Mass Timber’s Latest Benefit: It’s Antimicrobial

In addition to all the pluses of mass timber construction a new study finds it also is better when it comes to containing germs.

The old cliché that wood construction was not hygienic, especially for structures in the healthcare field, is about to get turned upside down. New research coming out of the University of Oregon has found that cross-laminated timber, especially exposed wetted wood, could have antimicrobial potential.

“People generally think of wood as unhygienic in a medical setting,” said Mark Fretz, assistant professor and co-director of the University of Oregon’s Institute for Health in the Built Environment and the principal investigator for the study. “But wood actually transfers microbes at a lower rate than other less porous materials such as stainless steel.”

Researchers discovered that when wood was exposed to a brief wetting, it tested lower for levels of bacterial abundance than an empty plastic enclosure used as a control.

“The experiments are the first to explore relationships between microbial communities on the surfaces of cross-laminated timber, a key mass timber component, and the emission of volatile organic compounds under dry and wetted conditions,” said Gwynne Mhuireach, a University of Oregon research assistant professor, in the release announcing its findings.

“We wanted to explore how mass timber would stand up to the everyday rigors of healthcare settings,” said Mhuireach in the release. “In hospitals and clinics, germs are always present and surfaces occasionally get wet.”

According to a published report, researchers – which also incorporated others from Portland State University in Portland, OR, and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego – “sealed blocks of CLT in disinfected plastic boxes to create a microenvironment with carefully controlled temperature and humidity, according to the news release. To simulate a healthcare setting, air was filtered and exchanged at rates similar to hospital codes.”

Water and common microbes found in hospitals were applied to the blocks and an empty plastic box was used as a control. The study was conducted over a four-month period. The healthcare field has tended to stay away from using wood in building new facilities but a new hospital in Canada’s Ontario province will be the first to use mass timber, perhaps opening the door for more widespread use of mass timber in the healthcare field in the future.

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