OLDSMAR, Florida--How many hands touch the pens at the doctor's office, the bank, the teacher's desk each day? How many viruses, colds or flu, and bacteria such as MRSA are on those pens?
Pen-X, created by Tami Rodriguez, a health-care worker, and her husband, Joe, is a writing instrument sanitizer.
Tami Rodriguez had noticed that health-care workers rarely sterilized any writing instruments. So, the Rodriguezes began researching the types and amounts of germs found on pens in hospitals and other medical office settings. Their suspicions were correct: Most pens studied had been shown to have multiple colonies of bacteria, and were considered fomites, or inanimate objects capable of transmitting germs or viruses between people.
"We all know the writing pen can be one of the biggest sources of transmission regarding the spread of infection," stated Joe Rodriguez. "Studies have shown that pens from health-care workers have tested positive for viruses and bacteria, including influenza, VRE, and MRSA. Studies have also shown that wiping down these pens with an alcohol-based cleaning agent significantly stopped the growth and spread of these germs."
Reasoning that few people will take the time to wipe down a pen with alcohol, the Rodriguezes knew they had to provide a way to stop the spread of infectious disease via writing utensils that people would actually use. They came to a quick and inexpensive solution to the problem: Pen-X.
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Available in a sturdy, no-tip tabletop bottle, Pen-X is easy to use. Simply dip the pen into the Pen-X cleaning and sanitizing solution. That's it. The solution dries in seconds without interfering with the pen's effectiveness, yet it kills 99.9% of germs.
Though Pen-X was developed to address a problem within the health-care setting, it can be used in environments in which multiple people touch the same pens each day. This includes schools, offices, social services settings, police stations, and grocery stores.
"Hand washing is considered the No. 1 way to stop the spread of colds, flu and other contagious illnesses," said Tami Rodriguez. "But that's only effective until we touch the next contaminated pen. Many people practice frequent hand washing yet still contract infectious disease. Pen-X helps put a stop to that by killing the germs that have, until now, been transmitted by writing instruments."
For a limited time, Pen-X orders come with a free wall mount.
For more information, visit www.pen-x.com.
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