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Clothes That Kill
StriderA writes "Robert Engel, of Queens College at The City University of New York, and colleagues have developed a new defence against bacteria and fungi. It seems that they have created tiny molecular daggers that actually seek and destroy the fatty bacteria. Applications to include battling athletes foot to military uniforms that kill anthrax."
This could be used not only for fabrics but for any surfaces that can have the "daggers" bonded to them, creating long-lasting antiseptic surfaces.
However, for clothing I have a question - how would the oils in sweat affect the surface? Would they occupy all the "daggers" and prevent the microbes from being penetrated?
www.eFax.com are spammers
What about non-bacterial illnesses (i.e., viruses, microplasms)
Do these molecules ever come unanchored, becoming little fat-seeking molecules of death?
How fast does a person die if they swallow a scrap of it, or some of those suddenly un-anchored molecules?
How do you clean these garments?
Will dead-bacteria buildup eventually render the garment useless?
How do you dispose of these garments at that point?
this piece was woefully short on facts, and context, and i'd love to hear more if anybody's got some other perspective on this new 'fabric of doom'...
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
Well, in a limited sense. You realize, of course, that the dagger stuff is just by way of analogy.
(From the article):
The "blade" is a carbon chain up to 16 atoms long, populated only by hydrogen atoms. It has a strong affinity for fatty surfaces.
That sure sounds like chemical action to me.
However, the reaction is not specific to some compound in the microbe:
When bacterial or fungal spores approach the fabric, their negatively charged fatty membranes are attracted to positive charges on the nitrogen-rich rings and to the fat-seeking blades.
So since it is not selective, you're right: there is no chance of creating resistant germs. There's no way the critters can stop having fatty membranes altogether.
Works for government funding, or VC funding as well... Find out what the hot topic of the day is... Storage Area Networks, Killing Anthrax... Find a way of writting those things into your proposal regardless of whether it makes sense ??? Profit Interestingly enough Anthrax doesn't do much damage to skin contact, you have to BREATH it into your lungs, a fancy set of clothes won't stop that unless you are wearing it as a mask, and if you are doing that I'd just assume wear a NBC suit that will protect me from the really dangerous stuff on the battlefield
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
I read an article recently on Yahoo Science News.
Apparently a laboratory was wondering why so many of their lab rat offspring were being born deformed. The only different with this batch of mice is that their cages seemed to show more wear than the other mice.
Apparently the "harsh" cleaning agents used to sterilize the cages were breaking down (softening) the polymers in the plastics of the cage. The mice would then gnaw the softer plastic. On further examination, once in the body, the chemically-altered plastic had a negative effect on chromosome ordering during cellular division, leading to an equivalent of "down syndrome" for mice.
What makes it worse is that this same type of plastic "bisphenol A" is common in many human products, including many baby toys & bottles. Combine that with the disease-paranoid parents who scrub their homes with ever-increasing-strength cleaning agents, then look at the increase in childhood asthma and autism in recent years, and you have to wonder...