Professor Kirk Atkinson talks about Far UVC and its ability to kill the SARS-CoV-2 virus and other pathogens.

Learn more: https://kojalamedical.com/covid19theanswers/

Scientific Research Links:

“Far-UVC light (222 nm) efficiently and safely inactivates airborne human coronaviruses” - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-67211-2?mc_cid=98d0b3d652&mc_eid=c7429e3ec7#change-history

“Predicting airborne coronavirus inactivation by far-UVC in populated rooms using a high-fidelity coupled radiation-CFD model” - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-76597-y

“Improved estimates of 222 nm far-UVC susceptibility for aerosolized human coronavirus via a validated high-fidelity coupled radiation-CFD code” - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-99204-0

Professor David J Brenner, Columbia University - http://www.columbia.edu/~djb3/Far%20UVC.html

“Inactivation Rates for Airborne Human Coronavirus by Low Doses of 222 nm Far-UVC Radiation” - https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/14/4/684

“Extreme Exposure to Filtered Far-UVC: A Case Study” - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/php.13385

Kojala Medical presents COVID-19, The  Answers. The show that delivers the

scientific evidence-based knowledge that can  safely return us all to our pre-COVID lives.

My name is Dr. Funmi Okunola  and I'll be hosting the show.

Every week you can listen to me  interview a highly respected professional

about the science that can reduce your risk  of becoming infected with this Coronavirus.

Hello and welcome to COVID-19 The  Answers Episode 12 – Far UVC. I’d

like to welcome Professor Kirk Atkinson PhD.

Professor Atkinson is an Associate  Professor & Associate Industrial Research

Chair of Energy Systems and Nuclear Science  at Ontario Tech University in Canada.

Dr Atkinson graduated from the University of  London with a BSc in Theoretical Physics in 1999,

an MSc in Astrophysics in 2001, and an  MRes in Image and X-ray Physics in 2002.

He then joined the Ministry of Defence  as Senior Lecturer in Nuclear Science in

the Nuclear Department, the UK’s only  dedicated Nuclear Engineering School.

He became Technical Lead for Reactor  Physics and High Performance Computing

and for Radiation Physics and Criticality.  Since 2014, in collaboration with Rolls-Royce,

he led a multi-million dollar technical effort  to develop a high-throughput Gamma Emission

Tomography system (EGRET) for imaging and  characterisation of spent nuclear fuel.

He joined the Faculty of Energy Systems and  Nuclear Science at Ontario Tech University

as an Associate Professor in January 2019 and  began collaborating with research into Far UVC

with Professor David Brenner’s  team at Columbia University

Welcome. Hi. So Kirk, could you tell the audience  what led you into the world of far UVC technology?

I had a background for my PhD  work in in Radiation Biology

and I found myself a little bit stuck moving my  family, from funnily enough, from the UK to Canada

and I was trying to leverage  my my skills and experience

with that background and my background in  nuclear engineering and modeling and simulation

and I sort of stumbled across the work that  David Brenner had been doing, who I knew from

before at Columbia University and I noticed that  whilst they were doing some really good stuff

in the experimental side the widespread  application how it would work in practice

in the in the environment in a building  wasn't really well worked out at all

so they've concentrated much more on  the laboratory studies in the science of

how it does the killing rather than how it would  work in practice and so with some colleagues from

the UK we decided to do some some simulation work  to try and figure this this kind of thing out

and it's been quite influential I think in terms  of the findings that we've that we've found

and we've actually been able to help the Brenner  group interpret some of their their work and

actually found that far UVC is even better than  we thought it was gonna be. Oh that's fantastic!

