Chapter 29-- HOW DO YOU USE HOCL ON HARD SURFACES TO DISINFECT? -- Pioneer of HOCL Science with Jeffrey F. Williams

And there's an old mantra in infection control, and that is you can't disinfect if it's not clean. So the first part of any kind of sanitation disinfection intervention is cleanliness. And that's true whether it's blood on the floor. It's true whether that is saliva on an instrument.

If it's there, clean it off, then you can disinfect it. And that's true whether we're talking about HOCl or we're talking about quats or other kinds of disinfectants, peroxide, cleanliness comes first. Surfactants can remove grime and fat in particular, lipids, and then disinfect. 

One of the things that we have noticed, and this is important in terms of where we started with oral health, is that HOCl is a great disruptor of slime and biological deposits. 

It's actually a biofilm remover. It's a disperser of biofilm. And that's an attribute that physicians and nurses can tell when they're cleaning wounds. But it's also, I think, a part of the value of HOCl as an environmental disinfectant. It's got a good cleaning power as a disruptor of organic material, particularly biofilms..

-- Jeffrey F. Williams, PhD, BVSc, MRCVS, microbiologist and infectious disease expert, has devoted his career to researching, inventing and bringing to market solutions that have improved the lives and health of people all over the world. 

-- Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Michigan State University (Emeritus)

-- Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

-- Holder of 30+ patents covering water treatment, disease control, odor control

-- Author of 200+ scientific papers and textbook chapters

-- Member of the Board of Counselors, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Health (1984-88)

-- ​Chairman of a World Health Organization research committee on tropical diseases (based in Geneva) (1985-1989)

-- Chief Science Officer, HOCL producer that is world leader in hypochlorous acid technology and manufacturing (2014-2024)