In this episode

Copper has long been used in cooking, roofing, and making beautiful jewelry. It’s also a key component in the transition to an electrified future, and its antimicrobial superpower is the focus of scientific study. In this episode, we explore the history of copper in health care and its role in keeping us all safer now and into the future.

Guests:
Dr. Marthe Charles, Division Head, Medical Microbiology and Infection Control, Vancouver Coastal Health
Catherine Adair, Manager of Community Development, Teck
Jillian Lennartz, Manager Sustainability Reporting, Teck (“Jill from Teck”)

 

Transcript

00:00:03

Robin Stickley: Today my family is traveling home onboard a ferry. We're headed from Vancouver on British Columbia's mainland over to the southern tip of Vancouver Island, Victoria. And so I thought, here's an opportunity to have a really good look around and be paying attention to how many things we're all putting our hands on. One right after the other. And as soon as you get out of your car, you're doing that, you're opening doors, you're in the stairwell using the handrail there behind dozens of people ahead of you who are doing the same thing. Then I immediately went into the washroom again, more doors, faucets, touching something so that I can get the paper towel to come down. And then off we go into the gift shop or the cafeteria or the kids' play area.

A lot of shared surfaces that we're all putting our hands on. And so of course, lots of opportunity there for bacteria to spread, which is what we're talking about in today's episode. And so it's kind of got me thinking more critically and really looking around with this in mind and wondering about copper and if copper could be here, working away kind of undercover in the background, if you will, making this space a bit safer, mitigating the risk for me and for my family. Well, that's a pretty intriguing idea. I definitely want to know more, and I'm looking forward to diving into this topic today and chatting with our experts about it.

For some of us, it's in our kitchen sinks, our favourite set of pots or even a railing. An interior designer insists is the height of modernity and copper has been with us for thousands of years. According to the US National Parks Conservation Association, the oldest copper mine in North America is in Michigan and dates back 7, 000 years. Over the centuries, copper has been used for tools, needles, tableware, and dishes. And yet, for as long as humans have mined and used copper, its real superpower is just now the focus of scientific study in the modern world. Copper is a proven antimicrobial agent that eliminates up to 99.9% of harmful bacteria on surfaces within two hours. Just think about that for a moment. If copper can eliminate harmful bacteria from surfaces within two hours, wow, what does that mean for our public, private and social spaces?

We'll explore all of this and more in this episode of why we mine with my guests, Dr. Marthe Charles division, head of medical microbiology and infection prevention and control at Vancouver Coastal Health, and Catherine Adair, manager of community development at Teck.

I am back with Jill Teck's manager of sustainability reporting, but now known as the-

00:03:21

Jill: Scientist with social skills.

00:03:23

Robin Stickley: We're going to get that to go viral, Jill, I promise. So this week's topic is one that I feel like I know a little bit about. I've been to the tech offices recently. I've seen the copper decals on door handles, and for a while there during the pandemic, I also noticed people were putting copper foil over stuff where people are touching that stuff. So why is copper put on surfaces?

00:03:44

Jill: Yeah, great question. Copper is a naturally antimicrobial product. It doesn't immediately kill microbes, but it does so over a relatively short period of time. So surfaces can self disinfect in a way.

00:04:00

Robin Stickley: Could you shed some light for us, Jill, on how people learned this about copper in the first place?

00:04:08

Jill: The earliest written record is from Egypt in 3, 200 BCE. When they were already using copper to sanitize water. The Phoenicians shaved off pieces from the bronze swords. Bronze is a metal tin alloy, to put in wounds to prevent infection.

00:04:25

Robin Stickley: No pun intended here, but, I mean, come on, that's that's pretty metal.

00:04:32

Jill: And if you'll humor me, allow me one more example. This one comes from the industrial era. In the 1800, there were multiple cholera outbreaks around the globe. When cholera was impacting Paris, there was this physician named Victor Burke who made a really interesting observation on visiting a copper smelting facility. Even after two deadly cholera pandemics in the city, only a few of those 200 workers had gotten mildly ill and none had died.

