Far-UVC light used to control the spread of airborne-mediated microbial diseases
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Re: Far-UVC light used to control the spread of airborne-mediated microbial diseases
#2I did not see any references to acquired UV resistance in this or other articles. Could this be a short-lived solution?
Re: Far-UVC light used to control the spread of airborne-mediated microbial diseases
#3I did not see any references to acquired UV resistance in this or other articles. Could this be a short-lived solution?
That doesn’t really work; it would be like a human trying to acquire resistance to being riddled with bullets. Strong UV is more or less a sort of machinegun if you’re a microorganism. You can produce more of your existing defenses, but it will be so far from what’s required to gain a reproductive advantage that you won’t evolve.
Maybe you could induce resistance to very brief exposure, but that’s it.
Re: Far-UVC light used to control the spread of airborne-mediated microbial diseases
#4How about targetted use? eg lighting the doorways either side of toilets, or entry/exit points? Might be lower cost retrofit than entire venues, for close to same benefit.
Huge potential in schools, if this is kidsafe.
And cruise ships, floating gastro-enteritis factories.
Or on Aircraft.
Re: Far-UVC light used to control the spread of airborne-mediated microbial diseases
#5This is awesome. Our team at Infinite Food have been working with UVC light for our food robotics project, and the area is very dynamic. Traditional UV lights were broad spectrum and had spikes in output at various wavelengths that could not be controlled, consequently they were only effective with vast power consumption. Newer UVC LEDs are able to target specific wavelengths identified through research like this as particularly damaging to pathogens, thus enabling very low energy, high effectiveness machine sterilization. Current germicidal applications are mostly in industrial settings, water and air conditioning, however I believe we will see a lot more UVC deployment. There are only a handful of manufacturers in the world that can achieve high longevity products right now. Lower spec products last only hundreds of hours, higher spec products are rated to 5000-10,000 hours. A complicating factor in deployment can be protecting the LEDs - quartz glass must be used as emissions in these wavelengths cannot pass through traditional glass.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28941399 and http://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/articles/2008/11/uv-lig... are examples of prior information.