![]() Some health experts argue that disinfecting indoor spaces with light could be a game-changer as the world opens up and the memory of lockdowns - for most of us - slowly fades. The researchers are confident that the lamps would also destroy the virus that causes Covid-19: Experiments in a different setting by other teams have shown that far-UVC does inactivate SARS-CoV-2, perhaps because UV light damages the genome of the virus. Since then, they have tested the technology on two other pathogens - Pseudomonas aeruginosa and a bacteria-infecting virus called Phi 6 - with similar success. The team published their results in the journal Scientific Reports in March 2022. The highest exposure saw pathogen levels plunge by about 98 percent in mere minutes. “We were pretty gobsmacked at the reduction in the pathogen,” says Ewan Eadie, a medical physicist at NHS Tayside in Dundee, Scotland.Įadie and colleagues tested various levels of exposure to far-UVC, all within the guidelines set by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists. These showed that the light had worked - with astonishing effectiveness. Then they grew cultures to count how many living bacteria were present in samples retrieved before and after switch-on. The researchers took air samples from the room every five minutes. And that offers tantalizing possibilities as the Covid-19 pandemic rolls on. Light with such a wavelength - called far-UVC, from the ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic spectrum - is deadly for microbes, researchers are learning, but appears safe for human beings. Then, with the press of a button, the scientists activated lamps they had fixed to the ceiling, sending a death ray beaming down upon the cloud of germs - a light, invisible to the human eye, with a wavelength of 222 nanometers. Unable to use the Covid-19 virus in their experiment due to biosafety restrictions, the researchers had opted, instead, for Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium that can cause a range of sometimes deadly infections. ![]() It was a pared-down replica of the kind of situation that many of us have tried diligently to avoid for the last couple of years. ![]() For nearly two hours, they pumped the roughly four-by-three-meter chamber full of aerosols carrying a nasty pathogen.
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