More than 50 million surgical and invasive medical procedures—includ-ing approximately 5 million gastroin-testinal endoscopies—are performed each year in the US alone. During these procedures, the close contact between surgical instruments and the exposed tissues of the patient can constitute an additional health risk due to the increased possibility of contamination by pathogens introduced by the surgi-cal device itself: if the instruments used are not properly disinfected or steri-lized, the risks of transmission of infection from person-to-person (e.g., hepatitis B virus) or of introducing environmental pathogens (e.g., Pseu-domonas aeruginosa) become high. The seriousness of this problem can be clearly seen by considering that the number of Hospital Acquired Infections (HAI) is estimated to be of the order of 2 million each year in the US. Moreover, the number of these infections which, directly or indirectly, may be linked with patient death in U.S. hospitals is thought to have been about 10 000 in 2002 [1] for a cost of the order of 5–7 b$. Similar figures are also reported for the UK and France, with 100 000 HAI leading to about 5 000 deaths in 2000 for UK [2] and 4 000 for France. [3] These alarming figures are also reflected in the statistics of other European countries and serve to underline the importance of develop-ing and applying robust sterilization and decontamination processes and procedures. Recent studies in the UK have shown that significant quantities of residues composed of salts, proteins and undefined organic matter can remain on surgical instruments even after applying the normal cleaning and sterilization procedures adopted in Sterile Service Departments. [4]