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?

    • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      Might be a good idea though if you could pair it with timers/sensors so that it only turns on when people aren’t home or something.

      Like a 1 hour disinfection every day while people are at work/school.

      • Neil@lemmy.ml
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        8 months ago

        I’m going to shill for LifX here and not get paid for it. I swear.

        They already made smart bulbs that you can set a “cleaning schedule” on that uses UV light.

        I don’t have any yet because LifX is expensive. I have 11 of their multicolor bulbs throughout the house, though. Bought those back when I had bachelor guy money.

        https://www.lifx.com/products/lifx-color-clean-edition-1pk

        • bitwaba@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I look at this the same way I look at problems I’m trying to solve at work: is this already an issue causing massive problems with how we go about our day to day operations, or is this something that might have some kind of improvement.

          It’s a resource allocation issue. Sure, I can add some bulbs that kill some bacteria and viruses. But how expensive are there bulbs, and how much are we having to deal with the fallout from when someone gets sick? In the grand scheme of things, would spending ~$1,000 on light bulbs to make sure my kid doesn’t get sick (but not when in range of the bulbs…) be more beneficial than just putting that $1000 into their college savings account and learning how to deal with missing a couple days of class when the inevitable happens (which the bulb can’t protect you from anyways - you’ll get sick from other people no matter how many lights you have at home).

        • solrize@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          That thing looks terrible. t’s wifi controlled and you’re supposed to install an app to use it. And it doesn’t say anything about the UV wavelength or power (HEV=high energy visible light so I guess 9000K can be translated to wavelength). There is a pdf test report about its efficacy against a few bacteria species but nothing about aerosol viruses. I’ll pass.

      • june@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I’ve got my house kitted out with quite a bit of intelligence. I’ve spent a lot of time and money getting it working right, and it still has issues with human presence among other things.

        I would absolutely not trust any automated system with something like this. It’s like buying tools from harbor freight: anything that makes your life easier is fine but never buy something from harbor freight that you have to entrust your life to. Similarly, never trust an automation that has the potential to end your life.

    • pearable@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      Joke aside, looks like they’re using a higher bandwidth of light, 222nm compared to more common 254nm uv for medical uses. It doesn’t penetrate the skin or eyes sufficiently to cause damage.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      And bleaching all materials in the room. And slowly destroying anything made of paper or plastic or wood.

    • maness300@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      What if, and hear me out,

      What if…

      What if… we just ran them when people weren’t in the room? 🤯

      Crazy what happens when you can come up with your own thoughts instead of parroting reddit comments ad nauseam.

      • DreadPotato@sopuli.xyz
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        8 months ago

        What if… we just ran them when people weren’t in the room?

        This is already a thing in many hospitals, and has been used extensively even before covid.

        • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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          8 months ago

          And there are also UV systems that can be added to air ducts to kill off airborne pathogens as well. But they’re not cheap and not commonly used outside of medical facilities.

      • CustodialTeapot@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Lemmy users don’t respond well to reasonable criticism or facts.

        Only toxic and stupid comments allowed.

  • Inevitable Waffles [Ohio]@midwest.social
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    8 months ago

    I worked for a company that made a UVC light system for sterilization. The amount of safety you have to build in so people wont nuke themselves makes them hard to use.Also, the bulbs we used were delicate and had issues constantly.

  • asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    This is the dumbest shit. It kills all kinds of stuff, not just bad viruses. Homes are covered in bacteria which you’ve adapted to and are helpful. Kind of like gut bacteria, but outside your body. Killing all of them isn’t a good idea.

  • weew@lemmy.ca
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    8 months ago

    “X can kill gems! Why don’t we use X everywhere?”

    X: Thing that can kill humans too. And/or cause cancer.

