10 Comments
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ConnGator's avatar

Good post. We need an x-prize (or equivalent) for a company to create a safe, effective air sanitizer for under $500. And the promise to buy a million of them if it is done.

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The Potential Surface's avatar

Couldn't agree more!

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Lawrence William Baum's avatar

Maybe John Green could generate some interest in exploring this. He's promoting public attention on tuberculosis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D-gxaie6UI

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Metacelsus's avatar

How much of a problem is ozone formation for 222nm light? I've heard some debate about this but I'm not sure.

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Dr. Nicola Jane Boyd's avatar

It's good to see Far-UVC gaining more attention. The safety, efficacy, and ozone/air quality issues are now effectively resolved, and the technology is completely safe, if used at the correct doseage and with a minimal level of ventilation. Recent research even suggests it's effective at chemically degrading airborne allergens, thus helping with asthma, and of course, unlike filtration, Far-UVC also helps degrade surface pathogens. Another very significant advantage is that UVC/Far-UVC is the one air cleaning technology that will align with net zero policies, given it's superior energy efficiency profile.

I wrote about the astonishing double standards applied to Far-UVC as a non-medical public health intervention in July 2024 - https://mattersofperspective.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-two-technologies These double standards really are holding back what should be the next public health revolution.

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The Potential Surface's avatar

Such a great post, and so important! We're so close to adoption being possible its painful. I do think mass manufacturing of KrCl lamps wont be possible though and a new light source, LEDs, Second harmonic lasers, etc will be needed. I wrote a piece focusing on the development of far-UVC LEDs, which could mitigate many of those safety and efficiency issues.

https://thepotentialsurface.substack.com/p/far-uvc-and-the-history-of-the-blue?r=695xir

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Jim Gleeson's avatar

pm2.5 air pollution & co2 air levels? … hepa filters & hrv respectively deal with these issues.

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Fergus Merriman's avatar

Please fact check your suggestion that Covid 19 killed over 7M, it didn’t but inappropriate treatment certainly vastly elevated the death toll.

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Lawrence William Baum's avatar

Yes, for COVID-19, 7M is just the reported deaths: https://data.who.int/dashboards/covid19/deaths . A more likely estimate is around 20-40M: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-cumulative-economist-single-entity

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Kurt's avatar

Corsi-Rosenthal Box....the results are surprising.

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