The education sector has been one of the hardest hit by the pandemic and everyone is keen to see children and young people get back to normality as quickly as possible. However, schools and colleges still face the ongoing issue of maintaining the highest level of hygiene. Teachers and parents are becoming increasingly concerned about how everyone will stay protected and well once they return to the classroom.
Boosting infection control measures
One layer of defence that has so far been under-utilised in the UK is the use of antimicrobial coatings using silver ions. At a cost of less than £10 per student, a varnish-style coating is applied to touch points by hand and works by creating a permanent disinfectant coating, which creates an environment where the pathogens cannot survive.
In conjunction with regular cleaning, this raises the base level of hygiene to a standard where 80% of microbes are eradicated within 15 minutes, 90% die within one hour of landing on the treated surface and up to 99.99% are gone within two hours.
The coating is permanent – it just needs to be kept clean – and lasts for up to five years. Tests in one Finnish school found that illness in the treated classroom was reduced by 50% compared with rooms that had not been treated.
An ancient solution for modern challenges
Antimicrobial coatings are not new – metal ion technology dates back as far as 2200 BC with the Greek, Egyptians and Romans being found to have used copper and silver for their antimicrobial properties. The team at Bromoco International has brought the technology into use for a 21st-century pandemic, where it can be used to counter new threats to world health.
Developed by UK company Bromoco International in 2013, TOUCH Antimicrobial coating is the world’s only permanent, retrofit, hard film, crystal clear coating that provides protection against enveloped viruses and bacteria including Covid-19 (as well as SARS-CoV-2 and MSRA) for all hard surfaces.
It works by incorporating silver ions and sealing them onto the surface of the material treated, which disrupts the protective outer layer of the microbe so it cannot survive on contact with the coating. It is being used effectively in many institutions and organisations throughout the UK, including high security government buildings. Businesses and factories are also applying the product to help protect their employees.
Application in schools
Tony Semple, technical director at Bromoco International, explains: “TOUCH Antimicrobial coating is a major piece of the puzzle of ensuring schools and other public spaces and places of work have a solid, hygienically clean base level to support the existing cleaning regimes.
“Knowing that all surfaces in these buildings are working 24 hours a day, seven days a week to protect everyone from getting ill will make it much easier to keep the country open and moving forwards. We believe the application of this extra layer of hygiene and raising the base level of protection really is a no-brainer.”
Companies are also applying the product to protect their employees.
Ailsa Cavies, head of health and safety at N Brown Group PLC, said: “We’ve had our colleagues’ safety as our primary focus and this is an extra string in the bow for us in terms of our safety provision for our colleagues.
“We’ve maintained the 2m social distancing throughout, we’ve installed hand washing stations and provided antibacterial gels, and implemented a whole array of other precautions on site to keep colleagues safe. So I feel TOUCH Antimicrobial really enhances and goes the extra mile for our colleagues.”
- Touch Antimicrobial can be applied quickly and safely to virtually all surfaces and starts working straight away.
- Works 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year, raising the base level of hygiene protection.
- Studies have shown that most frequently touched surfaces that have antimicrobial protection kill 99% of bacteria.
- TOUCH raises the base level of hygiene on surfaces and should be used alongside other preventative measures such as ‘HANDS, FACE, SPACE’.
See how TOUCH Antimicrobial coating has been applied at Woodlands School in Birmingham
Bromoco coatings have a been in use for over 15 years with proven real-life durability with hundreds of applications worldwide, including iconic buildings and landmarks such as the McLaren Formula 1 headquarters in Woking completed in 2010 and Canary Wharf London in 2011.
The original protective application at McLaren was internal and then in 2010 the entire building was coated. The Mclaren building’s application initially had a four-year guarantee with advice to re-coat in year five, however the building has outlasted its original guarantee three times as the coating is still working today providing high levels of protection.
In 2013 founder and technical director Anthony Semple, along with leading biochemists, were able to add silver ion antimicrobials to the formula. This was an amazing achievement as the coating is crystal clear and only five to eight microns thick. The resulting TOUCH Antimicrobial coating was successfully tested and launched onto the market in early 2014.