Ozone- a Revolution?

Ozone purification.

The following article (by Siobhan Ryan) was printed by The Argus in Sussex.

But first some history…

What’s amazing about Ozone as a purifier? Well apart that it works extremely well the most amazing thing is that this perfectly natural purifier has been available since the beginning of time, yet it has been used very little as a purifier because of the high dependency on the very toxic Chlorine currently being used, it’s just laziness really by the powers that be.

Ozone (()3) is naturally formed whenever lighting occurs, or when an electrical discharge creates a charge, (so it is easily replicated) the Ozone layer protects the upper atmosphere and screens against dangerous solar radiation

.Ozone inactivates and oxidizes organic metals and most organisms faster than Chlorine.

It all began in Oudshoorn, Netherlands in 1893 and was the first Ozone water treatment plant in the World, the first large city to use Ozone for their drinking water was Nice in the South of France

Now, thousands of communities throughout the world use ozone. Los Angeles, California, is the world's largest (600 million gallons a day) water treatment plant to use ozone for water decontamination.

Ozone treatment is now easier more efficient and less costly than conventional methods. The "revolution" in ozone treatment is that it works - and works well - at an affordable price.

Bottling plants, municipalities and the beverage industry have used Ozone for decades, it is now used in vending machines and office water coolers as the chosen method of purifying water and to prevent contaminating taints to drinks and is approved by the Water Quality Association and many foreign authorities Worldwide.

Ozone treated water in swimming pools is far better and safer than Chlorinated pools

So it’s not new, it just hasn’t been used!

The article.

New hospital cleaning system to kill super bugs

By Siobhan Ryan

Housekeeping manager Maureen Bektasevic with a mop head cleaned by ozone

A revolutionary cleaning system has been introduced in two Sussex hospitals in a bid to combat a highly infectious superbug.

East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the first in the South East to use nature's most powerful disinfectant to raise hygiene standards and combat bugs such as Clostridium difficile (C diff) and MRSA.

Ozone is 3,200 times more effective than chlorine bleach and occurs naturally during thunderstorms when lightning changes the make-up of oxygen.

The trust, which runs Eastbourne District General Hospital and the Conquest Hospital in St Leonards, is using a new system, which artificially recreates the thunderstorm effect and injects ozone into the wash process to disinfect contaminated cleaning mops.

Mops are a common source of infection in healthcare environments.

The laundry system, called OTEX, artificially creates the ozone through a combination of chemicals and water.

The laundry system differs radically from the conventional high temperature disinfection wash processes still used in most hospitals and care homes throughout the UK in that it uses mostly cold water and kills bacteria, viruses and super bugs on all wash cycles.

Current Department of Health guidelines recommend that infected laundry should be washed at specific high temperatures but scientific tests have shown that these processes are ineffective against C diff, which is now a bigger killer than MRSA.

During development of the OTEX system, microbiologists examined a mop, which had been used on a hospital ward and subsequently thermally disinfected as per the guidelines.
They found it was still teeming with 150,000 colonies of C diff spores but after the mop was processed with OTEX, no viable trace of the superbug was found.

OTEX is also effective against MRSA and other dangerous bacteria.

Trust assistant director of facilities Stuart Barnhill said:

"This new cleaning system has proved to be very effective in terms of disinfection.

"We use around 1,250 micro-fibre mops daily across both sites. The new laundry system is very quick which has enabled us to ensure that all areas have consistently clean mops every day."The housekeeping team recognised that with hospital infection rates, particularly MRSA and C diff, we needed to be effective in the cleaning methods and technology used."We now have daily cleaned mops to reduce any risk of cross contamination from cleaning, with separate mops for each bed area and toilet. "This has increased the amount of mops used daily but we now have a reliable system to support the washing of all mops."

OTEX has been developed by leading commercial laundry equipment distributor JLA.The company's business development director Dick Cardis said: "In spite of mounting scientific opinion that laundry can be a major carrier of infections, dozens of NHS trusts feel bound by the Department of Health guideline.

"It is disturbing to say the least that people are potentially being put at risk because of red tape.

"East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust must be applauded for opting for a system which provides the only effective method of eradicating C diff in contaminated laundry."

9:31am Thursday 24th January 2008