So electromagnetic radiation is a term used to

describe all the different kind of energies  released into space by stars such as the sun

the energy travels at the speed of light  and is in the form of waves and photons

when you wake up and see the light from the sun  tune your radio watch tv send a text message or

warm warm food in a microwave oven you are using  electromagnetic energy you depend on this energy

every hour of every day without it the world  you know could not exist in the electromagnetic

spectrum there are all types of electromagnetic  radiation with various frequencies and wavelengths

the most well known are radio waves microwaves  infrared visible light ultraviolet and x-rays

the electromagnetic waves in each of these  bands have different characteristics such

as how they are produced how they interact  with matter and their practical applications

today we will be discussing ultraviolet light  or UV light and far UVC light in particular

as it relates to the preventative measures  for Covid this technology is widely unknown

and safety of use will be a major concern  to educate medical and non-medical people

UV light has different properties and uses in  industry in everyday life as well as pandemic

management and risk mitigation so Kirk before  we dive into this technology and its application

for COVID risk mitigation. Let's begin with  a very basic understanding of the technology.

Can you briefly describe the three different  types of UV light and their uses UV A B and C?

Sure, so UV light exists at shorter wavelengths  than visible light. So most of us maybe in school,

did a little bit of physics and somewhere  along the line the acronym Richard Of York

Gave Battle In Vain or ROY G BIV came up and  so you're going all the way from the red,

the R, to the V, the violet. The violet is around  about 400 nanometers when you go a little bit

too short, too shorter wavelength from there,  so below 400 maybe to as low as 315 nanometers.

That's in the ultraviolet range and that's the  ultraviolet A range. So that's what we call UVA

and that's the wavelength of light that we're  familiar with. It's what causes people to tan

when they go in the sun. It's what causes skin  to age. If you don't moisturize and take care

of your skin properly. So what you're using a bug  zapper. Now if you go to shorter wavelengths go a

little bit shorter we hit the UVB range, so that's  between about 315 nanometers and 280 nanometers

and that maybe less useful in some regards.  It can be responsible for causing melanoma in

terms of skin cancer. It's one of the ones that we  know about a lot, so one of the reasons we should

wear sunblock when we're in the sun, or protect  ourselves but it causes fluorescence. Okay. So you

can use it in fluorescent applications go a little  bit shorter wavelength still below 280 nanometers

and you enter the UVC range now that UVC range  pretty much exists between about 200 and 280

nanometers there are bands of UV light that  exist at shorter wavelengths than that,

what we would call the VUV and the EUV range  and they have specific properties as well,

but if we focus on that 218 nanometers down  to 200 nanometers range, where we have UVC

the most common kind of wavelength that  we know about around about 254 nanometers

and that's used in sterilization purposes when  we go towards the far, towards the very short

wavelength end that's where we hit what we call  far UVC. It's at the far end of the UVC range,

it's always existed and it's it's really within  the range 230 nanometers down to about 200

with the common ones being between 222 and 207  nanometers and that's really been an underutilized

wavelength range. Right, and just to clarify  for the non-scientific audience. So UVB when

you talk about fluorescence, you mean in  lighting, so for example nightclub lighting

and that blue lighting you see that we sometimes  see in shots that kills bugs that's what

UVBis used, well no that's not what UVB is used  for, it tends to the fluorescence. I mean in the

sense here is more to do with particular kinds of  scientific applications you can get fluorescence

at all different kind of wavelengths whether  it's UVA through to x-ray through to whatever

all all fluorescence really is the  light that becomes emitted through

the excitation of electrons in an atom so  if you go back to school, now many of us

would have probably done chemistry class  maybe physics class and they would have

remembered that the atom is kind of like has  a blob in the middle that's the nucleus where

we've got some protons and stuff going on and  then orbiting around that and they the word,

the important word here is orbiting are electrons  and those electrons can live in different shells

so when we cause an electron to be to be  promoted from a lower shell to a higher shell

it doesn't necessarily like to live at that higher  shell state so what it does is it relaxes back

down and gives off light in the process and that's  fluorescence right okay and then UVC when you

said it's used in kind of sterilizing properties  that's practically speaking that's things like our

operating theaters they use UVC you know at night  don't they to sterilize them when nobody's around

so that's one of its uses too is that right, so  UVC more recently has has been used so traditional

