BusinessTN

For centuries, silver has been recognized for its naturally sterilizing properties that kill or slow the growth of bacteria, making it ideal for storing food and water. Now, that ancient knowledge provides the basis for modern technology that incorporates silver antimicrobials into consumer products to achieve similar germ-fighting effects.

"The most common antimicrobials are silver-based, and they act like a poison to microbes," says Bhushan Deshpande, product development and quality manager of Techmer PM, a Clinton, Tenn.-based colorant and additives producer. When added to fiber or within plastic molding or coating, silver ions destroy microorganisms over time, rendering the final product self-disinfecting.

Deshpande says silver antimicrobials are not a common product in the industry, even today. Why the lack of adoption if the quality has been known of so long? Deshpande gives two main reasons: cost and strict regulations.

"This is not a cheap technology," he says. "With the cost of the product, some companies tend to shy away from it. Also, [there are] the headaches involved with doing a lot of testing to ensure the product works in the application, registering with the EPA and making sure the labeling is correct."

Cost and regulations aside, use of the technology is gaining strength, in part due to the fact that while the technology itself is not new, the technology of applying it to certain products is, and better and better products have become more suitable for use over the last decade.

"In the past, we did not have a lot of raw materials like silver that were suitable to go into the fiber industry because we need very fine particles that won't break the fiber as its being produced, and we need to disperse those particles evenly throughout the polymer matrix," Deshpande says. "Any clumps that form will cause the fiber to break."

Techmer specializes in this "dispersion technology," that has helped make more products suitable for antimicrobials over the years. The company incorporates silver antimicrobials into custom-made "masterbatch" solutions, which purchasers in the textile and plastic industries use for sanitation in products like hospital equipment, swimming pool liners, diaper products, food packaging and apparel. The masterbatch solutions vary based on the strength of the bacteria to be fought and the length of time for which effectiveness is desired.

In apparel, Techmer PM's product fights odor-causing bacteria and preserves fabric color. In other sectors, the technology plays a role in disease prevention. According to Deshpande, the application in hospital equipment cuts down on commonly found MRSA or "staph" bacteria, while application in food packaging helps prevent the spread of E. coli. He points to a test done on the hospital application using the JIS Z 2801 method (JIS stands for "Japanese Industrial Standard") that occurred in a 24-hour time period. "The approximate number of bacteria put on the fabric was 200,000," Deshpande says. "With time, the sample showed less than 100 bacteria left alive. That would be about a 99.9% kill rate."

When it comes to applicability, silver trumps its neighbors on the Periodic Table.

"Its lack of color contribution, small particle size and high heat stability all make silver a good choice for antimicrobial use," Deshpande says. Silver also poses minimal health risks from exposure.

For potential investors in the technology, silver antimicrobials are nothing short of marketing gold.

"Aside from the obvious functional benefits, there's the marketing side of delivering new technologies that really deliver on what they say they will do," says Paul Ford, CEO of Agion Technologies, a Massachusetts company that produces silver antimicrobials for the electronics industry, among others. "You see companies like Dell and Motorola utilizing Agion. They are leading-edge innovators."

But before you can market it, you've got to verify whatever claims you wish to make -- and this is especially true of silver antimicrobials, which are strictly regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"If they want to say it kills 99.9% of bacteria, they have to have testing to prove their product works," says Deshpande, whose company also assists in such research.

Overall, Techmer PM's antimicrobials work is just one of many threads connecting it with the fiber industry it serves. The company hosts the annual Fibertech conference, which was held earlier this month in Chattanooga. Deshpande says his company's advances in silver antimicrobials have "opened a lot of doors for us."

Though Deshpande stops short of describing the antimicrobial industry as a big industry, as it represents just one of many types of additives, he says it is definitely growing in how and where the technology is finding application.

Similarly, Techmer's production and testing of silver antimicrobials is not a huge part of its business, "but it is an important part because of the level of support and technical expertise needed for the products," Deshpande explains.

Those are the kinds of products that have the potential to become long-term fixtures in the industry.