Whole-Room Disinfection Systems
Your options for attacking bacteria that survive manual cleaning.
W
hole-room disinfection systems don't replace the need to
carefully wipe down high-touch areas or mop OR floors,
but they do attack bacteria on surfaces that even the most
diligent member of your turnover team might have missed.
"It's not a magic bullet," says Jim Davis, MSN, CIC, a senior infection
specialist at ECRI Institute, a healthcare research organization in
Plymouth Meeting, Pa. "It's an environmental control that should aug-
ment good manual cleaning and disinfection."
Your options in whole-room
disinfection include:
• Ultraviolet light breaches the cell walls of viruses, bacteria and
spores to deactivate their DNA and kill them in the air and on sur-
faces. Two types of devices use UV-C for germicidal irradiation: con-
tinuous light systems with 1- to 2-hour cycles and xenon-based pulsed
light systems with 5- to 10-minute cycles. Both require direct illumina-
tion to treat targeted surfaces.
• Hydrogen peroxide vapor systems deliver a heat-generated odor-
less vapor, which uses oxidative processes to kill microorganisms.
When the systems are in use, a room's doors, ducts and ventilation
ports must be sealed.
• Aerosolized hydrogen peroxide is uniformly sprayed with a pres-
sure-generated aerosol, which delivers a residue-free mist that is typi-
cally made up of 5% to 6% hydrogen peroxide and a very small percent-
age of silver.
• Ozone gas has been used in conjunction with high-powered air filtra-
tion and UV light to rid surfaces and air of microbe colonization.
• Cluster ion air purifiers actively seek out pathogens via electro-
magnetic charge. On contact, their stored energy is unleashed through
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Mike Morsch | Associate Editor
