Skimp on the dollars to save on the germs
by Lucy Atkinson
Well, the world sure is a disgusting, disgusting place! You may have received the email that has been going around for a while detailing how many litres of other people anal gases you inhale in a day … how many litres of urine you ingest in an hour of swimming in a public pool … what percentage of doorknobs have traces of semen on them … and how many bugs you are likely to swallow in a year, while you are asleep. If you were as horrified as we were upon reading all of this, you may be glad to know that in a small way, you can fight the power of germs, by choosing brass door knobs!
Apparently it is quite a common teaching exercise for people in the medical profession to go around taking samples from various surfaces that we might commonly encounter and analyzing the germs that can be found on them. It makes sense – it would definitely drive home, in an absolutely unarguable way, why they must wash their hands and wear gloves after every time they touch medical waste, or in between patients, or before they go fiddling around with your precious, hygienic innards! But this exercise has had the unexpected benefit of revealing the fact that brass is actually a natural disinfectant, while aluminium and stainless steel, other common hardware materials, do absolutely nothing to inhibit bacterial growth. This is despite the fact that silvery-looking metals always look much cleaner than their soft, golden counterparts!
It seems to be the copper that brass is an alloy of that has the antimicrobial properties – which is good news for all of the gorgeous copper alloy hardware on our site, including the copper-brass mixtures, and also the gorgeous bronze items.
And, incidentally, in most places it is more expensive to buy stainless steel than it is to buy brass items …so, skimp on the dollars to save on the germs!
Photo credits: Staphylococcus Aureus by Esther Simpson
