[CAUT] New flu info

[Porritt, David]

I have used isopropyl alcohol for many years and have never seen any damage on the keys.  It's a good solvent and evaporates quickly and kills germs quickly.

dp

David M. Porritt, RPT
dporritt at smu.edu

From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Jim Busby
Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 6:54 PM
To: PTG-CAUT (caut at ptg.org)
Subject: [CAUT] New flu info

All,

My son Eric is a new Pharmacist and "up" on all the latest, and has some pretty good sources for products. I asked him to do some research and here is what he told me;

- Hydrogen peroxide is NOT proven to kill flu germs. It may, but Eric says he wouldn't trust it w/o testing.
- Lysol wipes HAVE been proven to kill type A flu (Swine flu is type A) but not type B, which is a lot of the others
- Clorox wipes say they kill flu but they have NOT done the testing. THey have the same active ingredient as Lysol, but other stuff is different and the bottom line is it's NOT tested/proven.
- Lysol wipes (all wipes w/o alcohol) need 10 minutes to be effective (!!! I didn't know that!)
- Alcohol/alcohol wipes take only 30 seconds and is effective
- Sprays (Lysol or Clorox) are far more effective than wipes, mainly because of the alcohol, and take 30 seconds, but...they have alcohol, (which we believe is bad for keytops and finishes.) (Is it really??)
- Flu and other viral germs can live on a surface like piano keys for 2 days, but Eric says say 3 to be safe.

I'm revising the revisions of my revised rough copy of the "policy"...

For whomever told me that Hydrogen Peroxide would kill flu germs, do you have a source for seeing the tests? Eric couldn't find any.

Does alcohol really hurt keytops, or is this another urban pianotech legend?? I've never seen it, but there's a million things I haven't seen.

I hate to run this into the ground, but it looks like we need to study this more. I don't know about you, but BYU and Snow College want something definitive ASAP, and I'm afraid profs will take it upon themselves to start hosing down the piano after each student. Hence my pressing this query.

Thanks.

Jim Busby
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20090924/375d9fdc/attachment.htm>