UVC is the kind of UV that’s more energetic than the UV we get in sunlight. It’s shorter wavelength. Paradoxically, at around 222nm the light is so energetic it is stopped by almost anything — even the layer of dead cells or fluid on the surface of our eye. But for a naked virus floating in the air, UVC is deadly — it will damage all nucleic acids to the point where the viruses and bacteria are unable to replicate. In contrast, for our skin cells, photons of the far UVC wavelengths (200 -230nm) can’t penetrate far enough to cause any damage that matters.
Far-UV-C radiation: An emerging tool for pandemic control. Blatchley III, Brenner et al (2022)
The UVC coming off the sun is stopped by the ozone in the stratosphere, so it doesn’t reach us on the ground. The kind of UV that causes burns, cataracts and skin cancer is from longer wavelength UVB and UVA which can penetrate the surface and damage our DNA.
Could a New Ultraviolet Technology Fight the Spread of Coronavirus?
Columbia News
“Far-UVC light has the potential to be a ‘game changer,’” said David Brenner, professor of radiation biophysics and director of [Columbia University’s Center for Radiological Research]. “It can be safely used in occupied public spaces, and it kills pathogens in the air before we can breathe them in.”
Far-UV-C radiation: An emerging tool for pandemic control. Blatchley III, Brenner et al (2022)
The research team’s experiments have shown far-UVC effective in eradicating two types of airborne seasonal coronaviruses (the ones that cause coughs and colds). The researchers are now testing the light against the SARS-CoV-2 virus in collaboration with Thomas Briese and W. Ian Lipkin of the Center for Infection and Immunity in a biosafety laboratory on Columbia’s medical center campus, with encouraging results, Brenner said.
The team previously found the method effective in inactivating the airborne H1N1 influenza virus, as well as drug-resistant bacteria. And multiple, long-term studies on animals and humans have confirmed that exposure to far-UVC does not cause damage to the skin or eyes.
Here’s the thing though. That press release was from way back in April 2020. And plenty of papers were released on UVC before Covid-19 even appeared, yet the only nation doing mass installation of UVC, two years later appears to be China.
Do we get the feeling Western Ministry’s of Health don’t actually want to stop this virus – or any virus — spreading? Are they even trying?
The Chinese are.
Intro to far-UVC air-cleaning from a non-expert.
Ultraviolet light has been used to sterilise objects for decades and has been used to clean air in rooms since the 1940s, with TB being a big driver of that.
It's called UR-UVGI – upper-room UV germicidal irradiation.— Fergal (@fergal_whatever) July 2, 2022
The Chinese Olympic team even used Far-UVC to protect them in Tokyo last year:
To protect the health of their athletes from the threat of airborne pathogens, the Chinese national team relied on patent pending Lumenizer filtered Far-UVC light technology, announced Scott Gant, Lumenlabs, LLC President and Co-Founder.
In addition to having all of their Olympic athletes and staff vaccinated, to provide a comprehensive layer of protection, the Chinese national team installed advanced Lumenlabs Lumenizer far ultraviolet disinfection light fixtures throughout their housing and training facilities.
Brenner et al figured out the benefits of far UVC back in 2013, and published a paper on it in Nature in 2018. So Chinese health departments are reading our papers but where are all the well funded institutions like the FDA, CDC and TGA, UK NHS?
Ever get the feeling that our Western Institutions are completely captured by the Big-Pharma finance project?
UVC seems especially well suited to killing Coronaviruses
Blatchley and Brenner have just released a new paper last month showing that UVC radiation is probably useful for many viruses, and especially for RNA viruses with long genomes (that provide more target material and are therefore more fragile), which is exactly what Coronaviruses are:
UV222 irradiation is at least as effective as UV254 irradiation for inactivation of viruses, with approximately 1 log10 reduction of coronaviruses achieved for each 1 mJ/cm2 of delivered UV-C fluence or less. In other words, irradiation at 222 nm provides roughly twice the rate of inactivation as observed at 254 nm.