00:05:02

Robin Stickley: So copper to the rescue?

00:05:04

Jill: Right. Correct. It's actually pretty funny. Burke noted that most of the smelting facilities had the same sort of results, even though, and I stressed, these are his observations, " The facilities were in poor condition and the hygiene was pitiful." So basically this place was a dump.

00:05:26

Robin Stickley: Oh my gosh. Burke, a little harsh there to write that stuff.

00:05:31

Jill: Yeah, I agree. It's surprising how candid some of the articles from way back when can be, but Burke was onto something there. Something other than general hygiene had to be the cause of the lack of cholera. After all, this place was a dump. He then surveyed over 300, 000 people in Paris and found a strong correlation between copper exposure and resistance to cholera.

00:05:56

Robin Stickley: Incredible. So copper stopped the spread.

00:06:00

Jill: Exactly.

00:06:01

Robin Stickley: Wow. I love hearing about this. Thank you, Jill. Now I'm really excited to see where we've taken this information in modern day. We'll be back in a moment. I really want to begin understanding how copper is making a difference in the medical field and in everyday life. Let's find out with my first guest, Dr. Marthe Charles is a medical microbiologist and division head of Medical Microbiology and Infection Prevention and Control at Vancouver Coastal Health. Dr. Charles, welcome to Why We Mine. We are so delighted to have a chance to talk to you today.

00:06:38

Dr. Marthe Charles: It's so good to be here. Thank you so much for the invitation.

00:06:41

Robin Stickley: So let's start with your background and your work at Vancouver Coastal Health.

00:06:48

Dr. Marthe Charles: I was born in Montreal. I've done bachelor and a master's degree in microbiology, and I ended up doing also my medical training at the University of Montreal office. So after that I went and did a subspecialization in infectious diseases and in medical microbiology at the University of Alberta, and I continue to move further west. So in 2017 I joined the really great team and super dynamic team of medical microbiologists at Vancouver Coastal Health. The team is really nice and we take real pride in what we're doing. So if you ask me what my day- to- day job looks like, so I'm mostly in the laboratory at Vancouver General Hospital, and my job is really to help the clinicians and trying to figure out which microorganism or pathogen are causing the illness in their patient that they're seeing. So that's one part of my job. But as early as 2018, I got promoted and became the division head for Medical Microbiology and Infection Prevention and Control at Vancouver Coastal. So just on time right before the pandemic. So now what it looks like on the prevention of infection side for us is really working in close collaboration with a big team to try to prevent the risk of transmission of microorganism between the staff patients and also the environment in which they're getting their care.

00:08:19

Robin Stickley: I can only imagine what the last few years have been like for you taking that promotion and then walking into a global pandemic. Wow.

 

00:08:27

Dr. Marthe Charles: It was really demanding. But I really like to say that we have the best team here and we did amazing work during that pandemic.

00:08:35

Robin Stickley: So we're talking about infection control and copper. If I had said this to you 10 or 15 years ago that you would be working with copper, would that have surprised you or not?

00:08:45

Dr. Marthe Charles: Well, I got to say that I would've been surprised because there's a lot of things that have moved really quickly in our understanding and knowledge about copper and how it can be used. So I think it's a really exciting field and even more when you think about the fact that copper was the first solid material, metal, that was recognized as an antimicrobial. So that for us was fascinating. And also, as I mentioned, my team is really motivated and curious and we are always on the lookout for innovations and new ways of doing things and finding new solutions. So for us, I think the hope was that we were able to find an engineered solution. So not waiting and depending solely on human intervention. Now we were looking into solutions that you have a surface now that has the ability of self disinfecting. So it's almost having an added insurance policy that the surface that you're interacting with is clean and thus making the environment safer for everyone.

00:09:56

Robin Stickley: I don't want to force you into all the technicalities, but I do want to try and understand a little bit of how this works and how we know that it works.