UVC more recently has been used in the in the  operating room emergency room kind of context

out of hours but for the longest time it's been  used in other contexts too many of us in here

in here in canada and in maybe in the US and  other places might take water from from a well

or has fairly unclean water from in the mains and  so they want to sterilize it now you can go down

many hardware stores certainly here in Canada and  you can buy UV apparatus that will illuminate the

water and kill the bugs that are in it you can  put the same kind of thing into HVAC systems,

so the idea that it's been used for germicidal  purposes to kill germs has actually been around

for about a hundred years and it's really, really  well established. Thank you and yes, Professor

Jimenez talked about it a couple of weeks ago. Germicidal UV. What's

the difference between conventional germicidal use  UVC lighting and far UVC lighting? Okay, so it's

fundamentally down to wavelength, so germicidal  UV is pretty much what we would call 254 nanometer

UVC, and that wavelength is what is one of the two  principal wavelengths that comes out of mercury

gas discharge lamps which is the fundamental  traditional way of of making UV light

has two particular wavelengths and one of them  gets absorbed in the in the glass so it doesn't

make its way out but the 254 nanometer does so it  comes out of the bulb and there's there's a range

of different types of bulb that you can have that  employ this technology some are very long some

are small, you can you can find them in Canadian  Tire, I have one I bought one a while back myself

the far UVC it is made at lower intensity in these  kind of lamps so it does exist there and if you

could filter out all of the other wavelengths  that you don't want, you could use it, but it's

not necessarily the most efficient way and what  the kind of revolution in this kind of field was

was the use of plasma based light sources and  eczema lamps predominantly. And these eczema

lamps, they use particular kind of diatomic  molecules that you can excite. Just like I

talked about earlier with the electrons being  jumping up to a higher level and when they relax,

they relax at particular wavelengths. One  of which is to around about 222 nanometers.

Now that's not the only wavelength that comes out,  so you have to use a filter, a specific filter

to filter out the components that you don't want,  but these new kind of lamps. They allowed greater

intensities of this kind of two to two band made  the process of the filtering less troublesome so

it's really only down to wavelength and the  big thing with far UVC is that it's safer

than the conventional UVC. Do you want  to talk about that? Sure, sure. So

if it kind of relates to the history of this  actually, so let's, if we went back some amount

of years ten years, or so maybe a decade. It  was recognized and Brenner's group at Columbia

University was was one of the pioneering  groups in this area it was recognized that

far UVC wavelengths will

penetrate less deeply into tissue which  is the fundamental bit that makes UVC

light dangerous to us normally, so they came  along and they figured out if they took this lamp

and they took this a particular kind of  filter and they brought it together they

could make systems that could be used  to to cure pathogens to kill microbes

now the way this kind of works is talking about  fluorescence I'm talking about electron movements,

what happens is every time that radiation hits  material the atoms and molecules in that material

their electrons get affected  by the energy that's coming in

now they can get knocked out they can get promoted  to higher orbits where from where from they relax

now UV a light actually penetrates really  deeply, this is kind of counterintuitive because

as you go into shorter to shorter wavelengths  the frequency goes up and the energy goes up

normally in life we think about things like  x-rays. X-rays are higher energy photons and we we

largely think about them as being damaging and you  go to the hospital and you see the radiation sign

on the door and you know you're not to go in there  because it can hurt you if it's not used properly.

