Evaluating decontamination methods for mobile devices

Introduction The use of mobile devices within healthcare settings by staff, patients and visitors is widespread and growing. DoH guidance states that patients should be allowed the widest possible use of mobile phones. For staff mobile devices have become an essential aspect of their day-to-day professional and personal lives. There is, however, clear evidence that phones/tablets can be contaminated with pathogens, which may survive for prolonged periods before being transferred onto hands or other surfaces. This quantitative study evaluates the ability of a range of technologies to decontaminate iPads.   Methods The front, back and sides of iPads were contaminated with a standard suspension of Staphylococcus aureus. Half of these surfaces were sampled to provide pre-values, whilst the other half was decontaminated with either alcohol wipes, detergent wipes, quaternary ammonium impregnated wipes, or exposure to Ultraviolet light for either 30 or 60 seconds. As a control, a microfibre cloth impregnated with sterile water was also tested.   Results Alcohol based wipes were most effective, generating on average a 2 log reduction on the back of the iPad and a 3 log reduction on the front. The cleaning of the front surface of the iPad was consistently easier to clean that the back. However, all of the wipes were less effective than UV exposure, where a 60 second exposure generated a 4 log reduction on the front and a 3.5 log reduction on the back.   Discussion The results indicate that commercial wipes are unable to effectively decontaminate the high touch surfaces of an iPad. However, the application of a UV decontamination technology was a much more effective method for the removal of bacteria from these surfaces. This suggests that UV based decontamination technology would provide a quick, efficient and economical method for the disinfection of mobile devices such as iPads in healthcare settings

New proof-of-concept in viral inactivation: virucidal efficacy of 405 nm light against feline calicivirus as a model for norovirus decontamination

The requirement for novel decontamination technologies for use in hospitals is ever present. One such system uses 405 nm visible light to inactivate microorganisms via ROS-generated oxidative damage. Although effective for bacterial and fungal inactivation, little is known about the virucidal effects of 405 nm light. Norovirus (NoV) gastroenteritis outbreaks often occur in the clinical setting, and this study was designed to investigate potential inactivation effects of 405 nm light on the NoV surrogate, feline calicivirus (FCV). FCV was exposed to 405 nm light whilst suspended in minimal and organically-rich media to establish the virucidal efficacy and the effect biologically-relevant material may play in viral susceptibility. Antiviral activity was successfully demonstrated with a 4 Log10 (99.99%) reduction in infectivity when suspended in minimal media evident after a dose of 2.8 kJ cm−2. FCV exposed in artificial faeces, artificial saliva, blood plasma and other organically rich media exhibited an equivalent level of inactivation using between 50–85% less dose of the light, indicating enhanced inactivation when the virus is present in organically-rich biologically-relevant media. Further research in this area could aid in the development of 405 nm light technology for effective NoV decontamination within the hospital environment

17. Issues for Nuclear Power Plants Steam Generators

Open Access Boo

First hospital outbreak of the globally emerging Candida auris in a European hospital

Background: Candida auris is a globally emerging multidrug resistant fungal pathogen causing nosocomial transmission. We report an ongoing outbreak of C. auris in a London cardio-thoracic center between April 2015 and July 2016. This is the first report of C. auris in Europe and the largest outbreak so far. We describe the identification, investigation and implementation of control measures. Methods: Data on C. auris case demographics, environmental screening, implementation of infection prevention/control measures, and antifungal susceptibility of patient isolates were prospectively recorded then analysed retrospectively. Speciation of C. auris was performed by MALDI-TOF and typing of outbreak isolates performed by amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP). Results: This report describes an ongoing outbreak of 50 C. auris cases over the first 16 month (April 2015 to July 2016) within a single Hospital Trust in London. A total of 44 % (n = 22/50) patients developed possible or proven C. auris infection with a candidaemia rate of 18 % (n = 9/50). Environmental sampling showed persistent presence of the yeast around bed space areas. Implementation of strict infection and prevention control measures included: isolation of cases and their contacts, wearing of personal protective clothing by health care workers, screening of patients on affected wards, skin decontamination with chlorhexidine, environmental cleaning with chorine based reagents and hydrogen peroxide vapour. Genotyping with AFLP demonstrated that C. auris isolates from the same geographic region clustered. Conclusion: This ongoing outbreak with genotypically closely related C. auris highlights the importance of appropriate species identification and rapid detection of cases in order to contain hospital acquired transmission

Inactivation of Campylobacter jejuni by exposure to high-intensity 405-nm visible light

Although considerable research has been carried out on a range of environmental factors that impact on the survival of Campylobacter jejuni, there is limited information on the effects of violet/blue light on this pathogen. This investigation was carried out to determine the effects of high-intensity 405-nm light on C. jejuni and to compare this with the effects on two other important Gram-negative enteric pathogens, Salmonella enteritidis and Escherichia coli O157:H7. High-intensity 405-nm light generated from an array of 405-nm light-emitting diodes was used to inactivate the test bacteria. The results demonstrated that while all three tested species were susceptible to 405-nm light inactivation, C. jejuni was by far the most sensitive organism, requiring a total dose of 18J cm−2 of 405-nm light to achieve a 5-log10 reduction. This study has established that C. jejuni is particularly susceptible to violet/blue light at a wavelength of 405nm. This finding, coupled with the safety-in-use advantages of this visible (non-ultraviolet wavelength) light, suggests that high-intensity 405-nm light may have applications for control of C. jejuni contamination levels in situations where this type of illumination can be effectively applied

Safety assessment of the process ‘EREMA Recycling (MPR, Basic and Advanced technologies)’, used to recycle post-consumer PET into food contact materials

Publisher PD

Effective elimination of Staphylococcal contamination from hospital surfaces by a bacteriophage-probiotic sanitation strategy: a monocentric study.