00:10:04

Dr. Marthe Charles: The interesting part about copper is that there's so many mechanism by which it has the ability of being a problem for the bacteria. So one of the ways that it does it is by, if you look at the genetic information of the bacteria, so the DNA, it has the ability of disrupting that. If you look at the cell wall of bacteria, so just like the outer membrane of a bacteria, it has the ability of poking holes in it and making it leaky. So that's another way, again, where bacteria have difficulties with that. Another way that has been described as well is just copper in itself seems to be toxic for the bacteria and also has an impact on its metabolism. So when you put all of this together, it seems like there's so many various ways that copper has the ability of making bacterias way weaker and easier to die on its surface. So a lot of scientists are looking into that or are thinking, well, it's going to be really hard for bacterias to become resistant to that when there's so many ways at which copper is coming at it. But at the same time you never say never with bacterias. So it would be possible, right?

00:11:17

Robin Stickley: Copper is the natural enemy of bacteria on lots of different levels.

00:11:21

Dr. Marthe Charles: On lots of different levels that copper would have the ability of being detrimental for bacterias. Yeah, for sure.

00:11:28

Robin Stickley: And that's got to be exciting, I mean, especially most of us are far more aware of places that we touch, surfaces we touch, bacteria, germ sharing, all of those things right now. So this is pretty exciting news.

00:11:41

Dr. Marthe Charles: Oh yeah, it is for us as well in the healthcare system for sure. But I got to say that the pandemic has really put a spotlight on copper. So I feel like people are now a bit more aware of the property story of copper, and we have big projects going on. So my team, the VCH, has been involved with the transit system in Toronto and in Vancouver, and we've placed elements of copper in really highly touched surfaces to try to see how durable and what's the efficacy of those copper product in a real world setting. So a lot of people are already aware of that, and you look at different areas like door handles in universities or at the airport. So I feel like there's been a lot of attention put into copper and its ability of keeping us safe.

00:12:32

Robin Stickley: It's not new though in healthcare. Copper's been around, right?

00:12:36

Dr. Marthe Charles: It's been around for a long time. So if we go down the history lane, some people would say that it goes all the way back to Egyptian time. So there is some evidence that Egyptians were using copper to sterilize water or even chest wounds when there's wounded soldiers. So yeah, it goes way, way back. But if we stay within our today's time, I want to say that since 2008, EPA, which is the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States had registered copper as the first elemental or solid surfaces that is antimicrobial. So we're talking about more than a decade ago.

And then not long after that, you had Health Canada recognizing copper, again, as an antimicrobial, and that was in 2014. So it's super exciting. And as I mentioned, Vancouver Coastal Health is always on the lookout for innovation. We really take great pride in providing the best care for patient and always learning and finding solution and innovation. Two years later, Vancouver Coastal Health was installing elements of copper in various areas at Vancouver General Hospital. So you had copper put in ICU settings and also at the bone marrow transplant unit. So we were able to study the impact of utilizing copper on those surfaces, and we were able to show that copper kills 99.9% of bacteria that are in contact with copper, and also that it did reduce the rate of nosocomial infection in that population.

00:14:16

Robin Stickley: So let's talk about superbugs like MRSA. Where does copper fit in terms of the fight against these antibiotic resistant infections?

00:14:25

Dr. Marthe Charles: Yeah, it's a good question. We talk a lot about superbugs or multi- drug resistant organisms. So first, if we start talking a bit about that, so people probably heard about MRSA, which is a staphylococcus aureus type of organism that is resistant to penicillin, but we are also wary of utter organism like enterococcus. The acronyms that people use is VRE, and that one is also resistant to some of the common drug that we use. And lastly, what we call the CRE or the CPO, which are organisms that are resistant to carbapenems, and carbapenems for us are often the last lane of defense that we have when we're trying to treat an infection. So superbugs are really, really important in the sense of we need to find a solution against those tread because it's as if the bacteria were coming up with more ways of becoming resistant to antimicrobial at a rate that is way faster than our ability to produce new antimicrobials.

