I’m getting my kitchen redone & want to know why copper alloys like brass isn’t used more. It seems perfect for counter space and prep areas with its self sanitation properties.
Am I missing something bc I’m stupid or maybe just ahead of the curb ?
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To answer your question, with my relatively shallow knowledge of the topic;
Brass, and other self sanitizing metals (a casual Google returns results on the oligodynamic effect, if you want to look more in depth) do so over a period of time. This is great for surfaces that are relatively low traffic; the things I read saw timelines in the 15 minute ish range. However, if it sees new or repeat traffic before then, then the self sanitization gets interrupted.
Second, as other people have pointed out, many of these metals are softer than many things you’ll use while cooking (steels, mainly, being the concern). Any scratches or dings you put in your self sanitizing surface create nooks and crannies that can be hard to clean, which is important for our last point;
Schmutz. Basically, the best self cleaning ‘stuff’ is powerless if it gets coated in enough ‘stuff’ to create a barrier between the metal and the germs you want to kill. With the doorknob example, think skin oils, dirt, grease, etc.. This also applies to things like cutting boards. The counter to this is typically ‘just clean it normally’, at which point we’ve kinda overshot why we’d want the surface in the first place.
tl;dr – the surfaces we do use it for, typically, are where it’s useful, and other surfaces would typically not be well suited to softer metals, or would just have to be cleaned conventionally anyway.
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