Anuario Brasileiro do Cobre | Brazilian Copper Yearbook 2018

2018 Anuário Brasileiro do Cobre Brazilian Copper Yearbook 50 SAÚDE HEALTH founders, Catalina Vicente and María José Spoerer, accepted the ICA/Procobre´s invitation to intervene in their installations, since it was a campaign that looked after children’s health, mainly in the winter season, when virus and bacteria attacks are stronger. Users of public transports protected by antimicrobial copper Public Transport | Subway Station Santiago Bueras - This subway station is an extension of the line number 5 of the metro system and is situated at the community of Maipú. It is in operation since 2011. This line is the most extensive of the America, the fourth longest in the world and the second most used in the country. More than 6,500 passengers circulate by this station daily. Traditionally, almost 100% of the handrails in the public transportation systems are built in stainless steel that doesn´t prevent the bacteria growing; for this reason, since its inauguration, the station counts with 350 meters of handrails made of antimicrobial alloys of copper. This intervention will allow reducing the contagion of diseases between the users of this public transport. Santiago Bueras uses 350 m of copper and zinc alloys in pipes. In addition, the expansion of the underground transportation service of Santiago will add 10,000 m of handrails with an additional level of protection and safety for public transport users. First train with antimicrobial copper in the Valparaíso subway - The Valparaíso subway has more than 18 millions of users per year. The authorities and the company that manages this transportation mean of are engaged in improving the travel experience with the reformulation of the main stations, the implementation of new multimodal stations and the arrival of new trains: it is their commitment to enhance the strategic role of railways in the public transportation. The application of copper on the surfaces with greater contact with the public represents a big change in the public transport standards. The project uses copper alloys to elaborate handles and pipes – the alloy uses copper, nickel and magnesium to make the handles and five types of handrails (56 units in total). A train has two carriages, with the 400 passenger capacity per unit and a usage demand of more than 150 linear meters of copper. The initiative wants to make the train a pilot experiment to move forward with similar trains in Chile. Mexico Antimicobrial copper fights hospital-acquired infections Hospital centers | Traumatology and orthopedics’ Hospital of Lomas Verdes - In Mexico, there are important reasons to use copper in hospitals, considering that the fourth cause of death in hospitals are nosocomial infections of people that underwent surgery and passed away because of a further infection. This assistance center belongs to the hospital network of the Mexican Institute for Social Security (IMSS). In their installations, a pilot project was carried out with the installation of copper furniture in seven rooms from the Intense Care Unit in order to measure the decrease of bacterial load as compared with other eleven rooms without the intervention. In the rooms included in the project, five pieces of furniture made of copper were placed: a support for bowls, a bandage trolley, a serum stand, a Pasteur table and a conveying table. Public transport | Juárez Subway Station - The station of Juárez belongs to line 3 of the public transport system. It carries some 488 million of passengers per annum; with line 3 only transporting 234 million passengers. Such concentration of people implies a huge exchange of microbes that cause a lot of diseases; for this reason, it was chosen to take part of the study to measure the bactericidal properties of copper in their installations. The project consisted in the application of handrails and currency containers built in copper to demonstrate the benefits that this change would bring to the users. The undertaken measurements revealed that the handrails made with the current material had 3.67-time more aerobic mesophilic microbes and 2.67 times more coliforms than the handrails of the pilot project, built in copper. Measurements were made during the morning, when the users’ flow is constant.