Control of Microbes

Contaminants are microbes present at a given

place and time that are undesirable or unwanted.

Decontamination methods employ either

physical agents, such as heat or radiation, or
chemical agents such as disinfectants and
antiseptics.
Relative Resistance of Microbial Forms

• Highest resistance: Bacterial endospores

• Moderate resistance: Protozoan cysts; some

fungal sexual spores (zygospores); some viruses.
Bacteria with more resistant vegetative cells are
Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Staphylococcus aureus,
and Pseudomonas species.

• Least resistance: Most bacterial vegetative

cells; ordinary fungal spores and hyphae; enveloped
viruses; yeasts; and trophozoites.
 Sterilization

Sterilization is a process that destroys or

removes all viable microorganisms, including
viruses.

Any material that has been subjected to this

process is said to be sterile.
 Microbicidal Agents

•The root -cide, meaning to kill, can be combined with other terms to define
an antimicrobial agent aimed at destroying a certain group of
microorganisms.

•A bactericide is a chemical that destroys bacteria except for those in the

endospore stage. It may or may not be effective on other microbial groups.

•A fungicide is a chemical that can kill fungal spores, hyphae, and yeasts.

•A virucide is any chemical known to inactivate viruses, especially on living

tissue.

• A sporicide is an agent capable of destroying bacterial endospores. A

sporicidal agent can also be a sterilant because it can destroy the most
resistant of all microbes.
 Agents That Cause Microbiostasis

•The Greek words stasis and static mean to stand still.

•Although killing or permanently inactivating

microorganisms is the usual goal of microbial control,
microbiostasis does have meaningful applications.

• Bacteriostatic agents prevent the growth of bacteria

on tissues or on objects in the environment, and
fungistatic chemicals inhibit fungal growth.

•Materials used to control microorganisms in the body

(antiseptics and drugs) have microbistatic effects
because many microbicidal compounds can be too
toxic to human cells.
 Germicides, Disinfection, Antisepsis

A germicide, also called a microbicide, is any chemical agent

that kills pathogenic microorganisms. A germicide can be used
on inanimate (nonliving) materials or on living tissue, but it
ordinarily cannot kill resistant microbial cells.

The related term, disinfection, refers to the use of a physical

process or a chemical agent (a disinfectant) to destroy
vegetative pathogens but not bacterial endospores. It is
important to note that disinfectants are normally used only on
inanimate objects because, in the concentrations required to
be effective, they can be toxic to human and other animal
tissue.
In modern usage, sepsis is defined as the growth of
microorganisms in the body or the presence of microbial toxins
in blood and other tissues. The term asepsis refers to any
practice that prevents the entry of infectious agents into sterile
tissues and thus prevents infection. Aseptic techniques
commonly practiced in health care range from sterile methods
that exclude all microbes to antisepsis.

In antisepsis, chemical agents called antiseptics are applied

directly to exposed body surfaces (skin and mucous
membranes), wounds, and surgical incisions to destroy or inhibit
vegetative pathogens. Examples of antisepsis include preparing
the skin before surgical incisions with iodine compounds,
swabbing an open root canal with hydrogen peroxide, and
ordinary hand-washing with a germicidal soap.
Methods That Reduce the Numbers of
Microorganisms

•Sanitization is any cleansing technique that mechanically

removes microorganisms (along with food debris) to reduce
the level of contaminants.

•A sanitizer is a compound such as soap or detergent used

to perform this task. Cooking utensils, dishes, bottles, cans,
and used clothing that have been washed and dried may
not be completely free of microbes, but they are considered
safe for normal use (sanitary).
 Antimicrobial Agents

The Modes of Action

An antimicrobial agent’s adverse effect on cells is known as

its mode (or mechanism) of action.
Agents can be classified according to the following degrees of
selectiveness:
•Agents that are less selective in their scope of destructiveness, inflict
severe damage on many cell parts, and are generally very biocidal
(heat, radiation, some disinfectants),

•Moderately selective agents with intermediate specificity (certain

disinfectants and antiseptics), and

•More selective agents (drugs) whose target is usually limited to a

specific cell structure or function and whose effectiveness is
restricted only to certain microbes.
The cellular targets of physical and chemical
agents fall into four general categories:

(1) The cell wall,

(2) The cell membrane,
(3) The cellular synthetic processes (DNA,
RNA), and
(4) The proteins.
 Chemical Agents in Microbial Control
A good number of the disinfectants are being used
extensively based on their individual merits and superb
characteristic features, such as:
(1) Alcohols
(2) Aldehydes
(3) Chlorohexidine
(4) Gaseous chemosterilizers
(5) Heavy metals and derivatives
(6) Halogens
(7) Organic acid and derivatives
(8) Oxidizing agents
(9) Phenol and phenolics
(10) Quaternary ammonium compounds (QUATS)
(11) Surface-active agents