Genome size and make-up are key factors governing the response of viruses to UV-C radiation (Lytle & Sagripanti, 2005; Pendyala et al., 2020; Rockey et al., 2020; Sagripanti & Lytle, 2020). In general, larger genomes provide more targets for photochemical damage; therefore, viruses and other pathogens with relatively large genomes tend to be inactivated relatively quickly. The type of genome (either single-stranded [ss], double-stranded [ds], RNA, or DNA) also influences the response of viruses to UV-C exposure. Coronaviruses have the largest known genomes among ss-RNA viruses; this is likely an important contributing factor to the facile inactivation of coronaviruses by UV-C exposure. Viruses with ds DNA genomes are often relatively resistant to UV-C exposure because the complementary nucleic acid strand can facilitate repair within its host (Boszko & Rainbow, 1999; Rodriguez et al., 2014; Shin et al., 2009). The presence of a viral envelope can influence the susceptibility of viruses to exposure to some physical agents, such has heat or shear forces. However, the presence of a viral envelope may not have any influence on the response of viruses to UV-C exposure.
Coronaviruses have strings of RNA that are 26,000 to 32,000 nucleic acids long. It’s enough to encode for about 30 genes (or proteins). So coronaviruses come with more tools than other viruses, but the disadvantage for them is that they are more fragile with such a long chain of RNA. The smallest RNA viruses are Hepatitis D with a genome of only 2,000 nucleic acids.
Handy: UVC also kills MRSA (Multiple Resistant Golden Staph) in about 5 minutes:
As a neat side effect, the use of UVC would probably reduce the worst kind of bacterial infections in hospitals as well. MRSA are the dreaded “Golden Staph” bugs that are resistant to most of our antibiotics.
UVC light kills off Staph Aureus in five minutes.
Claims from the people who make the Initus-V UVC system
Far-UVC 200 nm light transmission from the cornea to the lens is predicted to be essentially zero. It has been observed that 207 nm UV light kills MRSA efficiently, but unlike conventional germicidal UV lamps, it kills very few cells in human cells (19-22). There was no tumor induction in Xpaknockout mice and wildtype mice by repetitive irradiation with 222nm UVC, using a tumor producing protocol which was shown to produce tumor when irradiated with broadband UVB (23) In a three-dimensional human skin model, 207-nm UV light produced virtually no mutagenic UV-associated DNA lesions, unlike significant side effects caused by a traditional germicidal UV lamp (24,25). In this way, UVC sterilization is aimed without harming human health when there are people in the environment.
REFERENCE
Blatchley III, Brenner et al (2022) Far-UV-C radiation: An emerging tool for pandemic control. Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology https://doi.org/10.1080/10643389.2022.2084315
Welch et al (2018) Far-UVC light: A new tool to control the spread of airborne-mediated microbial diseases, Nature, Scientific Reports volume 8, Article number: 2752 (2018)
Ayhan Olcay, et al (2021) A new Far-UVC based method for germ free hospitals and travel: Initus-, medRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.04.23.21255969; April 2021
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.02.20051409v1.full.pdf
ht/ David Archibald
I seem to recall comments about UV sterilisation for Covid Viruses 2 years ago on this site!
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Same her. Question is, is this virtue signalling by the government over there, to nourish a public idea of a threat or is it to counter a real threat or is there maybe a good sales man on the go and is it something that could really work?
If so, why would anybody want that solution? Are the others not working?
So many questions.
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So do I.
However, this is yet another example of western universities and researchers giving their research findings away for Free. Publish or perish.
More like publish and perish.
When will publicly funded researchers in the west ever be required to not publish their findings in the national interest of those taxpayers who funded the research?
I noted there’s a mention of a Patent. How much did the Chinese Communist Party and its running dogs pay the Patent holders?
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Publicly funded should be publicly available, no?
Look at the other side, company founded should be available to the public?
Is not money paid to hide knowledge, distort knowledge, creates wrong findings mislead and support ideology? Climate, covid, energy, economy anything else?
All of above will be continued, but if you don’t see what they do, the public will be lost.
If UVC is clinically proven to help, it needs to be all over the public record.
Even if a company came up with the idea. Its too important.
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No.
