I recently visited one of our shelter partners in Ontario, in order to lecture on shelter sanitation to their volunteers. Never a waste of time to discuss these sanitation basics, since when these protocols are used efficiently, they can definitely make a big difference on how shelters protect their animals from infectious diseases.
In this talk I have a table that shows the activity of the most common disinfectants used in shelters(click here if you missed it!). This slide is always a great way to start the conversation on what kind of sanitation protocol the shelter I am lecturing at is using. And during this specific lecture, they told me they were using hydrogen peroxide. “Accelerated hydrogen peroxide you mean?”, I asked them. “Must be, we use usual hydrogen peroxide we buy at the grocery.” Sure it does sound the same… but in fact there is quite a difference here.
This short table gives you a summary of the criterias essential to focus on in a shelter environment:
Fig 1: Hydrogen Peroxide vs Accelerated Hydrogen Peroxide
Few comments on this table
– Detergent activity: if the product can also be used as a detergent, you can therefore use it for cleaning as well as for disinfecting (see the difference here)
– A disinfectant used in shelters should always be active on: parvovirus (causing parvo in dogs and panleuk in cats), Calicivirus (an agent causing upper respiratory tract disease in cats) and ringworm. Why focusing on these three pathogens in shelters? Because these are the ones that are commonly found AND highly resistant in the environment.
DR. EMMANUEL FONTAINE 