Word: glycol
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...powerful preventive against pneumonia, influenza and other respiratory diseases may be promised by a brilliant series of experiments conducted during the last three years at the University of Chicago's Billings Hospital. Dr. Oswald Hope Robertson last week was making final tests with a new germicidal vapor-propylene glycol-to sterilize air. If the results so far obtained are confirmed, one of the age-old searches of man will finally achieve its goal...
...sprays. Many chemicals were found to kill airborne micro-organisms quickly, even in concentrations as low as one gram of chemical per 500 cu. ft. of air. Trouble was that all these air germicides smelled bad, or were toxic, or irritated the respiratory tract. Dr. Robertson's propylene glycol vapor is odorless, tasteless, nontoxic, non-irritating, cheap, highly bactericidal...
...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...