DETERMINATION OF ANTIBACTERIAL ACTIVITY OF TEXTILES - METHODS, RESULTS AND THEIR INTERPRETATION

In recent years, antibacterially treated textile products became very popular and many producers announce presence of antibacterial and/or antifungal finishings in their products (underwear, socks, shoes, beddings, upholstery etc). Unfortunately, consumers are only able to determine antibacterial activity subjectively, and many manufacturers abuse this by stating that their product is antibacterial, when it's not true. In order to correctly check whether textile product is antibacterial or not, many different standards for determination of antibacterial activity were created in the past. Credible producers of antibacterially treated textile product should always support their marketing by results of some of above mentioned tests, provided by accredited laboratory. Determination of antibacterial activity is always based on two basic principles: agar plate tests (qualitative) and dynamic tests (quantitative). Both those principles are completely different and give different level of information about tested textiles. Even different methods utilizing only one of those principles are non-comparable, because they differ in certain testing conditions like used bacteria type and their concentration, shape of the sample and the way how to express results of tests. Knowledge of basic principles of microbiological measurements can help non-microbiologist textile researchers in better understanding of antibacterial activity tests results, frequently published in literature. This contribution is an overview of different methods for determination of antibacterial activity of textiles and, especially, meaning and interpretation of their results, which is absolutely crucial in considering of real effect of finishing.