Did you know that many disinfectant manufacturers will contain a shopping list of pathogens on their product label in order to look more effective? Instead of looking for disinfectants with the greatest number of efficacy claims, we want to look for disinfectants with the most applicable claims. There are different classes of pathogens, each with surrogate organisms that are reflective of the gold standard or more difficult to kill pathogen in that class such as:
Vegetative bacteria: Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus
Fungi: Trichophyton mentagrophytes
Viruses: Poliovirus
Mycobacteria: Mycobacterium bovis or Mycobacterium terrae
Bacterial Spores: Bacillus subtilis and Clostridium sporogenes
When cleaning and disinfecting surfaces, it is important to consider what pathogens are relevant to the facility and focus your attention on a disinfectant formulation that provides you with a balance between effectiveness and minimal toxicity to increase user compliance.
Look at Accelerated Hydrogen Peroxide® (AHP®) for example, on our product label, you won’t see a ridiculous number of efficacy claims, instead we focus on the pathogens that matter for life sciences with our intermediate level disinfectants.