Copper in architecture used in residential and commercial building structures. Variations in color stem primarily from differences in the alloy chemical composition. Some of the more popular copper alloys and their associated Unified Numbering System (UNS) numbers developed by ASTM and SAE are as follows: In practice, the term ‘bronze’ may be used for a variety of copper alloys with little or no tin if they resemble true bronzes in color. Further information on architectural copper alloys is available. The criteria by which copper and copper alloys are selected for architectural projects include color, strength, hardness, resistance to fatigue and corrosion, electrical and
Antimicrobial copper-alloy touch surfaces copper on floors, sinks, push plates, showerheads and doorknobs was evaluated by comparing bacterial loads on these surfaces and on their non-copper counterparts. The number of viable "Staphylococcus spp". organisms on surfaces containing copper and its alloy were reduced by half to one-thirtieth of that on control surfaces, depending upon surface humidity and the frequency of contact. Similar definitive findings were also obtained for "Pseudomonas aeruginosa". Various metals were evaluated for their antimicrobial efficacies, including copper alloys, zinc, nickel, tin, silver, and gold. Antimicrobial efficacies generally followed Lewis acidity values of the various metals. Silver, a prohibitively expensive precious metal,