If you’re one of these trillions of people who’ve been pressing lift buttons with your elbow, keys, smartphones or even feet…
…then you should stop now, because you’re doing more harm than good to youself.
Because in the past two weeks, lift buttons in HDB flats have been coated with something known as sdsf, and if you’ve been using your keys to press the buttons, you might just remove coating and cause yourself to be infected instead.
Here’s what this means.
HDB Lift Buttons Have Been Sprayed With Coating That Continuously ‘Kill’ Coronavirus
In the last two weeks, town councils in Singapore have been working hard behind the scene to keep you safe from the nasty bug.
Apparently, they’ve been coating all the lift buttons in all HDB flats with a self-disinfecting coating.
The number of buttons now coated with this?
A whopping 1.5 million lift buttons.
But how does it work? How can a coating “self-disinfect”? Is it some nano-robots that stay on the buttons and spray 0.0000001 ml of hand sanitiser on the surface?
No. It’s better than that.
If you’re a driver, you’d be familiar with rain repellent—drivers would just spray something on the mirror, and whenever it rains, water won’t stay on the mirror; instead, it’ll just slide off the surface.
sdsf, the name of the self-disinfecting coat, works agak agak the same way, but instead of repelling rain, it ‘kills” viruses, bacteria and fungi.
650 litres of the high-tech coat is donated by Changi Foundation, Changi Airport Group’s (CAG) philanthropic arm.
So, what’s the science behind it?
CAG said, “The sdst coating is effective in two ways. Firstly, it has a needle-like structure that ruptures the outer membrane of viruses, bacteria and fungi, thereby reducing their ability to infect.”
In other words, the coat is made up of trillions of small needles that “kills” virus.
Neat.
“Secondly, proprietary bonding agents in the coating allow it to adhere tightly to surfaces at a molecular level, such that even with repeated scrubbing and cleaning, the coating does not leach and remains effective for as long as three months.”
Cool.
Reader Bao: So it doesn’t repel the virus mah. It killed it
Well, yes. I’m just giving you an example of how it works, like how we do it with our cars with Rain-X.
Reader Bao: You don’t lie, you don’t drive
Right. The next question is this: if the coating is made up of zillions of small needles, would it hurt us? Would our cells be “ruptured” too?
Fortunately, no: it’s safe for the human skin.
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There’s just one problem, though; while a coating can last for three months, a hard object, such as a key, can scrape the coating off.
Which is why if you’ve used keys to press the buttons, it’s actually counterproductive.
While this sounds cool and all, and we should have coat the world with this, just be careful not to get complacent.
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Remember to continue to wash your hands regularly, because I’m 101% the lift buttons aren’t the only thing you’d have touched the entire day.