[Zepros Bâti] The time has come for a counter-attack. French industrialists have been concentrating for several months to fight against the ubiquitous coronavirus and several seem to have found solutions to slow its spread in buildings. Textiles with silver ions, copper alloy paint, heated glass, ultraviolet diodes, the imagination of scientists is boundless.

Firing up all kinds of wood to fight the infamous SARS-CoV-2 seems to be the strategy of industrialists for the last few months. Every R&D department in the construction sector has been looking into the question of how to combat viral spread in buildings and has tried to find an answer. Because the enemy, invisible, can hide anywhere, on a door handle, a switch, an elevator button, a toilet seat or a corner of furniture.

You are rather precious metals…

Metalskin Technologies’ specialists have been working for years on a copper-filled composite paint with well-known biocidal properties, which is resistant from the outset. Because the problem with this metal is its price, which generates real traffic when it is available in quantity. It is impossible to replace all handrails and door handles with copper items that would be too expensive and quickly stolen. The idea of the Hérault startup was therefore to reduce it to powder and incorporate it into polymer resin to obtain an effective surface coating that could be applied to all non-porous surfaces. The company claims that a layer only 200 µm thick (deposited in a certified factory) “makes it possible to divide the number of bacteria by an average of 3,000 in one hour”. But SARS-CoV-2 is a virus and not a bacterium… The coronavirus does not seem to be resistant to contact with copper either. Various studies have been conducted abroad on the effectiveness of this metal, including an American study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in March showing that the virus rapidly loses its virulence.

To read the full article (in French), click here!