Abstract

Traditional laundry decontamination has reliedon thermal decontamination. More recently, lowtemperature washing with the inclusion of bleach/chlorineas a biocide has been used, but both can lead to theaccelerated degradation of fabrics. We have investigatedthe ability of a novel copper-based biocidal compound,CuWB50, to assist in the decontamination of swatchespurposely contaminated with MRSA- and Acinetobacterduring “real life” low temperature machine washing. Ourstudies showing highly effective laundry decontaminationusing low concentrations of CuWB50 with commerciallyavailable detergents at low temperature (18 – 20°C) aretimely both in terms of rising energy costs and textiledegradation issues.