See how Hypochlorous Acid Products are being used in Hospitals, Hotels and Restaurants

Hypochlorous acid is widely used in restaurants and hospitals in Japan, to effectively sterilize medical equipment, clean floors and surfaces, and heal wounds. It's even used in Japanese hospitals to treat gangrene!

You can see some solutions below, that are used for disinfection. 

Briotech sells for $39.95 for a 16 ounce bottle of pure HOCl. That is about $2.50 PER OUNCE (not including shipping)! But with your own machine, you can make this stuff for less than half a penny, per ounce. 

Clorox has come up with a product that uses hypochlorous acid for disinfection.  This is listed as being able to kill the human coronavirus in one minute (please note, it does not specify COVID-19, I believe this is because most testing labs do not offer this strain for testing yet, and there is a wait to get on the CDC's approval list). You can see their stats on THIS PAGE.

Here's a post from Infection Control Today, which you can read HERE.

Hypochlorous Acid for Definitive Terminal Cleaning of the Hospital Environment

June 9, 2014

• Environmental Hygiene, Clinical Interventions

By Dorris Dimmit, MPH, CIC

Standard terminal cleaning of hospital rooms is a fundamental infection prevention process performed by the environment of care staff. It is defined as physical cleaning followed by disinfection with an approved hospital disinfectant. Monitoring consistency of this process, however,is difficult and not assured. There can be as many variations of the process as there is staff performing the task. It is not unusual that significant residual bacteria are left in place.(1-2)Alternative disinfection technology utilizing a product derived from saline and electricity, "superoxidized water," produces a cidal activity 50 to 100 times that of household bleach, addressing growing resistance issues of standard terminal cleaning agents. Electrolyzed sodium hypochlorous acid (HOCL), produces an efficient disinfecting adjunct to standard terminal cleaning and provides many advantages in optimizing infection prevention in the hospital environment.(3) The wand spray device distributes the product in a sequential back and forth motion producing a uniform distribution of the powder coating to all areas of the environment. Due to the neutral pH of the HOCL, it is non-toxic, does not leave residue on environmental surfaces, and is not corrosive to hospital equipment as traditional bleach and phenolics have long demonstrated.(4)

Materials and MethodsIn an effort to minimize residual bacteria post standard terminal cleaning, a preliminary study was performed utilizing two different cleaning and disinfection modalities post patient discharge. The first consisted of the standard terminal cleaning process. The second utilized the standard terminal cleaning process followed by a spray application of electrolyzed HOCL. Five high-touch sites -- bedrail, bed table, phone, toilet and TV remote -- were cultured before and after each process.

ResultsOf the 54 high-touch sites cultured post standard terminal cleaning, residual bacteria consisting mainly of coliforms and skin bacteria were found in 85 percent of the cultures (46/54 cultures yielding 2,014 bundled colony forming units or cfu). Following the additional HOCLspray, residual bacteria was reduced to 31 percent (17/54 cultures yielding 107 bundled cfu). The residual bacterial load after standard terminal cleaning followed by electrostatic HOCL spraying was reduced 10 fold.

DiscussionThe enhanced effects and cidal activity with the two-step process are presumed to be related to comprehensive coverage of environmental surfaces with the HOCL solution. This preliminary clinical study demonstrates that standard terminal cleaning followed by the routine use of electrostatic HOCL spray is effective in significantly reducing environmental bioburden found to be essential for infection prevention and patient quality assurance. Further studies comparing this reduction of bioburden to facility incidence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) or other potentially pathogenic and increasingly resistant microorganisms would be ideal. 

The general public fears hospitalization and contracting the “superbugs” they read and hear about today. While it is not our goal to sterilize the hospital environment, it is completely reasonable to assure its disinfection to the best of our current technological availabilities.

Ecolox Tech (a company that makes industrial grade machines for hotels) has these benefits of HOCl listed on their site:

• 100 times more biocidal than chlorine bleach
• Instant-kill on most G+ and G- bacteria
• Instant-kill on Clostridium difficile spores
• Instant-kill on VRE, MRSA, and MRSE
• Instant-kill on Mycobacterium tuberculosis
• Effective against Cryptosporidium and Giardia
• Effective against HIV, HBV, HCV, and CMV
• No high temperatures are necessary
• Most effective between 50-86 ºF (10-30 ºC)
• Does not cause irritation, safe on eyes and skin
• Does not cause corrosion of fabrics
• Does not alter colors, pH neutral

Excerpt from CDC

The microbicidal activity of chlorine is attributed largely to undissociated hypochlorous acid (HOCl).

The microbicidal activity of a new disinfectant, "superoxidized water," has been examined The concept of electrolyzing saline to create a disinfectant or antiseptics is appealing because the basic materials of saline and electricity are inexpensive and the end product (i.e., water) does not damage the environment. The main products of this water are hypochlorous acid (e.g., at a concentration of about 144 mg/L) and chlorine. As with any germicide, the antimicrobial activity of superoxidized water is strongly affected by the concentration of the active ingredient (available free chlorine) 536. One manufacturer generates the disinfectant at the point of use by passing a saline solution over coated titanium electrodes at 9 amps. The product generated has a pH of 5.0-6.5 and an oxidation-reduction potential (redox) of >950 mV. Although superoxidized water is intended to be generated fresh at the point of use, when tested under clean conditions the disinfectant was effective within 5 minutes when 48 hours old.

In October 2002, the FDA cleared superoxidized water as a high-level disinfectant (FDA, personal communication, September 18, 2002).


https://www.ecoloxtech.com/regulation-fda

This is what the FDA wrote in a letter to Ecolox, regarding their application for FDA clearance for their HOCl water generators:

Based on all the data reviewed, including all relevant publically available data, we have no hesitation stating that Ecolox’s intended use of hypochlorous acid produced in situ by electrolysis of sodium chloride at a level of up to 60 ppm as an antimicrobial to treat process water or ice which may contact a variety of foods including whole or cut meat and poultry, including carcasses parts trim and organs, processed and reformed meat and poultry products, whole or cut fish, fruits and vegetables and for the washing of shell eggs is GRAS. 


The FDA has approved 

https://www.fda.gov/media/109611/download




Hypochlorous acid in Hotels

If you have a look at this video, you'll see how one restaurant - the Sheraton Delfina in Santa Monica - has been using Hypochlorous Acid to clean their hotel rooms. The employees like it better, because they aren't inhaling strong chemicals all day. The downside to these large industrial machines is that they can cost $12,000. The machine we have was a fraction of that cost, but I would have gladly paid $12,000 for it, if that was the price.

The hotel is saving about $3500 per month, since adding the machines, because they don't have to spend as much money on expensive cleaners. They're also saving money on Worker's Comp costs... an employee in the video below reports she's not coughing as much as she used to. 

 



There's another company called Ecolox Tech, that makes industrial grade machines for hotels. These types of machines can cost $30,000, but they provide better disinfection, and a safer environment, for employees. The hotels can save money by not having to buy expensive cleaners!

The HOCl can be used as a fogger, and what's great about this is that it won't bleach fabric and furniture! The thing I like about it is that the smell dissipates quickly. It's extremely strong, yet so gentle, you can literally gargle with it : ).