And certainly not free for others to knock-off. Like the CCP – the exemplars of intellectual property theft.
An assessment should be made as to whether a financial return might be captured for the public (ie taxpayers) who funded the research.
Shovelling research dollars to research institutions (essentially universities) which may, somewhere down the track, lodge a patent application after having published who knows how many papers in the plethora of research journals floating around, is not the best way to capture a benefit for the poor old taxpayer.
Perhaps the up-coming ARC review might give some thought to this wasteful practice.
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Ask Fauchi and make sure he actually gives an answer.
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i don’t know for how long a patent would be good for, but UVC disinfecting has been around for decades. Probably not a lot of profit in it at this point. More likely the Chicoms are trolling us?
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Wasn’t President Trump rubbished for saying something about shining lights destroying the virus. Ha, what would he know!
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This is it here. Their Twitter acc was deleted by the Twitter goons almost immediately.
https://www.worldhealth.net/news/cedars-sinai-use-uv-light-treat-covid-19/
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From memory, he was talking about a light disinfectant used by Israeli researchers to kill COVID in the body. Because he used the technically correct term of disinfectant he was ridiculed by all and sundry who had NFI.
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trump mentioned this technology over 2 years ago. literally shine this light straight down the airways
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Now that is something quite differnt which I didn’t expectg to see here – thanks Jo.
– A Bolt from the Blue then, eh? Like some of those Laser treatments which are so selective …. will be ANOTHER Chinese Ali-bay jobs to get one.
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“ Do we get the feeling Western Ministry’s of Health don’t actually want to stop this virus – or any virus — spreading?”
No kidding. Welcome to Pfizer’s party, pal.
$$$$$$$$$$$
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Air systems with filters and UV-C are available in the USA in many forms — small-room units for under $100 to large facility sizes. In places such as elder-care facilities units can be installed inside the central ductwork. Home units are small and decorative.
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UVC works fast, but even UVA is effective. It simply takes longer … out in the sunlight. It makes all the sterilizing of outdoor places with disinfectant seem unhinged.
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Years ago at the Repatriation hospital at Heidelberg in Victoria the patients would sit out on the open air balconies, often without dressings on their wounds, to get the curative effects of the sun. The doctors and nurses encouraged it and of course the servicemen enjoyed it too. Then in the eighties they put in air conditioning …it was the modern thing, you know……and closed off the balconies to become more bed space in the wards. Progress has done some wonderful things.
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I use a nasal rinse, basically saltwater pushed through sinus cavity. Does salt water kill COVID? I don’t know but I know this- if it worked, Fauci would call it fake news and lapdog social media would shut it down.
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Brought up in Scotland and Wales during and just after WW2 “douching” with warm salty water was a standard treatment in our family for any infection that affected the head, including nose and eyes, and even catarrh. Always provided relief and seemed to speed up recovery.
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I still use the technique today and it is just as good now as then. A half teaspoon of salt with warm water in a tumbler. Pour a dose onto your palm and sniff it up until it runs down into the back of your mouth and spit out. Wonderful!
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I use a squeeze bottle while keeping the head upright.
Leave it for a minute then tilt the head downwards and feel the sinuses clear.
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I’ve got a small box unit made by Heller. Got it just in case of mould and pollen.
”
3. The activated carbon filter layer will reduce household odours caused by pets, cooking, garbage and the use of household chemicals.
4. UV-C light has long been known as an effective germicide. This same technology is now incorporated in this air purifier to kill up to 99.9% of airborne germs.
5. Total germ destruction is now possible through interaction of UV-C light and titanium dioxide (TIO₂) – all that is left behind is carbon dioxide and water.”
I’m a bit worried about item 5.
Hope that it also leaves oxygen and some nitrogen to dilute it to the right level.
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Ref John H at #6 above.
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Why is China not oning this on a large scale now to control outbreaks?
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Because the outbreaks are to control the people.
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Probably right.
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using (not oning)
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Why aren’t we using Ultra violet?. As soon as the elites find a way to make more money on it we will find it mandatory to be UV’d.
