BACKGROUND Initial management of acute poisoning in South African (SA) hospitals such as gastric decontamination and use of antidotes has not been evaluated relevant to current international guidelines. OBJECTIVES The objective of this study was to conduct a toxicovigilance survey of SA hospital admissions to assess the spectrum of acute poisonings, current practices in gastric decontaminatio...

UNLABELLED The blue wavelengths within the visible light spectrum are intrinisically antimicrobial and can photodynamically inactivate the cells of a wide spectrum of bacteria (Gram positive and negative) and fungi. Furthermore, blue light is equally effective against both drug-sensitive and -resistant members of target species and is less detrimental to mammalian cells than is UV radiation. Bl...

This study investigates the effects of five decontamination methods on the filter quality (qf) of three commercially available electret masks-N95, Gauze and Spunlace nonwoven masks. Newly developed evaluation methods, the overall filter quality (qf,o) and the qf ratio were applied to evaluate the effectiveness of decontamination methods for respirators. A scanning mobility particle sizer is uti...

The anaerobic metabolism of phenol in the beta-proteobacterium Thauera aromatica proceeds via para-carboxylation of phenol (biological Kolbe-Schmitt carboxylation). In the first step, phenol is converted to phenylphosphate which is then carboxylated to 4-hydroxybenzoate in the second step. Phenylphosphate formation is catalyzed by the novel enzyme phenylphosphate synthase, which was studied. Ph...

In the event of a wide area release and contamination of a biological agent in an outdoor environment and to building exteriors, decontamination is likely to consume the Nation's remediation capacity, requiring years to cleanup, and leading to incalculable economic losses. This is in part due to scant body of efficacy data on surface areas larger than those studied in a typical laboratory (5×10...

We consider the problem of decontaminating an infected network using as few mobile cleaning agents as possible and avoiding recontamination. After a cleaning agent has left a vertex v, this vertex will become recontaminated if m or more of its neighbours are infected, where m ≥ 1 is a threshold parameter of the system indicating the local immunity level of the network. This network decontaminat...

Introduction Remediation of environment polluted with toxic chemical warfare agents (CWA) is a challenging task for authorities who deal with public health and environmental safety. Abnormal health symptoms appear when the human beings are exposed to these hazardous chemicals. Decontamination of surface or environment tainted with these toxic chemicals is the main job we have to do, to avoid he...