BACKGROUND Hand hygiene is a vital intervention to reduce health-care associated infections, but compliance remains low. The authors hypothesized that improvements in intraoperative hand hygiene compliance would reduce transmission of bacteria to surgical patients and reduce the incidence of postsurgical healthcare-associated infections. METHODS The authors performed a controlled before-and-a...

To improve food safety on farms, it is critical to quantify the impact of environmental microbial contamination sources on fresh produce. However, studies are hampered by difficulties achieving study designs with powered sample sizes to elucidate relationships between environmental and produce contamination. Our goal was to quantify, in the agricultural production environment, the relationship ...

Developments in continuous-flow isotope ratio mass spectrometry have made possible the rapid analysis of delta13C in CO2 of small-volume gas samples with precisions of < or = 0.1 per thousand. Prior research has validated the integrity of septum-capped vials for collection and short-term storage of gas samples. However, there has been little investigation into the sources of contamination durin...

Introduction: The aim of the present study was to determine the levels of alpha particles and heavy metals contamination in the meat products consumed in Najaf, Iraq. Moreover, this study was also targeted toward comparing the results with those in the literature and making appropriate conclusion and recommendations. Material and Methods: This study determined the track of alpha particles and ...

OBJECTIVES To investigate the influence of glass ionomer cement layers with various thickness and cement contamination on the fracture resistance of thin zirconia plates luted onto coplanar human molars. MATERIALS AND METHODS Zirconia plates measuring 0.7 mm in thickness were luted onto 70 coplanarly trimmed human molars with glass ionomer cement. Cement layers measuring 100, 250, 1000, and 2...

A large proportion of hospital-related infections are acquired and spread due to the direct contacts between patients and healthcare workers. Accordingly, proper infection prevention measures, and especially hand hygiene, are key to limit the spread of infections in nosocomial settings. However, healthcare workers frequently experience difficulties in complying strictly to hand disinfection pro...

Gloving reduces acquisition of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus species (VRE) on the hands, and it should be considered for routine inpatient care, even for contact with the intact skin of patients who may be colonized with VRE. However, gloving does not completely prevent contamination of the hands, and hand washing is necessary after glove removal.

Fecal-oral pathogens are transmitted through complex, environmentally mediated pathways. Sanitation interventions that isolate human feces from the environment may reduce transmission but have shown limited impact on environmental contamination. We conducted a study in rural Bangladesh to (1) quantify domestic fecal contamination in settings with high on-site sanitation coverage; (2) determine ...