Odour-free shirts to materialise soon

NEW DELHI, SEPT 14: Odour-free shirts, that kill odour causing bacteria and infectious germs within minutes and save office-goers from co...

NEW DELHI, SEPT 14: Odour-free shirts, that kill odour causing bacteria and infectious germs within minutes and save office-goers from constant embarrassment of driving away colleagues on working up a sweat, could soon become a reality.

Chemicals in the US have developed a technique which could enable manufacturers of cotton textiles to graft to their fabrics chlorine-containing compounds called N-halamines which lead to the death of a wide range of odour-causing bacteria, virus, yeast and fungi.

The new fabrics could be used for the manufacture of a wide range of clothing including sportswear, nurses uniforms, hospital and hotel bedding, handkerchiefs, dishcloths and household sponges, says a report published in The Guardian, London.”

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According to Dr Jeffry Williams of the Seattle firm which commissioned this research, carried out at the University of California, the grafting of the N-halamines to the cotton fabric required a process very similar to the one already being used to give the fabric a “permanent press,” which meant that the technique would be very easy to adapt.

The bacteria-killing N-halamines might one day even be grafted to a butcher’s chopping block and kitchen tables to protect against food-borne bacteria, he said.

But the first use is likely to be in shirts that will pass the “sniff test,” he said. According to Dr Williams, the nostril-friendly shirts can be reinvigorated once they start to lose their effectiveness: A quick rinse in a dilute solution of bleach would restore the used up chlorine atoms in the fabric, thus reequipping it to kill odour-causing bacteria.