The National Laboratory Certification Program undertook an evaluation of the dynamics of external contamination of hair with cocaine (COC) while developing performance testing materials for Federal Drug-Free Workplace Programs. This characterization was necessary to develop performance materials that could evaluate the efficacy of hair testing industry's decontamination procedures. Hair locks (...

BACKGROUND Despite standard manual decontamination, hospital equipment remains contaminated with microorganisms, contributing to nosocomial transmission and hospital acquired infections. This has the potential to negate the effects of healthcare workers' hand-washing protocols. In order to decrease the likelihood of equipment contamination, there has been a rise in the use of disposable pieces ...

Despite regular disinfection and decontamination of the hospital floors and surfaces, resistant pathogens from the hospital surfaces and their transmission to humans have been reported recently. The resistance of pathogens to the disinfectant agents or failed disinfection techniques have put the routine floor and non-critical surface disinfection done in hospitals into question with regard to t...

The aim of the current study was to analyse the planktonic growth of Streptococcus mutans on the surfaces of three implants retrieved after three different peri-implantitis treatments. Three implants from a male patient with high levels of bone loss were treated by mechanical debridement, chemical decontamination, and implantoplasty. After 4 months of follow-up, the implants were removed. The g...

Food irradiation is one of a set of processing technologies that can be used to increase the microbiological safety and shelf life of a wide range of foods. Ionizing radiation is used to generate highly active chemical species within the food that react with DNA. Under normal usage conditions, the food receives a pasteurizing treatment that gives a valuable reduction in common food-spoilage org...

Current doctrine describes the use of the M291 Skin Decontamination Kit (SDK), 0.5% hypochlorite solution (household bleach diluted 1 to 10) and 1% soapy water solution to decontaminate skin exposed to chemical warfare agents. Reactive Skin Decontamination Lotion (RSDL) is a new product being considered and was recently approved by the FDA. This study directly compares the efficacy of these fou...

In this study the decontamination procedures of laryngoscopes in Dutch hospitals are described, based on a structured telephone questionnaire. There were substantial differences between decontamination procedures in Dutch hospitals and the standards of the APIC (Association of Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology), CDC (Centers of Disease Control) and ASA (American Society of Ane...

After the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident, little information has been available on individual doses from external exposure among residents living in radioactively contaminated areas near the nuclear plant; in the present study we evaluated yearly changes in the doses from external exposure after the accident and the effects of decontamination on external exposure. This stud...

Prions are comprised principally of aggregates of a misfolded host protein and cause fatal transmissible neurodegenerative disorders of mammals, such as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans and bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cattle. Prions pose significant public health concerns through contamination of blood products and surgical instruments, and can resist conventional hospital st...

Despite decontamination, overgrowth by pseudomonads renders cultural isolation of mycobacteria from respiratory specimens of patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) difficult or impossible. We performed a prospective study by comparing levels of reduction of overgrowth and recovery of mycobacteria using either pretreatment with N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NALC)-NaOH alone or pretreatment with NALC-NaOH and...