Abstract:
Shopping Carts, a facility provided to the consumers to transport their purchased
product, is one of most contaminated surface that harbors bacteria especially on their
handles. With the passage of time, the extent of contamination of shopping cart handles
is increasing which leads to transmission of infectious diseases among people. To
overcome this problem, different strategies have been mentioned in literature like hand
washing, antibacterial agents, disposable plastic barriers, and photocatalysis etc. Among
all these, photocatalysis is becoming an emerging technique due to its low cost, non
toxicity, and being energy independent and environment friendly technique. In the
present study, titania nanoparticle suspensions were immobilized on double sided tape
and wrapped around the shopping cart handles to provide self cleaning surfaces. Whereas
the major species of microbial contamination found on shopping cart handles include
Staphylococcus sciuri, Bacillus pumilus, Bacillus aerius, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and
Agrobacterium tumefaciens. The coated tapes were tested against E. coli and the isolated
bacterial strains (Staphylococcus sciuri and Agrobacterium tumefaciens) with 2 hrs
exposure to UV and visible irradiation. The outcomes of the present study indicated that
titania nanoparticle embedded tapes are effective in killing E. coli as well as resistant
microbes (Staphylococcus sciuri and Agrobacterium tumefaciens) under normal light.
Bacterial count was 9.75×106 CFU/ml at the start of experiment while after 2 hrs it was
7.4×106, 1.8×106, 9.0×105 CFU/ml for uncoated, 5%TNPs coated and 1% Ag-doped NPs,respectively. Finally it has been demonstrated that the technique may be effectively used for continual disinfection of the shopping cart handles.
