Self-Cleaning Lawn Furniture - as part of the news series by GeoBeats.

Hosing down the lawn chairs is a thing of the past; introducing the future of yard décor: self-cleaning lawn furniture. Scientists from Germany have come up with a polymer surface coating formula containing titanium dioxide, which when exposed to sunlight produces a chemical reaction that results in free radicals: molecules that damage cell walls and “infiltrate the DNA inside, damaging it and thereby killing bacteria and fungi” like those that grow on lawn furniture. Scientists say the titanium dioxide works on 30 varieties of bacteria and fungi, and can be used on products like glass and cell phones to eliminate fingerprints after being in direct sunlight for an hour.

If the technology is implemented, and the self cleaning products become commercially available they will be on shelves along with these other products like the self cleaning kitty litter box, and self sterilizing plastic, which is being developed by PolyMedix and scientists from the University of Pennsylvania who are working to create a drug that will be added in plastics to self sterilize. “PolyMedix points out that 70% of bacteria are now drug resistant which is why new drugs, antibiotics and new sterilization techniques are so desperately needed.”