[Mount Athos]

this isn’t really a discovery.
Maybe they test which wavelength and how long, but they’ve known for long time that UV kills viruses, uvc

[21twelve]

I got a UV light in early February. I use it a few times a week for 5 minutes or more. It is still going strong.

I got my daughter one in March. Same brand. It lasted about 5 minutes and burned out!?

[ProtectOurFreedom]

The germicidal properties of UV radiation have been known for 142 years...

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Ultraviolet germicidal irradiation

In 1878, Arthur Downes and Thomas P. Blunt published a paper describing the sterilization of bacteria exposed to short-wavelength light. UV has been a known mutagen at the cellular level for over 100 years. The 1903 Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to Niels Finsen for his use of UV against lupus vulgaris, tuberculosis of the skin.

Using UV light for disinfection of drinking water dates back to 1910 in Marseille, France. The prototype plant was shut down after a short time due to poor reliability. In 1955, UV water treatment systems were applied in Austria and Switzerland; by 1985 about 1,500 plants were employed in Europe. In 1998 it was discovered that protozoa such as cryptosporidium and giardia were more vulnerable to UV light than previously thought; this opened the way to wide-scale use of UV water treatment in North America. By 2001, over 6,000 UV water treatment plants were operating in Europe.

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There are scores of "UV Light Sanitizers" sold on Amazon in every size, shape and form factor imaginable.

The invention of simple UVC LEDs has created all sorts of innovation in this area. You can buy a Rockubot, "the world's first UV-C Sterilizing Music playing Robot." One of their models travels over your bed to disinfect it.

[pepsionice]

I think they’ve known this since the 1960s. The way it was explained to me a decade ago...it’s not rocket science.

[jcon40]

My restaurant is safer, cleaner and more Covid free than the offices the politicians pontificate from and the health inspectors reside

I’ve installed 5 of these (Honeywell100E) throughout my restaurant on the return air side of the HVAC units.

I’ve also installed whole house style humidifiers (Aprilaire 600) on some of those

Humidity is also an important factor

[whitney69]

“...but they’ve known for long time that UV kills viruses....

Good note. They have known about UV ultra for a long time. But smaller droplets and particles from coughs and sneezes (formed when small droplets dry very quickly in the airstream) that can remain suspended for many minutes to hours and travel far from the source on air currents, are a constant threat in public.

So for all intents, we are surrounded by virus all the time as air passing in the most obvious way of contracting the virus. When you consider a dry virus particle landing on a wet mask from breath, it can get at you from almost anywhere. This is why the CDC has decided that masks are not as safe as previously advertised.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/scientific-brief-sars-cov-2.html#:~:text=%E2%80%A2%20Larger%20droplets%20some%20of,source%20on%20air%20currents.

You can’t live in a world of UV. And you can’t treat the inner person with it after contracting the virus. So, good idea, and possibly good for cleaning/sterilzising in certain situations, but not practical or cost effective as a cure or control of the virus all the time.

wy69