Word: glycol
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...prevent colds, Pediatrician Joseph Stokes Jr. and Dr. Tzvee N. Harris used propylene glycol vapor (TIME, Nov. 16, 1942) last winter to spray the air of six wards containing 105 children at the Children's Seashore House in Atlantic City. While the wards were being sprayed, three children came down with colds. While the wards were unsprayed, 79 got colds...
...accidental. Dr. Robertson and his colleagues were trying out another possible germicide-a detergent or "soapless soap" (similar to Dreft, Aerosol and other products widely sold for household and industrial use). Water solutions of the detergent were only mildly effective, so the researchers tried solutions of detergents in propylene glycol, which is a sort of thin glycerine. Results were much better. Then the researchers found that the propylene glycol itself was a potent germicide. One part of glycol in 2,000,000 parts of air would-within a few seconds-kill concentrations of air-suspended pneumococci, streptococci and other bacteria...
...work? Respiratory disease bacteria float about in tiny droplets of water breathed, sneezed and coughed from human beings. The germicidal glycol also floats in infinitesimally small particles. Calculations showed that if droplet had to hit droplet, it would take two to 200 hours for sterilization of sprayed air to take place. Since sterilization took place in seconds, Dr. Robertson concluded that the glycol droplets must give off gas molecules which dissolve in the water droplets and kill the germs within them...
...Robertson placed groups of mice in a chamber and sprayed its air first with propylene glycol, then with influenza virus. All the mice lived. Then he sprayed the chamber with virus alone. All the mice died...
Propylene glycol is harmless to man when swallowed or injected into the veins. It is also harmless to mice who have breathed it for long periods. But medical science is cautious-there was still a remote chance that glycol might accumulate harmfully in the erect human lungs which, unlike those of mice, do not drain themselves. So last June Dr. Robertson began studying the effect of glycol vapor on monkeys imported from the University of Puerto Rico's School of Tropical Medicine. So far, after many months' exposure to the vapor, the monkeys are happy and fatter than...