Mooresville-based Anpath Group's subsidiary EnviroSystems has won approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for additional uses for its disinfectant/sanitizer, EnviroTru, to kill the "superbug" known as Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
EnviroSystems said the EPA approval has also led the company to proceed with state-by-state registration of EnviroTru to combat MRSA and another nasty bacterium known as Vancomycin Resistant Enterococcus faecalis (VRE). The firm said it believes registrartions should be completed in the majority of states within 30 days.
"The timeliness of this registration is noteworthy considering the increased incidence of MRSA cases reported in public settings, particularly schools," said J. Lloyd Breedlove, president and CEO of Anpath Group.
A study led by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published in the October 17, 2007 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that MRSA would have been responsible for 94,360 serious infections and associated with 18,650 hospital stay-related deaths in the United States in 2005. These figures suggest that MRSA infections are responsible for more deaths in the U.S. each year than AIDS.