Archinect - News

Perkins+Will release white paper that recommends avoiding antimicrobial products in buildings

2017-03-02T13:12:00-05:00

Perkins+Will have released a white paper that recommends avoiding including antimicrobial products in buildings. “Antimicrobial building products marketed as ‘healthy’ or beneficial to human health contain ingredients that may have adverse environmental or human health impacts, and alternative products should be considered whenever possible,” it states.

According to their research, antimicrobial products such as paints, door handles, flooring and kitchen countertops could enable the proliferation of so-called 'super bugs', or antibiotic-resistance microbes. They could also contaminate aquatic ecosystems and sometimes include suspected carcinogens such as formaldehyde. Their research echoes the position of the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

From 1994 to 2014 the amount of antimicrobial consumer products in the market has sky-rocketed. Sometimes manufacturers add antimicrobial ingredients to serve as preservatives, while still...

Eek! Bed bugs have developed a resistance to the most common insecticide

2016-01-27T20:18:00-05:00

Bed bugs have developed a resistance to neonicotinoids, a group of the most widely used insecticides, according to a new study published in the Journal of Medical Entomology. [...] The newly found resistance to neonics has real implications for people who need to control the pest... Neonics are the most commonly used insecticide to fight the already elusive and resilient bed bugs, and if they no longer work, bed bugs will continue to thrive despite exterminators’ efforts.

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The viral "metropolises" of your skin

2015-11-03T19:28:00-05:00

In the microbial metropolises that thrive in and on the human body, underground networks of viruses loom large. A closer look at human skin has found that it's teeming with viruses, most of which don't target us but infect the microbes that live there. Almost 95 percent of those skin-dwelling virus communities are unclassified...Those unknown viruses may prune, manipulate, and hide out in the skin’s bacterial communities, which in turn can make the difference between human health and disease...

Study finds antibacterial soap no more effective than regular soap

2015-09-17T11:22:00-04:00

Scientists in Korea have discovered that using antibacterial soap when hand-washing is no more effective than using plain soap, according to a paper published today in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy... The study examined the effect of triclosan...on bacteria in two ways. The first was to examine the bactericidal effects of triclosan in soaps against all 20 strains, and the second compared the ability of antibacterial and non-antibacterial soap to remove bacteria from human hands...

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