 It is quite concerning in 2019, the CDC in Atlanta, USA had put CRE, VRE and MRSA as being urgent threat to public health. So it's quite serious. I think what's interesting is if you look into the literature, the scientific literature right now, there's some good evidence that copper has the ability to also kill MRSA, which is one of the superbug, as well as CRE, and there's some evidence as well for enterococcus. So it is promising to think that copper would help us towards that fight against superbugs.

00:16:09

Robin Stickley: Incredibly promising. What do you think when you look into the future in terms of copper and its uses within your work environment, and I don't know, maybe even beyond?

00:16:21

Dr. Marthe Charles: Yeah, so I feel like people are way more attentive to what's going on with copper, and they've seen it coming in like various forms. We saw copper getting involved in mask production or the handles for doors. So there's a lot of that happening. So we're seeing this transition between utilization of copper in the healthcare system, but way more in the community. But what I'm really looking forward to is all of the technical development in nano technologies, for example. So from a healthcare perspective, there's some literature coming out where they're using copper alloy with titanium to create those implants and reduce the risk of failure of implant due to infection. So that's exciting. Looking into dental implant for example, or even most recently, there was some papers showing that you could use copper to treat chronic wounds, so chronic infection, so copper would have the ability to try to help heal faster those chronic infected wounds.

So that's one aspect. But our group here at Vancouver Coastal Health has also have great collaboration with surface engineers. We're working with Dr. Amanda Clifford at UBC, and she's looking into specific type of surfaces that are hydrophobic. So what it means in practice is that those surfaces are repelling bacteria. So bacterias cannot adhere to them as easily as stainless steel, for example. And she's combining that with the activity of copper. So not only are we creating surfaces that doesn't allow for additioning of bacteria, but it could potentially kill the one that had the ability of staying there. So that's with Dr. Clifford. But we're also working with Dr. Gary Leach at SFU, where he's looking into nano engineering and nano structures that if you shine the right light on those copper nano structure, it has the ability of creating super high temperature at nano levels to kill the bacteria. So I'm really, really looking to the future. I feel like the future of copper is really bright.

00:18:35

Robin Stickley: Very exciting times. It's really fascinating to listen to you talk about it. Dr. Charles, thank you again so much.

00:18:42

Dr. Marthe Charles: Thank you so much for the invitation.

00:18:48

Robin Stickley: Stay tuned for the next part of why we mine where I speak to Catherine Adair, a manager responsible for Teck's Copper and Health Program about why mining is getting involved in infection control. I'm Robin Stickley. This is Why We Mine. Catherine Adair, welcome to Why We Mine. I am incredibly excited to have this conversation with you today.

00:19:17

Catherine Adair: Thanks, Robin. I'm really excited to be here.

00:19:19

Robin Stickley: Catherine, if you don't mind, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do and how you came to be in the spot you're in.

00:19:26

Catherine Adair: Absolutely. My current role is the manager of community development at Teck Resources. My real oversight of my position is I manage our community investment program across the company, especially our corporate community investment. So when I'm saying that, I mean donations and sponsorships and the supports we provide to our local communities, both in the communities we operate and then more nationally and globally across the world.

00:19:49

Robin Stickley: I love it. Okay, so copper, this is so interesting to me because we think about a mining company being involved in infection control and a program related to that. And those two ideas, I don't think for a lot of our listeners necessarily go together.

00:20:03

Catherine Adair: It's not the most obvious connection, that's for sure. But I think we have our program, it's called Copper and Health, and it is part of our corporate social responsibility community giving program. We know once we learned about antimicrobial copper from our healthcare partners that we already work with on a number of healthcare initiatives, we knew that it was the right thing to do as a corporation that knows about copper, and as well, just the understanding that we could draw that connection between what we take from the ground in terms of mining and metals and making that connection for folks on how they use those products in their everyday lives, and especially how they use them to protect human health.

