If you haven’t read the article on VICE about how exactly copper interacts with viruses, and how it was used in history and how it contact kills, just go and read it! It’s a cohesive and long and very accurate report on the topic, but if you want some quick links to the actual scientific papers, abstracts, experiments and studies, here you go (you don’t have to google and hunt now!):

Copper starts to kill viruses (influenza A was the one they used) on contact and stainless steel holds onto it. This is the full experiment, complete with the actual slides showing how quickly copper works. Lots of science, but pretty cool visuals: https://aem.asm.org/content/73/8/2748

Or a faster scientific abstract for those who want to read fast and get an overview on the same topic: https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/43dcb5ea-9cad-3d02-bf95-3073075643d8/

Yes, copper has been used for 4000 years, and in Ancient Egypt, they would use it to heal wounds and for equipment. It’s amazing to see how they saw the benefits of copper and its alloys even back then. Lots of history mixed with scientific formulas: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3067274/

And yes, they checked to see if copper kills noroviruses, too. It does, in specific circumstances. The exact science here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0075017

A 2015 study that pitted copper against the known 2015 coronaviruses, plus a few more, found that yup, copper inactivated those viruses on contact. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/copper-destroys-respiratory-viruses/)

What does that mean for us? You’d have to hold copper a long time to let it sterilize your hands – like several hours – but boy we should start to use it on all bedrails and hospital handrails, etc! It works, as studies show: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19931938

We can also put water in copper cups and leave it sit, since copper kills bacteria floating in water. Don’t believe me? Check out the actual experiment that proved it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3312355/

So, of course, I’m not a doctor or a medical or health professional. None of this should be used as medical advice, and none of the information in this blog post is intended or implied to be a substitute for professional or medical advice, treatment or diagnosis. Do NOT eat or ingest copper or copper supplements. This is merely where I put all the scientific articles on this topic in one place, so you can click through to read the actual primary sources yourself.