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submitted 9 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

Ultraviolet light can kill almost all the viruses in a room. Why isn’t it everywhere?::Can special lightbulbs end the next pandemic before it starts?

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[-] Life_inst_bad@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago

An actually halfway decent idea might be adding a strong UV light inside the washing machine or dryer to kill germs. Modern eco methords with 30-40 C° just dont kill the germs effectively. You'd need to wash your clothes at last at 60C° which most clothes (especially sports wear) cant handle anymore. Or just dry them on the outside where we also have a Strong UV source aka. The sun.

[-] reversebananimals@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago

I'd like to know which 12 users upvoted this so that I can block them all.

[-] DragonAce@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago

IIRC, they have UV sterilizers for central HVAC systems. So while it may not sterilize surfaces, it will kill all airborne pathogens.

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[-] BreadOven@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago

Not necessarily agreeing with the article posted, but for all the people who clearly didn't read the article:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-08462-z

That's just one paper I found searching for far-UV. Seems to be many more.

Again not saying it's 100 % safe or anything, but it looks promising.

[-] MTK@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

Why not inject UV as a cure for all virus infections!

This way it wont reach our eyes or skin so no problems!

[-] Rubanski@lemm.ee 6 points 9 months ago

In Macau, they have little trash garages which are flooded with UV at night

[-] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

We installed one in the kitchen cabinet trash and recycling "drawer bins," as well as behind the stove and fridge. It smells of ozone, but there are no bugs or trash smells

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[-] OnfireNFS@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

I always thought these were pretty cool. I'm not sure how HEV compares to UV though, or if it even works

[-] Grass@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 months ago

The bulbs don't last very long last time I looked into this for home use

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 4 points 9 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Ultraviolet retained a small coterie of enthusiasts over the ensuing decades, focused narrowly on preventing transmission of tuberculosis — which has no reliably effective vaccine for adults — in its remaining hotbeds, like homeless shelters.

The biggest test it received, the Tuberculosis Ultraviolet Shelter Study of 1997-2004, demonstrated that “upper room” UV, in which UV-emitting lamps are placed at least 6.9 feet above the floor where they can disinfect air without harming humans, was safe.

It wasn’t — detective work from scholars including Linsey Marr, Jose-Luis Jimenez, and Katherine Randall in the middle of the pandemic determined that this conclusion was based on a misinterpretation of the Wellses’ research that had somehow persisted for decades in the medical profession.

“This is the most difficult talk I’ve had to give in my career,” Jose-Luis Jimenez, a distinguished professor of chemistry at the University of Colorado, told the audience at the first International Congress on Far-UVC Science and Technology this past June.

But 2020 was also an unusually brutal year for airborne disease: 49,783 Americans died from influenza in 2019, for instance (and none from Covid); 1 percent of that number is about 500 people, which starts to feel comparable to the air pollution cost Jimenez identifies.

Jimenez favors using UV in very high-risk locations, such as hospitals, but worries that construction companies, schools, malls, and the like will seize on the potential of far-UV as an excuse not to invest in proper ventilation and filtration, leaving us with the ugly trade-off he identifies.


The original article contains 4,104 words, the summary contains 252 words. Saved 94%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[-] gramie@lemmy.ca 3 points 9 months ago

I could see UV light also causing plastics to oxidize and become brittle much faster, because they might not be made for that kind of exposure. So using UV light might mean having to replace a lot of plastic things too.

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[-] Socsa@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago
[-] iAvicenna@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

can it kill Tardigrades though?

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this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
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