A Comparison of Decontamination Technologies for Biological Agents on Selected Commercial Surface Materials
Abstract
This study evaluates available technologies (mostly research-scale) on the basis of to what level these technologies reduce the spore contamination on panels of different materials, which represent office environments. The testing platform consisted of six vertical surfaces, each made of a different material which could be commonly found in a typical civilian office environment. These test surfaces were uniformly contaminated with the bacterial agent simulant, bacillus globigii, BG and then sampled to determine the concentration level of the contamination at time zero (t=0). The test participants decontaminated the panels using their technology and procedure. The following day, the test panels were sampled again by swabbing to check for surviving BG spores. Performing best in the overall rankings were University of Michigan (U. Mich.), Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) and Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (LLNL). The data suggest that the material surfaces most receptive to decontamination of agent simulant BG are Painted Metal, Painted Wallboard and Panel Fabric. The decontamination technologies were less effective on the porous surfaces. No technology was able to fully-decontaminate all surfaces in this test.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 2001
- Accession Number
- AD1032142
Entities
People
- Bruce Harper
- Laurel E O'connor
- Lloyd Larsen