00:20:44

Robin Stickley: Yeah, I think that's a great point. I mean, the whole premise of the podcast, Why We Mine, is making the connection for people about, yes, we know that these metals and minerals come out of the ground, but how do we use them? How do they apply day- to- day? And this is, I don't want to say, it's not a new application, but it's definitely something that is taking off.

00:21:03

Catherine Adair: Yeah, it's not new at all. If you look to what they call the Bronze Age, that's when they first started keeping water in a bronze urn or a copper urn, and they found that water didn't go bad as quickly because of course it was killing the bugs. And VGH was the first hospital in Canada to install antimicrobial copper in a hospital setting. And so in 2016, they installed it within the intensive care unit to help protect those most vulnerable patients who are most at risk for infection and also can be most impacted from infection.

00:21:33

Robin Stickley: So when COVID comes along, this is something that if it was on the back burner before this was just thrust straight into the healthcare spotlight at that point. I mean, that would put it on a different trajectory altogether.

00:21:44

Catherine Adair: Absolutely. So where the main focus of research around infection control, I'll call it pre pandemic, was really in hospitals. So how do we make sure patients and folks who works on hospitals are safe? And especially the focus was on those so- called superbugs. So the bugs that mainly bacteria like MRSA and staph infections and those types of things that can unfortunately prove deadly if you catch something like that in a hospital. And so that's really where the focus was. What are the opportunities? If you don't allow the infection to spread from person to person, you don't need to treat it with antibiotics. It doesn't increase that antibiotic resistance. But then the pandemic happened and that changed the conversation. All of a sudden there was this much greater awareness. Yes, hospitals are absolutely still a priority, but over and above that, infection control in public spaces is also so important. So those high traffic, shared public spaces that were all walking through, touching door handles, 100 people are grabbing in an hour. Those types of considerations. What can we do to help reduce the spread of infections outside of healthcare in addition to all the work we're doing in hospitals?

00:22:55

Robin Stickley: How are decisions made about where the copper should go in terms of best use or best results?

00:23:03

Catherine Adair: Yeah, that's a really good question. It's high traffic, high touch. So if you think of a patient care room, you don't have to coat the whole room in copper. What you need to do is the door handles, because nurses, doctors, staff, family are all using the door handles to come in and out. You want to do the bed frames because the bed frames are going up and down. They're getting moved sometimes, if the patient's getting moved around, and it's a shared surface. You want to do the bathroom. So if there's touchpoints within the bathroom that you're not able to make touch lists, you want to make those out of antimicrobial copper, but you don't need to coat the walls, nobody's licking walls, right? Those types of things.

00:23:41

Robin Stickley: I was actually going to tell you that the thought crossed my mind with my preschooler who had come home with a different virus every week that maybe I could wallpaper his room with copper because just so many viruses when they're that age.

00:23:53

Catherine Adair: That's actually a really good point. So we were able to partner with the Logan Lake Daycare, which is just outside of our Highland Valley Copper Operation in British Columbia, just outside of Kamloops. They've just built a new daycare space, and they're the first daycare in Canada to include antimicrobial copper. So exactly what you're saying, Robin, kids touch everything and then they don't always wash their hands well, and so we know daycares can be such a spread of infection and bugs and germs. So we were able to get some input from the infection control teams and say, what are the best locations within a daycare? And it was the same sorts of things. It was the sinks. How do we make sure the taps are antimicrobial copper? How do we make sure they were even able to do the toilet seats? So those little kiddie toilet seats are antimicrobial copper, but also the countertops, so the shared countertops where you're preparing a bunch of crafts and then you're helping kids get ready, those types of things. So it's those high touch shared spaces, but especially for kids, a daycare is one of the easiest places to pick up germs, so that's where you want to use copper.

