I recall there being some concern that a residue can build up on the copper tape making it less effective. Certainly the tape on the back of my phone is discolored now.
If the tape ended up being not effective but it made people complacent such that they didn’t clean the surfaces as much, that could be worse?
Everything I’ve seen so far seems to suggest that copper oxide is still anti-microbial, but I haven’t really attempted to research this, so take that for what it’s worth (which is little.) (I’ve actually become curious whether having it on my hands—which are visibly turning a bit blue-green where they rub against the copper—might have further antimicrobial benefits. But this is idle speculation I do not intend to do anything with.)
The one potential downside of copper is that it may have reduced efficacy when cleaned multiple times using normal cleaning products.
In a study where copper surfaces were inoculated with bacteria in 1% solutions of albumin, dried, and subsequently cleaned with 70% ethanol or 1% sodium hypochlorite, there was a build-up of residues and a concomitant decrease in killing efficiency (1). On the other hand, it was reported that copper surfaces remained active when soiled (42). Also, it was found that there was no reduction in killing efficiency over 30 cycles of bacterial inoculation, followed by cleaning with a 1% nonionic detergent solution (M. Solioz and C. Molteni, unpublished observations).
Might want to try metal cleaning products like Brasso or Neverdull, instead—with the caveat that you definitely want gloves and possibly want ventilation while using those.
I recall there being some concern that a residue can build up on the copper tape making it less effective. Certainly the tape on the back of my phone is discolored now.
If the tape ended up being not effective but it made people complacent such that they didn’t clean the surfaces as much, that could be worse?
Did this get resolved?
I write this atop a mound of copper tape.
Everything I’ve seen so far seems to suggest that copper oxide is still anti-microbial, but I haven’t really attempted to research this, so take that for what it’s worth (which is little.) (I’ve actually become curious whether having it on my hands—which are visibly turning a bit blue-green where they rub against the copper—might have further antimicrobial benefits. But this is idle speculation I do not intend to do anything with.)
If you find a link let me know and I’ll investigate/probably include it.
The one potential downside of copper is that it may have reduced efficacy when cleaned multiple times using normal cleaning products.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3067274/#r1%20is%201%%20nonionic%20detergent%20solution%20(which%20can%20be%20found%20on%20Amazon
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-nXiUm-WdhapbqngHkM8tXOovuIZuPoW/view?usp=drivesdk
Might want to try metal cleaning products like Brasso or Neverdull, instead—with the caveat that you definitely want gloves and possibly want ventilation while using those.