Investigation of antibacterial activity of footwear leather obtained from different tanning

Abstract

In present study, antibacterial properties of leathers prepared by different tanning processes such as chromium, vegetable (mimosa and quebracho) and wet-white (modified glutaraldehyde) processes were analyzed by qualitative and quantitative tests. Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 33862 and Bacillus cereus NRRL-B-3711 as a representative of Gram-positive, Escherichia coli ATCC 25922 as a representative of Gram-negative were used in our study. The best inhibition effect was achieved against S. aureus by disc diffusion method. According to the bacterial reduction performance of leathers, the antibacterial property of vegetable tanned samples was higher than that of chrome and wet-white tanned samples against E. coli. The surface morphology of the leathers was also examined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). In SEM analysis, the pores of chrome tanned leather were found to be larger than those of vegetable and wet white tanned leather, and these results were verified by the imagej program. We considered that the antibacterial properties of leathers can be improved by various plant extracts.