    See also:

    • Fire

    • chlorine gas

    • dehydration

    • Boiling water

    • Radiation

  • jayandp@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    Because it’s great at killing things, including human skin. Seriously, my local gym has people practically sign their life away before letting them into a UV-A/B tanning booth. No way are you putting the even worse UV-C bulbs out in public. That’s how people got their retinas fried at a crypto conference in Hong Kong last year.

    • Sagifurius@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      People think I’m nuts when I wear sunglasses on cloudy days, but my eyes hurt. Idk why they don’t hurt the same way sunny days, probably I don’t squint when it’s not so sunny.

      • jayandp@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        Probably the scattering effect of the clouds. Instead of light coming from one direction, which you can angle away from to reduce intensity, the diffused light from the clouds is bouncing every which way. Which while making the intensity less, instead keeps it constant no matter where you face. I often wear sunglasses while driving on cloudy days for similar reasons.

        Basically, looking at direct sunlight will obviously be more damaging, but diffused light doesn’t give you a break.

    • lud@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Who the hell thought that an NFT festival was a good idea and unprotected UV lights?

      Maybe the organisers were exposed to gamma radiation lwhen they thought up the event.

    • iAvicenna@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Ultraviolance: solution to anything and everything (ps: this would make a very good name for a custom minigun)

  • frezik@midwest.social
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    8 months ago

    This thread might be the worst example of “I didn’t read the article, but I’ll comment anyway” that I’ve seen.

  • mariusafa@lemmy.sdf.org
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    8 months ago

    UV light kills almost all viruses because it’s ionizing EM radiation. So it also fucks humans up, xd. I mean just stay on sunlight naked for a day. Your body will be so happy. All the mutations from ionizing radiation would be great.

    But yeah we life in a society where ppl is scared of Radiofrequency EM waves (non-ionizing), “dangerous cell phone towers, wifi dangerous”. That same people recomends staying long periods of time with direct sunlight contact without protection (yeah we need protection because sunlight spectrum has UV and higher freq ionizing radiation).

    Sunlight healthy/radio waves dangerous, that is the most stupid statement ever.

    Sunlight is beneficial in small dosis because of how we syntetise vitamins (as little as i know). But remeber if you are scared of microwaves, remeber that sunlight has much more higher freq(higher energy) waves.

  • partizan@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    You really dont want to live in a sterile environment, you actually need some stimulation to your immune and other bodily systems. Most body stuff is like muscles including the immune system - when you regularly over load and stress them, thats the impulse to stimulate growth and evolving.

  • just_another_person@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Because the spectrum required (UV-C) to do so is harmful to humans and the environment. Putting it EVERYWHERE would cause all kinds of problems.

    • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      The article blathers on for page after page after page talking about technology is back in the '60s and '70s, an experimental technology using UV wavelengths that supposedly don’t bother humans. And systems that only point up in a room like the UV light isn’t going to get reflected into your eyeballs. I get the feeling the author doesn’t have much of a background and was really just trying to stitch a bunch of research together without really understanding most of it.

      You can safely blast the shit out of central air ducts, but it doesn’t do anything for infected breathing viruses into the air sitting next to you or the people that touched the bathroom door handle.

      I suspect if we see any real non biased studies come out of any of this equipment the difference will be close to within the error bar.

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        8 months ago

        This is the most informed comment in the thread where it’s clear you actually read the damn article.

        Some of this does appear to be due to a widespread misunderstanding about how droplets spread disease in the medical field. It was thought that UV light far enough away to be safe would also be too far away to be effective. At least, not without additional ventilation, but ventilation itself would help reduce the spread, and we don’t do that because it’s expensive. UV would be cheap.

        Research conducted during Covid corrected this scientific misunderstanding, and UV may be effective without additional ventilation. Ozone effects still need to be studied, though, as well as overall effectiveness. It might be that the additional ozone causes a few hundred additional deaths, but with the tradeoff of thousands or even millions fewer respiratory disease deaths. That would be a worthwhile tradeoff, but we don’t know what those numbers look like.