Process
Copper-silver ionization is a dispersive process that introduces long-lived, stable, positively charged copper and silver ions into the water system. The ions bond electrostatically with negative sites on bacterial cell walls and denature proteins. Over the long term, ionization thus disperses and destroys biofilms and slimes that can harbor Legionella, the bacteria responsible for legionellosis (Legionnaires' disease). Complete control of a water system can take 30 to 45 days. Flow cells should be cleaned periodically to maintain the system; in a hospital, this task can be delegated to the facility's utility engineers.
Forensic scientist Randy Fornshell of the Sedgwick County Regional Forensic Science Center explains that copper-silver ionization is a modern implementation of the ancient Greek practice of reducing bacteria in wine vessels by lining them with silver, and controlling algae and fungi with copper. Fornshell notes that copper-silver ionization has been effective in swimming pools (it is an alternative to chlorine) and is becoming adopted by larger municipalities.
Replacing chlorination with copper-silver ionization to keep water safe was one response of Frederick Memorial Hospital, Frederick, Maryland, to new requirements in the 2001 Guidelines for Design and Construction of Hospital and Healthcare Facilities, issued by the American Institute of Architects. Ionization is in many cases installed because more convenient and cost-effective than other approaches.
Read more about this topic: Copper-silver Ionization
Famous quotes containing the word process:
“Rules and particular inferences alike are justified by being brought into agreement with each other. A rule is amended if it yields an inference we are unwilling to accept; an inference is rejected if it violates a rule we are unwilling to amend. The process of justification is the delicate one of making mutual adjustments between rules and accepted inferences; and in the agreement achieved lies the only justification needed for either.”
—Nelson Goodman (b. 1906)
“The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.”
—Elias Canetti (b. 1905)
“To exist as an advertisement of her husband’s income, or her father’s generosity, has become a second nature to many a woman who must have undergone, one would say, some long and subtle process of degradation before she sunk [sic] so low, or grovelled so serenely.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)