Now more than ever, it’s incredibly important for businesses to focus on putting safe and effective hygiene practices into place. Not only does it restrict the spread of germs and bacteria, this also shows both staff and clients that you have a good awareness of personal health for everyone that passes through your place of work.

If you’ve already put the most obvious of measures into place, you might be wondering how else to fight the current global health crisis and keep yourself and your staff safe. There are probably some safety aspects of your workplace that could be improved upon.

Hygiene in the workplace

Regular touch points, like door handles, elevator buttons, and equipment that is frequently used by several different members of staff or the public, can contain several different types of dangerous and highly infectious bacteria or viruses. This includes e-coli, the common cold, flu virus, norovirus, and of course, coronavirus.

The University of Arizona published a study in 2013 demonstrating that just one contaminated door handle could infect up to 60% of a building’s occupants within 4 hours.

In a further study, swabs were taken from 100 different door handles from different departments in a hospital (including wards, offices and bathrooms), and the results of most of the tested swabs show that MRSA, a type of bacteria that is resistant to most medication, was present.

Of course, infection control has taken a massive step forward since the Covid-19 outbreak, but there are always improvements that could be made when it comes to personal safety – that is shown by the amount of people that pick up infectious viruses such as the common cold every year.

Studies like the above, plus the recent pandemic, has highlighted the importance of updating your safety protocol for employees who work in environments with common touch points. You should consider providing certain tools, such as antimicrobial ID card holders to prevent the spread of disease.

How can you prevent the spread of diseases?

Antimicrobial materials are often used in the production of high touch products such as phone cases, debit cards, and as mentioned previously, ID card holders. This is to restrict the growth and reproduction of bacteria and viruses on items that we frequently touch, hold, and put onto potentially contaminated surfaces.

There are many different types of antimicrobial materials. Some are simply a coating, which is made up of a chemical compound toxic to microorganisms and placed on top of a standard surface, whilst others occur naturally.

The naturally occurring antimicrobial materials are those that come from copper and all copper alloys, such as brass, bronze, copper-nickel and others. They kill all bacteria and viruses that land on the surface rapidly – often within 2 hours – and with a high rate of efficiency. Research suggests that using copper, brass or bronze antimicrobial materials at regular touch points can reduce the rate of reinfection by as much as 58%.

How can hygienic brass door opener tools help?

To reduce contact with common touch points in busy environments, you can use a door opener tool that’s made with antimicrobial brass. You can use this not only to open doors, but also to press buttons such as those on elevators, access control keypads, or ATMs, as the tools come with a handy stylus built into the end of the hook.

Featuring a finger loop for comfort and ease of use when holding the tool, ID Card Centre’s door opener tool has an eyelet that’s perfect for attaching to a key ring – or you can attach it to your clothing with the heavy-duty badge reel that comes included with the price of the tool.

Our hands free door openers are perfect for handles in areas with high traffic, such as bathrooms, front doors, or kitchen areas, and can be used in a range of industries across a wide variety of companies.

Who can benefit from antimicrobial door opener tools?

Door opener tools are the perfect way to ensure you’re doing everything you can to keep yourself and your staff safe. Retail workers may find this antimicrobial door opener tool helpful due to the nature of their jobs – personal hygiene is especially difficult to keep track of when it comes to customers, as you only come into contact with them for a fraction of their day.

This is also a helpful tool for employees who work in warehouse and transport. There are often hundreds of workers across different teams in warehouses who use the same machine to clock in and out; so using the stylus at the end of the door opener would reduce contact with keypads.

Offices have plenty of common touch points in the forms of any internal door handles such as bathrooms, kitchens, and internal office cubicles. There are also many that you might not think about, such as kettles, fridge doors, and coffee machines. Using an antimicrobial door opener would reduce the risk of contaminated door handles and the spread of germs to lesser-recognised touch points like the ones above.

Both staff and students of schools could benefit from a contactless door opener. Schools are one of the busiest environments and are often spread across a larger area, with teachers having to use classrooms in different ends of the building with a completely different bubble of students. Using antimicrobial door openers would prevent the unnecessary spread of diseases in situations like this for both staff and students.

Of course, the perfect environment for brass door openers would be in healthcare. Hygiene is of utmost importance in hospitals and antimicrobial door openers would prevent the spread of bacteria and viruses when staff members go between patients and wards.

We care about your safety

Here at ID Card Centre, we’ve been providing companies with safe and secure identity solutions for over ten years. We know that businesses come in all shapes and sizes, and that’s why we’ve made our contactless door opener tools available to purchase in single units without a limit on your order quantity. When you come to us, you can be sure that all our products are genuine, high quality material.

Click here to buy our antimicrobial brass door opener tool.