So this is where it's kind of counter-intuitive  in that UV-A has lower energy, but penetrates

tissue more deeply. Thankfully it doesn't have  the energy to cause damage to DNA UVB does, which

is why people get melanoma, UVC does, it goes  less far in but still hits cells that are living

UV far UVC on the other hand is so energetic,  it interacts much more readily with atoms

and molecules in the dead skin layers that we  have or the tear layer that we have on our eye

and all the energy gets absorbed  before it hits anything that's living

anything where we've got dna that could be hurt  and that's really the fundamental advantage

about far UVC light is that whilst it's got  more energy and can cause damage it can't

make it to those parts of us where we  could be harmed and I like to think about

interactions a bit like if you went into a bar,  and you're trying to make your, it's a busy night

and you come in the door and you're trying  to go to the bar, so you can buy a drink,

or a coffee if you don't drink, if there's lots  of people in your way. You can have lots of

interactions before you make it to the bar,

if there's less people in the bar, you get  to the bar quicker and this is fundamentally

what's happening with the difference between the  different types of light. So whilst it's carrying

damaging energy, it has so many more interactions  on the way to the bar, the energy gets lost,

so that's why it's so powerful right so we get  this unique property whereby it can kill germs

unlike conventional UV light, it won't cause  cancers because it doesn't interact with DNA

and living cells and it won't give us cataracts.  So we can have a light that shines directly on us,

killing the coronavirus in the aerosols and you  know live happily without the dangers of cancer

or cataracts. Absolutely and this is really  where a huge amount of work has now been done

so prior to the pandemic there are a number of  groups obviously the Brenner group being one the

Dundees and Andrews group in the UK group in  Japan. I think Kobe University and some others

they were all already doing work on this? So  they were looking at they were exposing skin

on in mice for instance and the eyes on mice  and they were seeing what the effects were

and obviously since the pandemic this is has  taken off massively with many more groups

joining the field and they all see the same  thing, you can put very large intensities of

far UVC light on the skin and not get any damage  none at all and it's been repeated over and over

and that's really reassuring that you know  that experimentation has been repeated and

you there is a scientific consensus there so how  was far UVC discovered? So I kind of touched on

that a moment ago when I sort of suggested that  around about a decade ago it was noted that

these kind of wavelengths wouldn't be  able to penetrate as deeply through cells,

through tissue and therefore not be able  to cause harm and so bringing together

the technology that had evolved in the lamp space  eczema lamps and the like along with the right kind

of filters allowed it to be exploited clearly  it's always existed because it's part of the

electromagnetic spectrum it comes out of all UV  lamps and almost certainly is produced in the sun

and it's produced all over it's just never been  able to be exploited because the technology wasn't

really there to do it but once the technology was  there you can see the applications of it and that

and that's where we find ourselves now okay so  in what scenarios and environments do you think

far UVC would be most effective in the prevention  of Covid-19. Okay so I went to a conference last

week. It was the first conference I've been to  in two years and a large number of people started

the conference wearing masks, and they were trying  to be mindful of the fact that we know that Covid

is carried in the air and they will be talking  to a lot of people but they realized that when

they went into the reception hall and people had  had some canapes and a glass of wine and he had

this big space with hundreds of people and pretty  poor airflow having a mask on was kind of moot,

all the mask was doing was acting as a little  bit of a filter about what's going in and out

the airflow in the room from the HVAC systems was  clearly insufficient to pull the air in and out.

If we had had a technology like far UVC  illuminating all of that air while we were

in there, the concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 or any  other airborne pathogen would be being reduced as

the far UVC photons get absorbed in the bugs  in the air and cause them to be damaged and

if they're damaged they then don't work properly,  and they can't infect you so the spaces where it's

very useful is spaces where air flow is very,  very bad, so when you're outside in the world

you have lots of air around you. The wind blows,  you know, other things there's lots of space, you

dilute any of the kind of concentrations of virus  that people might breathe out so your risk level

goes really far down, and that's good we like that  we know that if you go into a space and you have

really good ventilation it works, you can pull  a lot of the a lot of the bugs out of the air,

by exchanging the air you could run it through  a filter but the problem with all of those is

they need to take the air somewhere else, and  whenever you can't do that or can't can't do that

very well you're going to get it to build up so I  rode the via rail train from where I where I live

to Ottawa for this conference and I was pretty  uninspired by the ventilation on the train,

