[Quantitative recovery of bacteria from different germ carrier materials]

A number of germ carriers have been tested quantitatively, in order to select the optimum germ carrier for future quantitative tests of chemical disinfectants, belonging to the class of surface and instrument disinfectants. Quality criteria applied were the storage capacity of the carrier and the germ recovery fraction. For the surface disinfectant, the cotton piece was confirmed to be suited best, while for the instrument disinfection the mineralized soft rubber tube proved to be optimal. The cotton piece, however, stores ten times more germs than the rubber tube which means that with the former, reduction factors of as high as log 6 (-7) can be measured.