Persistent contamination of hospital surfaces and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are recognized major causes of healthcare-associated infections (HAI). We recently showed that a probiotic-based sanitation (PCHS) can stably decrease surface pathogens and reduce AMR and HAIs. However, PCHS action is slow and non-specific. By contrast, bacteriophages have been proposed as a decontamination method as they can rapidly attack specific targets, but their routine application has never been tested. Here we analyzed the feasibility and effectiveness of phage addition to PCHS sanitation, aiming to obtain a rapid and stable abatement of specific pathogens in the hospital environment. Staphylococcal contamination in the bathrooms of General Medicine wards was analyzed, being such areas the most contaminated and Staphylococci the most prevalent bacteria in such settings. Results showed that a daily phage application by nebulization induced a rapid and significant decrease of Staphylococcus spp. load on treated surfaces, up to 97% more than PCHS alone (p<0.001), suggesting that such system might be considered as a part of prevention and control strategies, to counteract outbreaks of specific pathogens and prevent associated infections

Impact of pulsed light treatments and storage time on the texture quality of fresh-cut tomatoes

The effect of pulsed light (PL) treatments at fluences of 4, 6 or 8 J·cm-2 on microbial growth, weight loss, pectinmethyl esterase (PME) and polygalacturonase (PG) activities of fresh-cut tomatoes was evaluated through 20 days of storage at 5 ºC. Additionally, a pair-wise comparison test was assayed to determine whether potential consumers could detect differences between untreated and PL-treated samples. Microbial counts of PL-treated tomato slices were up to 2 log CFU g lower than those on untreated samples over storage. Fresh-cut tomatoes exhibited slight firmness decrements, changes on the pectinolytic enzymes and increased weight losses over the storage. However, sensory evaluation did not reveal significant differences over at least 10 days. In summary, PL-treatments showed to be effective to reduce the microbial growth with a low impact on the physical quality of fresh-cut tomatoes.The Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) supported this work, through the project AGL 2010-21572. Carlos Guillermo Valdivia Nájar thanks to the University of Lleida (Spain) and Santander Banc, who awarded a Jade Plus grant for doctoral studies. The authors would like to acknowledge to Edelí Islas and Laia Vilarmau for their technical support. Prof. Olga Martín-Belloso is very thanksful to the Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA) for the Academia 2008 Award

Flexible Pilot Contamination Mitigation with Doppler PSD Alignment

Pilot contamination in the uplink (UL) can severely degrade the channel estimation quality at the base station (BS) in a massive multi-input multi-output (MIMO) system. Thus, it is critical to explore all possible avenues to enable more orthogonal resources for the users to transmit non-interfering UL pilots. In conventional designs, pilot orthogonality typically assumes constant channel gains over time, which limits the amount of orthogonal resources in the case of time-selective channels. To circumvent this constraint, in this paper, we show how to enable orthogonal multiplexing of pilots in the case of Doppler fading by aligning the power spectrum densities (PSD) of different users. From the derived PSD aligning rules, we can see multiple users can be sounded simultaneously without creating/suffering pilot contamination even when these users are experiencing time-varying channels. Furthermore, we provide analytical formulas characterizing the channel estimation mean square error (MSE) performance. Computer simulations further confirm us the PSD alignment can serve as one important decontamination mechanism for the UL pilots in massive MIMO.Comment: Accepted to IEEE Signal Processing Letter

The Employment Potential of Site Remediation Policies: A Micro-Economic Simulation

This paper deals with the impact on employment of a particular environmental protection policy: contaminated site remediation. We provide quantitative results on the employment level and also on qualifications in the case of France, by making different assumptions regarding the number of sites to be cleaned up and the decontamination level. We use a composite methodology: the engineering estimation method to obtain costs and direct jobs and a reversed input-output matrix to assess indirect employment, i.e., jobs incurred by the production of inputs. Given the high diversity of contaminated sites, we have selected two case studies, the first gathering gasworks and coke ovens and the other dealing with petrol filling stations. As regards the level of decontamination for each site, labour intensity follows a 'bell curve' with the highest labour intensity for intermediate levels of decontamination. By contrast, an increase in the number of sites to be treated has an important positive net effect on employment. Hence, a programme of site remediation of a large number of sites, preferably with an intermediate level of decontamination, would lead to a significant increase in employment, even when we take into account the jobs destroyed elsewhere in the economy by the funding of the clean-up.