Whereas the basis of bacterial resistance to antibiotics is well known, that of resistance to antiseptics, disinfectants and food preservatives is less well understood. Very often this resistance leads to cross resistance against commonly used disinfectants like Quaternary ammonium compounds, Iodophors and Gluteraldehyde when used at sub-lethal concentrations. The resistance demon can however be prevented by breaking the resistance chain using oxidising disinfectants like Hydrogen Peroxide, Chlorine-releasing compounds and electrochemically activated water. Patent technology to produce electrochemically activate water (Anolyte) results in the production of a number of oxidising free radicals, increasing the redox potential in a solution to more than 700mV.

The advantages of Anolyte technology  have been confirmed, wherein the biocidal activity of the hypochlorous acid and free radicals generated by the current ECA technology is 300 times more active that the sodium hypochlorate generated by earlier systems. Anolyte causes bacterial death by the complete destruction of proteins or by causing oxidative stress which resulted in protein fragementation of formation of altered and possibly, non-functional proteins. This, together with the high redox potential, prevents the development of microbial resistance. Breaking the resistance chain therefore requires that non-oxidising disinfectants be alternated with oxidising disinfectants on a regular basis.