Improving Indoor Air Quality with safeUV 222nm Lamps
Improving Indoor Air Quality with safeUV 222nm Lamps
Human beings have been fighting off viral pathogens since the beginning of time. However, the emergence of COVID-19 at the start of the decade lit a fire under the conversation regarding disinfection practices and air quality, especially in the occupied spaces essential to everyday life. Although mask requirements and available hand sanitizing stations have diminished in the last few years, the focus on improving indoor air quality has persisted. While safeUV 222nm excimer lamps are still an emerging technology they could become an important piece of the indoor air quality puzzle for occupied spaces. Part of this exciting conversation, led by Harvard Associate Professor Joseph Allen, extrapolates on the associated benefits of humans experiencing improved air quality in office spaces, schools, and other occupied spaces. This blog article will cover the importance of indoor air quality as defined by Harvard Associate Professor Joseph Allen, how Far-UV works, and how safeUV 222nm Far-UV technology can become an integral component to improving air quality for building occupants.
Joseph Allen & The Importance of Indoor Air Quality
Joseph Allen is a pre-eminent authority on indoor air quality, its impact on human health, and the emerging concept of constructing healthy buildings. Allen, an associate professor at Harvard University, is also the Director of the school’s Healthy Building Program and is heavily involved in other initiatives centered on improving indoor air quality. Allen believes that improved indoor air quality leads to several tangible benefits for those occupying shared spaces including enhanced health and productivity.
Defined by the EPA, indoor air quality refers to the specific air quality within and around buildings or structures and how it relates to the overall health or comfort of occupants inside the building. For years, contractors and building designers were mindful of energy usage and focused on limiting air movement from inside the building to the outside and vice versa. While working diligently to avoid these “leaky buildings” society essentially created closed-air systems that relocated indoor pollutants from room to room or floor to floor without proper sanitization procedures in place. Indoor air pollutants wreaking havoc on the health of building occupants can range from things as simple as air fresheners to pesticides, but in light of recent history biological pollutants have become especially relevant to the conversation.
Biological pollutants are a vast grouping of airborne particulate matter and include things like viruses and bacteria. These pathogens can easily travel through HVAC systems and quickly infect humans in occupied spaces nowhere near the source. Eliminating these transferable pathogens with safeUV Far-UV lamps contributes to improved indoor air quality and offers employees or building occupants the security of knowing the environment they spend so much time occupying is free of life-threatening disease. Thanks to the human-safe characteristics of 222nm UV light, these lamps can be installed and continuously operated in occupied spaces to eliminate pathogens at the source. By eradicating airborne biological pollutants and sanitizing surfaces without requiring the introduction of chemicals to the environment, Far-UV lamps are incredibly effective at improving indoor air quality.
How Does 222nm Far-UV Light Work?
For well over a century scientists, medical professionals, and other industries have used ultraviolet light as a powerful disinfectant. The most common wavelength for this germicidal light ranges from 240nm to 300nm and is collectively referenced as UVC. However, while this light offered complete sterilization of equipment or components, human exposure to this wavelength range damages delicate tissue in the skin and eyes. The Far-UV wavelength range implemented by safeUV falls just below UVC and possesses the same germicidal benefits without detrimental side effects. This revolutionary discovery quickly enhanced the innovation of sanitizing technology and ultimately became the overhead and handheld products offered by safeUV today.
The Far-UV excimer lamps emit ultraviolet light at a wavelength of 222nm that penetrates the molecular level of pathogens and disrupts replication by attacking DNA and proteins. In stark contrast to the widely used and harmful 254nm light, Far-UV also provides a more exhaustive eradication of the pathogen DNA and proteins without leaving the possibility for photo-reactivation. In some cases, pathogens exposed to only 254nm photons can use ordinary light to repair their structure and restart the replication process.
How Far-UV 222nm Lamps Improve Indoor Air Quality
The mission at the heart of safeUV is to create safer spaces to live, work, and play. Improving indoor air quality in these spaces is critical to enhancing safety and providing occupants with a clean environment free from biological pollutants. safeUV believes that a safer, more productive, and healthier future is possible with the widespread integration of 222nm excimer lamps throughout occupied spaces thanks to the below characteristics.
- Continuous Disinfection of Occupied Spaces: The greatest advantage of Far-UV lamps is that they can provide robust, immediate, and safe disinfection properties to occupied spaces. Harmful pathogens can be eradicated at the source and will not travel through a building’s HVAC infrastructure. Furthermore, as Far-UV lamps provide sanitization during occupation buildings do not need to rely on manual cleaning practices when the building is empty to keep occupants safe. Not to mention, reducing the introduction of aerosol or liquid cleaning chemicals helps improve the overall indoor air quality of the building.
- Versatility & Flexibility: safeUV Far-UV excimer lamps have far-reaching applications throughout buildings and can improve indoor air quality at several key points. Installing Far-UV lamps in offices, conference rooms, bathrooms, and entry points provides near-immediate and complete sanitization properties to both the air and surfaces directly underneath the lamps. Furthermore, 222nm lamps can be integrated into HVAC systems to thoroughly sanitize transferred air before it is redistributed throughout the building.
- Human-Safe Far-UV Lamps: While ultraviolet light has been implemented for decades as a disinfectant, the traditional UV-C wavelengths are not safe for human exposure. Far-UV light, with a wavelength of 222nm, offers all the same germicidal properties of UV-C while remaining safe for human exposure. Far-UV cannot penetrate the outermost layer of skin or eyes but will still penetrate harmful pathogens’ DNA structure and proteins. The 222nm wavelength light inhibits the pathogen replication process, effectively stopping the spread of germs throughout a building and improving indoor air quality.
- Diverse Industry Applications: Using Far-UV lamps to continuously sanitize surfaces and improve indoor air quality is not limited to office spaces. Any routinely shared space can benefit from these germicidal properties including hospitals, gyms, classrooms, public transportation, hotels, medical offices, and even restaurants or nightclubs.
Integrating safeUV Far-UV Lamps
There is no doubt that the world will continue to pursue methods of improving indoor air quality for the spaces in which we spend the majority of our lives. While safeUV 222nm lamps may not address all of the concerns Joseph Allen has regarding indoor air quality, they should quickly become a leading technology for surface sanitization and eradication of airborne pathogens or biological pollutants in occupied spaces. Through the integration of germicidal Far-UV light building owners can display a commitment to providing a safe and healthy environment that greatly reduces the transfer of avoidable illnesses in real time. Please contact our team today to learn more about safeUV lamps and how they can help improve the indoor air quality of your office, gym, medical space, and other occupied spaces.