Is it antibiotic, or bacteriostatic, or whatever the term is? I thought bacteria died when it came into contact with metal, so do things like stainless steel silverware resist bacterial growth?
Clean silverware isn’t a very hospitable environment for bacteria, so bacterial growth isn’t nearly as rampant as in, say, your dishwashing sponge, but I don’t know of any reason for bacteria to die when they hit metal. I mean, if bacteria died when in contact with metal, there wouldn’t be much need to sterilize surgical instruments.
Silver is a well known bactericide but it is the only common metal that I know of to have this property. Stainless steel “silverware” doed not have this property because it is not made from silver.
Mercury ions are also bacteriocidal. In fact most heavy metals, including iron, have this property to a greater or lesser extent. Metals ions, even ones as light as magnesium, catalyze reactions between molecular oxygen and biological molecules. This uncontrolled oxidation is not good for bacteria, and many have evolved elaborate metal chelating proteins to guard against the effect. At slightly higher concentrations, iron, nickel, silver, mercury, aluminum etc. are powerful chaotropic agents which physically disrupt proteins and membranes. Bacteria without a thick slime layer will die if exposed to more than a few millimolar of any of these metals.