WASHINGTON, D.C. — Copper pennies don’t have much value anymore — parking meters and vending machines don’t accept them and polls show that a majority of Americans prefer not to take them as change.
Don't feel sorry for copper mining companies, however. Once the global economy moves from sluggish to full-throttle, they're likely to be extracting far more copper than at any time in history.
That boom may well be accelerated by the results of new clinical trials commissioned by the Defense Department demonstrating that increased use of antimicrobial coppers in hospitals could reduce the rising toll of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) by a staggering 80 percent.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta estimates that such deadly HAI diseases claim more than 100,000 lives each year — annually killing more Americans than breast cancer, car accidents and AIDs combined.
The trials were conducted as a result of Pentagon concerns about infectious diseases sidelining — and often disabling — our troops in Iraq.
The second phase of the trials exchanged copper bed rails, tray tables, chair arms, call buttons, monitors and IV poles for the stainless steel and plastic versions that currently dominate intensive care units of three major hospitals: Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, the Medical University of South Carolina and the Ralph H. Johnson Veteran Affairs Medical Center — both in Charleston, S.C.
The results of the phase two trials were eye-opening, to say the least. The copper equipment dramatically wiped out the teeming bacteria in intensive care units.
Laboratory testing independent of the clinical trials affirmed the trial findings —copper and copper alloys such as brass and bronze, kill 99.9 percent of bacteria within two hours, when cleaned regularly in conjunction with routine disinfection programs.
Those findings strongly suggest that replacing such common hospital room items as bedrails, chairs and tables with anti-microbial copper would not only decrease illness and death, but also reduce by 80 percent the billions of dollars incurred annually by these adverse events.
According to Dr. Michael Schmidt, Vice Chairman of the Department Microbiology and Immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina, Healthcare-Associated Infections cost the U.S. $30 billion annually in terms of the money spent treating them and the lives lost.
Schmidt, who helped conduct the DOD study, strongly backs a swift changeover to antimicrobial surfaces in hospitals as about five percent of regular hospital patients develop a hospital-acquired infection, increasing to 30 percent of patients in intensive care.
Copper is so effective that it's the only touch-surface material registered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a public health anti-microbial product capable of controlling major drug-resistant infections that ravage hospitals, including such deadly ones as enterococci, staphylococcus auereus and E.coli.
Second only to Chile and Peru, America produces the largest amount of copper in the world, and more than seven million Americans are employed in copper mining-associated jobs. Major copper mining states include Montana, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Minnesota and New Mexico.
Huge amounts of copper — about 40 percent in the U.S. — already is used in construction, mostly for plumbing and electrical wiring. Electrical and electronic products; cars, trains and airplanes; industrial machinery and a plethora of large and small consumer appliances depend on the ancient mineral — first used to enhance jewelry by the Assyrians in the Middle East more than 5,000 years ago.
A Federal buy-in is necessary to make "copper conversions" at thousands of hospitals in the U.S., but healthcare costs likely would tumble within a year or two of such a rapid makeover.
Given the number of dollars saved and deaths avoided by curbing infectious diseases — not only in America but around the world — this changeover would be a worthwhile and financially prudent federal expenditure.
Let's hope the next Congress halts runaway spending on frivolous ventures that don’t create private sector jobs and frees up money for projects that put Americans to work and actually improve the health of Americans.
Kerri Toloczko is a Senior Analyst with the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a non-partisan, non-profit partnership forged to strengthen manufacturing in America by a select group of leading U.S. manufacturers and the United Steelworkers.
Readers may write her at AAM, 727 Fifteenth St NW,
Suite 700, Washington, DC 20005 