00:24:54

Robin Stickley: I'm very excited about the idea of copper in a daycare. Do these products, are they using copper that's actually been mined by Teck?

00:25:02

Catherine Adair: No. You would think so, but none of the copper in these products comes from Teck mines. As I sort of mentioned that all of these products are registered products with Health Canada, so there's independent companies that manufacture things like door handles, things like countertops, and these are a few different companies. So we come in much more as the funder and sort of the catalysts. So what that's more what we bring to the table is we have the opportunity to make the connection between these vendors and a patient control team in a hospital and that capital allocation projects group, and help them all work together. So it's not any of our copper that's actually used, but it does help us make that connection between what is copper, even though it's in your car, even though it's in your phone, even though it's in your computer, you don't necessarily see it in the same way as you would on a door handle or a countertop.

00:25:51

Robin Stickley: When I talked to my friends about the episode, they were all saying the idea that copper would be killing bugs instead of say harsh chemicals, stuff that isn't natural. That was the comment that kept coming up over and over again, which I thought was interesting.

00:26:04

Catherine Adair: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're all using alcohol- based sanitizers, which I'm very grateful that we have and we can use them, but how can this play a role as a built environment to help reduce some of those cleaning solutions or even copper, and most metals are one of the few things that are 100% recyclable indefinitely. You can recycle copper, it goes back to pure copper every time. Whereas with plastics, we haven't figured out how to do that yet. With paper, it degenerates a bit each time, so there's even the sustainability lens to it as well.

00:26:33

Robin Stickley: And going forward, Catherine, what do you think the future looks like? What do you see for the antimicrobial copper and how it plays out for us in the world going forward?

00:26:42

Catherine Adair: What I think we would want to see and what I would hope to see just as a community member and a citizen who lives in Vancouver and uses transit and uses healthcare, copper in every healthcare and hospital setting across Canada would be so important to help keep us safe. And then in our shared public spaces. So in airports, in transit, in lobbies of business buildings that we go in and out of, in malls, all those high traffic, high touch, high spread places where we can use copper to the most effective means to help keep us all safe.

00:27:13

Robin Stickley: That's exciting. Actually, to talk about and think about.

00:27:16

Catherine Adair: It is exciting. That's a big dream. I have to say. There's a ton of work that we need to go in by a lot of parties to get us there, but I think we could do it. And I think the value of doing it is really important.

00:27:25

Robin Stickley: I have just so enjoyed learning from you and listening to you today. Catherine, thank you so much for this insight today on our podcast. We appreciate you spending some time with us.

00:27:36

Catherine Adair: Thanks, Robin. I'm always happy to talk about copper and how it can kill bugs, and it was really interesting to talk to you and learn more about them.

00:27:49

Robin Stickley: Today's episode was full of what I call yay science moments. It is truly remarkable to me, copper's ability to give the door handles of my son's school or the guardrail I'm holding on to onboard the SkyTrain, or perhaps more critically, the call button inside a hospital room, an added line of defense, a built- in bacteria killer that cleans the shared surfaces we touch. And a hat tip here, we do know ancient civilizations pegged copper reports, antimicrobial properties thousands of years ago. But it has to be said, a modern- day application of the metal could be a game changer, a lifesaver. I can sense from our experts there are challenges ahead, healthcare providers, school districts, transit companies, they need to see the value and buy, and certainly for some it is outside the budget. And then there's the case of copper supply.

It's not intended to be a cure all, but if the goal is improving public health, I bet the pandemic weary among us would be encouraged knowing that copper's hard at work in the spaces we gather, making life safer, better, easier.

I'm Robin Stickley. Thanks for listening to this podcast brought to you by Teck. This is Why We Mine. Why We Mine is brought to you by Teck. Our producer is Andrew Pemberton- Fowler. Our sound engineer is Diego Domine, and our production assistant is Hugh Perkic. Additional production support provided by Jar Audio.

Resources

Copper & Health Factsheet

Copper’s Essential Role in Protecting Public Health