you can't open the windows, the windows are  sealed, it wasn't obvious that there was an

aircon that was working properly there were  a ton of people in there eating a drinking

so that's a terrible environment to have  circulation of aerosol in the air so having

far UVC lights in in the in the ceiling  of the of the railroad car would be

probably a good idea, similarly the classroom, I  have a lot of discussions with colleagues about

whether we should have masking still in schools  or not and I try and make the point that a mask

is just a filter however good the filter is  still only a filter, so if the filter is 50

efficient, all that does is double the time before  you get the same concentration as you would have

got anyway. If there's an infectious concentration  in the air, you sit in the room long enough

it doesn't matter that you're wearing a mask,  now there are ways to get that out of the room

but a lot of schools have put those kind of air  purifier devices at the front of the classroom,

and so it pulls the air from the  back of the room to the front

past the heads of all the kids it's kind of a  bit of a not well thought through problem here

and it only is when it gets there does it do  with the cleaning so you're actually spreading

the stuff around which you don't necessarily  want if you had them in the in the ceiling again

you could kill some of the concentration of  the bugs in the air of all the bugs in the air

doesn't really matter which and this has been  proven too whilst we sort of were the pioneers

of of the modeling and simulation side  of this that my my colleagues and I

the a group in the uk along with Columbia  University is very recently last month published

published a good paper where they they have  actually done some room-sized chamber experiments

and they found that far UVC can knock out  bacteria in the air down to two percent of the

concentration a stable two percent on a constant  release in about five minutes that's that's

equivalent to 184 air changes per hour for that  room and that's using standard UV limits as well

fantastic performance yes that is that's amazing  because I mean the best HVAC system will give air

changes of around six to nine I think from memory  and Professor Jimenez, so that's amazing, so

and again I think it highlights that you  need some form of expertise or some form of

regulated set up to help schools

assess their environment and work out which  technologies to use I guess in tandem to provide

the best risk reduction measure methods in terms  of removing the coronavirus, for sure I mean,

I' m obviously pro far UVC, I think it's a very  good technique but like some other like so many

other things in life it's not the only solution  and it's not like ‘oh you should only use far

UVC rather than something else’ all measures are  needed, like everything in life. There is some

context where it will work better that experiment  that I just spoke about was a very specific setup,

but make that more complicated by having people  moving through the space you have obstructions

so that the airflow is stalled, the room layout  is different everything then changes, so when

people say that this technique or the other  technique will give this amount of performance

yes it could under a certain specific set of  circumstances and this is where implementation

is really the key thing it's understanding how  the interplay between aerosol HVAC or other

ventilation other measures that we have in space  be it illumination be it masks be it whatever

how they all work together because  sometimes they work against each other

and also you've highlighted another property  whereby, the introduction of far UVC would

have wide ranging properties for example. If you recent research paper has shown that it's killing bacteria to that degree.

And will help to prevent other germs that might be floating around

and also possibly other viruses and bacteria that  might cause future pandemics, so it's not something

that would just help us with this pandemic  it would help us, it would have far-reaching,

wide-ranging properties. For sure, I mean if  we think back two years, nobody expected Covid

to happen or to be what it's what it's been, it  caught everybody a little bit up by surprise,

the west in the western world especially  governments that had pandemic plans in in pro that

or that that had worked on and published before  they they didn't seem to follow them properly one

minute they're saying it's not not an airborne  virus next minute it is by that point everybody

has already moved moved around they weren't  wearing masks and it's spread everywhere,

would we be where we are now had we  had some kind of defense in place

in January of 2020 and I don't know the answer,  maybe we would have been in a different space but

you could envisage that if you had something like  far UVC that sits there passively in open spaces

in public indoor spaces predominantly in  in in transit situations you would suppress

a lot of infections across the board whatever they  are be they new or old, and if we suppress them,

a bit like the masks do, if we suppress them less  people catch them if less people catch them we're

able to handle it better and put other mitigations  in place so I think about things like far UVC

as not so much something for Covid now but for

Covid 3.0 that comes along later, or some other  pandemic that we haven't thought about yet,

