The mechanical component specialist, Elesa, has recently expanded sanitary range of handles, knobs and levers. This adds new products to the range which use silver ions to give them anti-microbial properties, as MEPCA discovered.
In our present Coronavirus dominated social landscape, contact infection is our pre-eminent daily concern; with frequent handwashing recommended to break the onward transmission from touching handles and other equipment, therefore reducing new infections, and potentially saving lives. This very mainstream headline concern reflects the ever-present issue of hospital-acquired infections, which has recently been highlighted in a UK report, suggesting that up to 5,000 patients die each year, in England alone, from these hospital-acquired infections, with an estimated cost of £1 billion. Similar situations are reported elsewhere, such as in New York.
Therefore, it is of global importance to focus on the hygiene of hand-operated equipment in medical/biochemical and laboratory environments, including disability aids, food processing and pharmaceutical, catering and public fittings.
In these situations, Elesa offers an effective aid to hygiene, with its recently expanded high-performing SAN (sanitary) range of handles, knobs, levers, clamping handles and similar; produced with precisely this situation in mind. The company’s range expansion includes new cylindrical handles, e.g. for operating handwheels, knurled grip knobs, adjustable clamping handles, wing nuts and solid hand knobs – all suitable for equipment operation or adjustment.
SAN products are proven to prevent the proliferation of microbes, bacteria and fungi on the product surface by controlled release of silver ions, providing a long-term anti-microbial action in critical environments.
Silver has long been recognised for its efficiency in this role by damaging microbial cell walls – and even now – recent research has revealed a mechanism whereby the silver ions have been shown to inhibit operation of microbial flagella.
The Elesa manufacturing team has managed to develop a sophisticated injection-moulding material with this silver inclusion, and with stainless-steel inserts, suitable for use even in sterilisation cycles up to 130°C. SAN line components are available in white or black with SAN logo laser engraved to identify them clearly.
Tests on material samples to ISO 22196:2011 show considerable effectiveness for four different types of bacteria and the more difficult to eliminate fungus: Escherichia Coli – 99.9%, Staphylococcus Aureus – 99.9%, Klebsiella Pneumoniae – 99.8%, Pseudomonas Aeruginosa – 99.9% and Candida Albicans – 98.9%.
Elesa focuses on making its own tooling and moulds, also developing and testing materials with major suppliers. SAN lines are supported in the UK with stock and technical teams ensuring advice is always available.