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Cynical response: Not a lot of money to be made installing UVC. LOTS of money to be made with vax, which is why all the therapeutics went away.
Here in the US, UVC is used all over the place, from sanitizing hospital equipment to transportation cabins (airlines, busses, trains, etc). its even used in barber shops to sanitize tools (combs, scissors and razors).
You really don’t have to do anything magic with UVC. All you have to do is shine it into the air volume. Generally this is done by installing it to shine thru a moving air volume. UVC shining thru a HVAC system would be great, working not unlike any humidifier. In any room with a high ceiling, install it at the top, pointing sideways, and move the air volume past it with a ceiling fan. Costs are pretty cheap too, a couple thousand (US) per installation.
While it is pretty easy to assume Bad Intent in the complete failure of governments, any government to push UVC, I think the worldwide adoption of the One Size Fits All approach to COVID is sufficient. Difficult for the Powers That Be to go from We Have Decided to We Screwed Up (which they never, ever do). With that ability to direct things from high on top Mount Olympus, the only thing you can do to protect and retain that sort of power is to ensure the rabble (being us) never, ever gets to participate in the discussion, much less defining or implementing the solution.
Predictable? Absolutely. Worse, it ensures the worst possible outcome, for the bozi (multiple bozos) making the decisions and setting public policy are at best uninformed vermin. At worst, they are craven CYA merchants, ready, willing and able to do anything and everything humanly possible to make sure they retain their power. As such, they must be destroyed before they destroy us. If it is now us v them, which they seem to think it is, I choose us.
But what the Hell do I know? Cheers –
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You probably want to keep UVC out of your eyes, but for hand sanitization it should be fine.
That’s presuming you can make LED’s that deliver the appropriate wavelength.
UV lights in hand dryers has become fairly common now, I would guess most are UVB and therefore only intended for brief exposure. Not sure where you can get details of those things.
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Tel, counterintuitively, the higher energy of far UVC makes it safer for eyes. I found this hard to believe myself, but the studies were quite explicit that the higher energy photons are extinguished in the outermost layer, which in large organisms like us was dead tissue or fluids and oils but not cells.
Viruses and bacteria though — didn’t have a larger layer to protect them.
That said, I wouldn’t install a UVC machine above my computer and expose my eyes for hours to it.
What I didn’t understand was that some papers on UVC were testing it in aqueous solutions — which struck me as being useless — but they were reporting some success. I didn’t look closely at the penetration of far UVC frequencies into water. Perhaps it is not absorbed by H2O at 222nm?
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A piece of equipment that was in every bio lab I ever worked in.
https://bakerco.com/communication/latest/biosafety-cabinet-uv-light-pitfalls/
Note that, in section 3., they caution against human exposure to the UV, if installed (it always was).
Here’s their section on UV (UVC 254nm).
https://bakerco.com/images/uploads/assets/Disinfection_BSC_Mythbusters_Aug_2019_1.pdf
Also interesting that they don’t recommend them. LOL – so why we always had ‘em I couldn’t say.
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Aussies are renowned innovators. Laminar flow masks with far UVC the next Aussie invention?
01
It would be interesting to see the impact of these additions to air conditioning ducts on the health of residents of aged care facilities …..
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This “new” kind of ultraviolet light was first researched by Ed Neister, a physicist in Somersworth, New Hampshire in 1998. He discovered a way to stop the spread of illness in crowded areas by using a particular wavelength within the ultraviolet spectrum known as Far-UV 222 nm. Far-UV destroys ALL variants of coronavirus and is safe to use around humans. He patented the method and use of Far-UV for disinfection in 2005 long before anyone else researched this wavelength!
There are now dozens of studies that have proven the efficacy and safety of Far-UV Sterilray. Fortunately, the world is finally taking notice of this technology for air, surface and liquid disinfection.
The one thing we’re NOT doing to mitigate the spread of COVID-19
By Paul Taylor, former FEMA director
https://bit.ly/32R4OlB
Finally others are starting to realize the power and safety of 222nm light. Sterilray, Inc. 222nm products, are the only lamps in the world to achieve greater than 30,000 hour lamp life. All other manufacturers only get 1/10 the lamp life. We warranty our lamps for 30,000 hours prorated. Ask others about their warranty. we are the only manufacturer that puts an hour meter on its products!
