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Wiping Out 100 Percent of Deadly Germs in Houston

HOUSTON - For anyone who thinks 99 percent clean is clean enough, a Houston-area company wants to show 14 million reasons it isn't. There are only two chambers in the world that offer a solution that kills everything from the flu to anthrax, and the largest facility is in Houston.

FOX 26 News visited Garner Decontamination Solutions to learn how the company is using hydrogen peroxide to potentially save lives.

"Garner takes hydrogen peroxide and uses it to sterilize things like vehicles and rescue ambulances. We also do buildings, hospital rooms, any large areas," explains Keith Emmons, sales manager at Garner Decontamination Solutions.

Hydrogen peroxide is injected through a spark gap. It may sound complicated, but this ionizes the solution and makes a plasma that is attracted to every surface in its path.

"It destroys every pathogen. We can kill the easy stuff like the flu, but also MRSA, and can even kill spore-forming bacteria like C-diff (Clostridium difficile) and anthrax," says Emmons. This is an important advance for the medical field, where infection rates are soaring higher than ever.

"1 in 10 people who go to the hospital get an infection there and those average infection costs are $25,000. 99,000 people died in the U.S. last year because of hospital-acquired infections. It's a problem that costs the medical industry 45 billion dollars a year," says Emmons.

While Emmons hopes this state-of-the-art technology can lower those rates of infection one hospital at a time, it can also help medical professionals in the field.

FOX 26 met someone who basically has an office in the back of an ambulance unit. "Decontamination for us is a very tedious process. We usually use a bleach and water mixture or an industrial grade decontaminant and clean by hand. This goes one step above and beyond here and to see the process is incredible," says Jeff Kelly, paramedic supervisor with Baytown EMS. Kelly was amazed to see how the process works on an ambulance he brought in from Baytown.

While Garner focuses on emergency vehicles and hospitals, anyone can take their car there.