FAQ Categories: Monarch Product Line: Terminology / Definitions

Hygiene is the doctrine of health and maintaining health. The objective is to protect against illnesses and infections.

It is defined as specific eye, mouth, other mucous membrane, non–intact skin, or parenteral contact with blood or other potentially infectious materials.

Destruction of pathogenic and other kinds of microorganisms by physical or chemical means. Disinfection is less lethal than sterilization.

“Log” is short for logarithm. Log reduction means a 10 fold (one decimal place) reduction in CFUs.

A 4-Log Reduction on a surface with 1,000,000 CFUs would leave 100 CFUs, which is written as a 99.99% reduction in potentially harmful microorganisms.

A 6 Log reduction. Test results of Monarch surface disinfectant have shown a 6 Log reduction for viruses, bacteria and fungi.

A 3 Log reduction (99.9%).

Examples for enveloped viruses are HIV and Hepatitis B. These are easy to kill because of their viral structure. As soon as the disinfectant penetrates the outer membrane, the virus is killed. Simple bleach products are able to perform that job.

Examples for non-enveloped viruses are Polio, Parvo, Adeno, Noro. Non-enveloped viruses are much harder to kill because of their viral structure. The disinfecting agents have to break through the envelope into the DNA core in order to inactivate the virus.

Example for gram-positive bacteria is Staphylococcus aureus.
Example for gram-negative bacteria is Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Gram-negative bacteria are much harder to kill because of their double membrane (see image below).

• Bacterial Spores –Clostridium sp. & Bacillus sp.
• Mycobacterium – TB – Tubercle Bacillus
• Non-enveloped virus -Polio –Parvo –Noro -HAV
• Gram Negatives – Pseudomonas
• Fungal Spores – Trichophyton