Disinfectant Efficacy: How Can We Make It Effective?

摘要

Microorganisms are ubiquitous and their numbers as well as their diversity is beyond comprehension. According to the review article by Gibbons and Gilbert (2015), the largest global survey of microbial diversity to date, carried out by the Earth Microbiome Project (http:// www.earthmicrobiome.org/), revealed the existence of 5.6 million Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) (97% similarity at the V4 region of the 16S gene; not including singleton OTUs) in the first 15,000 samples, which set a new lower-bound on the number of bacterial and archaeal phylotypes on Earth. In addition, as sampling efforts increase, the number of novel phylotypes discovered continues to rise beyond prior estimates, and far beyond estimates for multicellular organismal diversity.' This gives us an idea about the complexity, resilience and evolutionary capability of the microbial world. It is important to keep this view of the microbial world in perspective when we are considering activities such as cleaning, sanitization, disinfection and sterilization. In other words, removal or killing of microorganisms to keep our product and patient safe. In this article, the topic of disinfection and sanitization will mainly be covered and considered as a chemical agent. It will also be covered from the standpoint of their application being on environmental surfaces.