An objective of the present research was to conduct specific monitoring of sanitary conditions via the study of liquids from wash swabs of door handles in a public place building, which is can be important in the context of fast-spreading of infectious diseases to model and understand how tightening and weakening preventive measures (cleaning) affect this dangerous process. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy was selected as an analytical method since it provides ultrahigh sensitivity, facilitates an express-analysis, and does not require specially-trained staff. To overcome the problem of irreproducibility of the SERS-spectra of multicomponent liquids typical for traditional SERS-active substrates based on nanoparticles we used the metal-coated nanovoids with a diameter of 1 m. The geometry of nanovoids facilitated excitation of the volumetric electromagnetic field inside them that provided a collection of reproducible SERS-patterns for each swab liquid sample. We were able to distinguish the samples constituted by skin secretion from fingers and those enriched with bacteria because of the long unclean period of the door handle and its frequent touching with dirty hands.
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