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Narrow spectrum UV-C has been around for decades and is quite correctly effective at “killing” (tut tut Jo 😉) viruses.
However given the narrow spectrums for safety the products MUST be of high quality (ie tightly controlled radiance bandwidth – no cheap Chinese eBay products, which people would no doubt flock to).
Dose (exposure time) is also a factor unless one plans to irradiate evacuated areas – already being done in hospitals but it takes TIME and is an inconvenience.
eg entry point irradiation (already being used for Covid-19) is a novel concept best left to the realms of sci-fi and transporter pads.
There is also the most important factor – the lack of long term safety studies, the factor we know all too well don’t we.
So yes, it’s another disinfection method but it also smacks of a panacea with a tinge of fear. Perhaps street lights will be replaced with UV-C ones to deal with the next 20 variants of Covid 😉
You have much bigger problems than Covid to worry about I can assure you…
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John, and the long term safety studies of cumulative covid reinfections on mitochondria, telomeres, t-cell exhaustion, fertility, cancer surveillance, prion activation, amyloidogenic deposits, and dementia don’t exist yet, but you know they are nothing to worry about right?
I cited studies at specific wavelengths on human tissue. Feel free to quote studies on 222nm that disagree…
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If you want to do it safely, just control turning it on an off remotely (like smart plugs), or via time-based switches. Disinfect a room when people are not in this room.
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The concept of microbiological sterilisation with Far-UVC is not new. It is certainly an exciting possibility. However the photons in UVC radiation are very energetic and for this reason there is still a high level of concern about the possibility of damage to healthy human tissue, especially with accumulated exposure, that has not been satisfactorily resolved yet. There is a good recent review article here- The impact of far-UVC radiation (200-230 nm) on pathogens, cells, skin, and eyes – a collection and analysis of a hundred years of data
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Thanks Andy. It appeared to me that most studies prior to 2010ish were looking at near or mid UVC at 254nm to 300nm. And some of those are hazardous. I might be wrong but it seemed that there was a newer awareness in the literature that the far UVC end was better for so many reasons and there were a lot more mentions since 2010.
Thanks for the review link!
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Update: Seeking COVID’s Kryptonite: Best UV Light for COVID-19 Virus Disinfection
A recent study overcame both these obstacles and completed what may be the most thorough test ever conducted of how several different UV and visible wavelengths affect SARS-CoV-2. The research was a collaboration between the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC), a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate laboratory.
Their experiment tested more wavelengths of UV and visible light than any other study with the virus that causes COVID-19 to date.
“I think one of the big contributions of this study is that we were able to show that the kind of idealized results we see in most studies don’t always predict what happens when there’s a more realistic scenario at play,” said Michael Schuit of NBACC. “When you have material like the simulated saliva around the virus, that can reduce the efficacy of UV decontamination approaches.”
https://scitechdaily.com/seeking-covids-kryptonite-best-uv-light-for-covid-19-virus-disinfection/
No magical panacea in the real world…not yet anyway…
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“The UVC coming off the sun is stopped by the ozone in the stratosphere, so it doesn’t reach us on the ground. ”
According to https://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/category/geoengineering/results-of/uv/ not only UVC, but even trace amounts of X-rays reach the surface of the earth. Ozone Holes are alive and well, governments bragging about winning with them is fake. They base their claims on measuring it.
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UVC kills bacteria and neutralizes viruses, but it won’t harm human cells?
Maybe so…
https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q9450.html
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17205632/
But please note that it isn’t without unpleasant effects. Besides, just because China says it’s safe for humans, is that a reason to believe them? If they gave me a container of water and told me that it was safe to drink, I’d have it analyzed first.
10
Probably the same UV used in my water filter for decades. Why is such an old discovery news?
Are we all going to have UV lighting coats to protect us? More money for the snake oil salesmen who have already gotten rich off of useless masks. At least the UV will not end up in the oceans.
20
nope.
01