates in hospitals were reduced by 58% when copper alloys were used.