Fig. 1

Schematic diagram of the Formica surface used for wipe testing. Two meters of Formica were delineated into 0.5 m² sections. 5.0 × 10⁸ log₁₀CFU C. difficile spores were spotted onto the inoculation zone (i-zone) as represented by red dots. The entire surface was wiped in an up and down motion across the entire surface as indicated by black outlined arrows from left to right. 10 cm × 10 cm (100 cm²) sampling zones (light gray squares) were sampled to recover potentially cross-contaminated spores