[TheForge] Copper vs. coronavirus

[jerry Frost]

Hmmmm, stresses induced by isolation and impending danger might be worse
than this virus? I know it's making me short tempered and abrupt. Been
reading too many YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING!! idiotic articles. A few friends are
bouncing them off me for an opinion. I'm skeptical enough for more than just
me. I tend to read cites and notations, darned articles are rabbit holes I
can't help exploring. 

Silver's been used for eating utensils for millennia, IIRC largely for it's
reactivity to poisons. Nothing like an strong base to turn silver black.
I've also read, wine stayed good longer in silver containers. That one I
don't know, I didn't follow the cites,

The main airborne danger seems to be from droplets rather than the
aerosolized virus. Masks are much more effective preventing infected people
from spreading it than they are keeping it out. Your eyes are almost as good
a vector as your mouth and nose. 

If you need to make a mask to keep virions out I'd go with the old ABC
filters as described in cold war editions of Pop Mech and Sci. They were
talking about filtration systems for shelters but given a large enough
surface area a person could breath through them it'd work in a mask filter.
What is Frosty talking about? One of those rolls of TP. 

The article described pulling the cardboard tube and stringing a number on a
screen roll or perforated pipe. One end of the pipe is capped, the other
connected to the shelter's air pump intake. The longer the filter length the
easier it draws. In the mag they tested it with the home made air pump as
described but tested the filtration against molecule size agents. It was
poor against acetone but acceptable against gasoline and proof against the
smell of sugar mist. Sugar mist is how our masks were tested And even shaved
and wiped with Vaseline ANY leake in the mask was instantly obvious. 

Sorry, got sidetracked again. I'm thinking quilting maybe 20 layers of
Absorbent tissue between layers of Chamois like your shirt. Might trap
enough virion to keep it out of your mucus. It'd want to be a big mask, the
larger the area the lower the velocity of passing air and the more time to
trap the bugs. 

I'd have to be awfully hungry before I tried that though.

Infusing a less than adequate or homemade mask with various viruscides in
something I've thought about but air would have to spend hours passing the
filter to be effective. Infusing copper into the mask is easy peasy,
dissolve some in sulfuric acid and make copper sulfate. It's water soluble
so it'll pass the virus's glycoprotein and lipoprotein envelope and kill it.
It's also a salt which will dehydrate the afore mentioned envelope and then
nucleus and kill it. 

I suppose infusing masks, clothes, sanitizers, and such might help but we
MUST keep in mind that copper sulfate for all the above reasons is even MORE
toxic for us than simple copper oxide. 

Too early to start a garden here but believe it or not potatoes make a lush
house plant which gives a person quite a jump on a  Victory Garden. Just
consider the term adopted Bruce. Many years ago I put a tater starting to
sprout in my weeks long absence on the job in a vacant flower pot. I'd given
the old plant away they didn't want the pot. Anyway, in the couple months it
lived in a window then on a stand on the kitchen table it took over several
cubic feet of mobile home kitchen. 

In my limited experience growing potatoes I knew you wanted to mound them
and keep adding soil so just a few leaves protrude. Makes for lots of taters
and easy digging, just knock the mound / row down and they roll out. Almost.


A proper garden isn't practical in a trailer park but I had old tires so I
laid one on a sheet of plywood with some stringers under the tires so it'd
drain, put about 6" of coarse gravel on the bottom and filled it with
"inherited" potting soil and planted my out of control potato plant with
just a handful of leaves showing. Oh yeah, I harvested a bunch of new
potatoes, a couple dinners worth. I watered it and when the leaves started
to drape on the tire I put another tire on it but I filled that tire with
straw with a sprinkle of soil. Potatoes are mostly air plants so soil isn't
so important so long as they have the nutrients then need and aren't
available in air and water. By time the trailer court management hung an
eviction notice on my door about keeping old tires stacked in FRONT (best
light you know) of my mobile home (that NEVER moved) I had to get out.
Rather than give you a call and talk they posted eviction notices nobody
paid attention to. Anyhow it was coming onto fall and my tater tower was too
tall to toss another tire on from my 8' stepladder unless I wanted to get
all 3 Stooges and set up the ladder in the back of my pickup. 

It was harvest time and with a number of neighbors watching, everybody but
court management knew exactly what I was doing and wanted to know if such a
crazy idea would be as humiliating failure as the odds makers predicted. I
was a little bummed, it'd gotten to be darn pretty, several weeks since the
last tire had allowed the leaves to drape almost to the ground and it was
flowering profusely. 

Anywho, I used a shovel to pry and rocks to prop till it got tippy and
shoved it over. An 11' tall stack of straw filled tires yielded better than
250 lbs of russets, some the size of cantelopes only more curved turd shape.
The big ones were against the sunny sides of the tires and came imprinted
with a fabric texture and words, code numbers and such. 

A large inspiration was the strawberry barrel so I adapted. 

Just tossing the idea out if things come apart enough we need to start
growing our food. 

It won't work filling the stack with soil, there's too much weight and
taters either get reabsorbed or just die and become fertilizer. Dad used his
good garden soil instead of straw or sawdust. I didn't have to do that
experiment and Dad preferred a less weird garden. Win win eh?

Frosty

-----Original Message-----
From: theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Bruce .
Sent: Friday, March 27, 2020 5:31 AM
To: Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA
Subject: Re: [TheForge] Copper vs. coronavirus

I agree with the ordinary precautions.
I think I read somewhere that silver is not as effective as copper as an
antimicrobial, but perhaps that's because it's slower to tarnish?
(Chemist, here.)
Copper is unsafe as a cooking vessel (as opposed to just for fetching
water) *unless* the tarnish is first removed.  The tarnish is soluble in
even very dilute acid, and copper (although a necessary nutrient in *trace*
amounts) is toxic.  Bright copper does not release atoms, but tarnish is
copper oxides and does.
So, that makes me wonder whether the toxicity of copper ions (which I'm now
speculating relates to the relatively short survival time of bacteria and
viruses on copper surfaces -- which usually have at least some tarnish or
verdigris) might be exploited more actively:  Suppose we made a hand
sanitizer that contained slightly more than trace amounts of copper ions --
enough to kill germs?  What if we treated paper face masks with copper ions
-- which would easily be done?
There's already a provisional patent on a mask with sodium chloride (table
salt) crystals which are said to destroy the virus in minutes, mechanically.
That, of course, is a better idea because salt isn't toxic.
But it doesn't hurt to pursue multiple avenues.
If things get worse, I might try out my ideas on myself, but I have no way
of testing efficacy or safety, so wouldn't do more than that.  In the
meantime, I'm washing my hands frequently, washing my face at least 2x per
day, washing down surfaces, knobs and other hand-holds daily, taking my
temperature daily or more, and of course, socially isolating.
I think the worst of this isolation psychologically is that it brings out my
potential hypochondria, which, fortunately, is minimal, "Gee is that pain a
lung infection?" (No, it's just a muscle ache from sleeping in a bad
position.)
FWIW, I'm using some of my time to start up my garden.  A "victory garden"
might be very useful this coming season.  I harvested lots of beans,
carrots, Swiss chard, and tomatoes last season, and a smattering of other
things.  I'm starting earlier this year with peas and spinach, and will be
putting more things in (lettuce, Swiss chard, Brassicas, etc., soon,
followed by beans, carrots, and maybe even a Ruth Stout potato garden.
Bruce
NJ