Posted by GIESECKE+DEVRIENT CURRENCY TECHNOLOGY GMBH, a company founded 170 years ago, has filed a patent application on papers with biocidal properties containing an antimicrobial component such as didecyldimethylammonium halide complexed by gamma-cyclodextrin [1]. The role of cyclodextrin is to suppress the foaming of didecyldimethylammonium halide as the foaming makes the processing difficult, and spoils the quality of the paper.
Many items made of paper or containing paper are handled multiple times by different people, with little to no control over whether these people are potential carriers of harmful viruses, bacteria, fungi or other microorganisms. Many people are concerned that a carrier of such microorganisms could transfer them to the object it touches, making the object itself a potential vector of the microorganisms in question to another person who in turn touches the object. A prime example of such objects are banknotes. Banknotes go from hand to hand multiple times, whereby viruses, bacteria and fungi could in principle be transferred to the banknote paper. It has been shown that microorganisms on banknotes may remain pathogenic for a wide variety of period ranging from few hours to several days [2, 3]. It is anticipated that most of the microorganisms found on banknotes and other frequently handled objects are in fact not capable of harming the health of the average healthy user. However, it cannot be ruled out that an unfortunate combination of circumstances could lead to the transmission of microorganisms, leading to a disease.
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[1] BÖHM, Michael, GROSS, Andreas, SEIDLER, Rudolf, WIEDNER, Bernhard: BIOCIDAL PAPER, BIOCIDAL VALUE DOCUMENT, AND METHOD FOR PRODUCING SAME. WO2022189043 (17.06.2022)
[2] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpops/ecb.op259~33b180d450.en.pdf
[3] https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329439/WHO-WHE-IHM-GIP-2019.1-eng.pdf