I think it's really important for 3.0 or future  pandemics whatever they may be, but I think it's

also important for Covid, because Covid just has a  propensity to cause such a huge amount of chronic

disease when you're looking at long Covid  figures, up to 30% of people that catch Covid

are going to end up with long Covid if they're  unvaccinated, and that best research preliminary

research is showing that vaccination will reduce  that by 50% but 15% is still a very high number and

then we're also seeing organ damage possible organ  damage with people that are even asymptomatic now

Professor banerjee in a previous episode talked  about research that he'd done to show that so I

think, this is the whole point of this program we  need bits of risk reduction technology whether it

be vaccination whether it be for UVC, whether it  be air filtration and ventilation all working in

tandem to keep us safe, and so that we can get back  to normal life safely I think that's what we need

I think you're right and I find it kind of bizarre, that Western governments, European

governments, governments in other countries spend  so much money on things like defense, which I

think is necessary, but we don't seem to do the  same thing in defense for health. Yes and this

is when we see the economic cost that when we get  it wrong, like for Covid, the economic costs of that

if we had done something and invested some  money early and been more cautious before

and more prepared, I think is the better word,  I think things would look very different so,

so if moving forward for continuing because  it doesn't look like it's going to go anywhere

unfortunately at least not in the near term and  whatever comes next I think building in engineered

passive solutions is really the best way to bring  people back to a normality of life that they want,

whilst not losing the advantages of

some of the more visible protective measures  that have been used in the past two years

yeah, yes, so we could, there still might  be instances where we need to use masks

but that would be reduced if we had far  UVC technology and air filtration, people

were adequately vaccinated, all of that working  in tandem. Is that what you mean? That's exactly

what I mean. I mean having far UVC there  for the vast majority of people might mean that

people don't have to wear masks frequently and  those people that do, are the ones that have have

more significant concerns, but the people that that  sit there now and are worried about their neighbor

who's maybe not being as cautious as them they  can get some reassurance that far UVC is picking

up the slack let's put it that way and I   think that make it will make everybody safer,

Yeah, and I think you actually bring to mind an  important point because if you take like

kids under the age of two, it's really difficult to  get them to keep a mask on and elderly people that

suffer from dementia, or people with learning  difficulties. Very difficult to keep masks on

them. So if we had far UVC lighting in those  environments it would really reduce their risk

and the risk of those around them. Yes absolutely  it's it's a tool that's so useful in many

contexts right okay you've answered a lot of my  questions which is fantastic so one that sprung

to mind is what is the speed and distance that far  UVC would work for example how far would I need to

sit from an infected person say if we were in a  restaurant and I had a friend who was contagious

with SARS-CoV-2 and I didn't know it and we had  like a far UVC light shining on us from above,

illuminating the restaurant so how close would  I need to be or far would I need to be from that

infected person with the far UVC light shining  on us for me not to be infected by their aerosols?

That is a hugely complicated question to  ask, because there is no one answer and

and that's where the reality of how technologies  interplay with the real world, exhibit themselves.

So right now most of the lamps are working to  the current threshold limit values that

exist and that is 23 millijoules, per centimeter  squared of of energy in an eight hour period

so you can pretty much do the math on that  and work out that you're just shy of about

three millijoules per centimeter squared  so that's that's energy so we're spreading

energy over a small area, and that that is what  the limit sort of tells us at that at those

limits if you're sitting opposite somebody in a  restaurant and the airflow isn't in your favor

all far UVC would do is reduce the concentration  that you get. So think of it a bit like a mask,

now if you were closer to the lamp, you would  get more intensity. You might go above the

guidance level but then you would kill more, more  quickly, if you were further away you'd kill less,

If you're in a shadow, and the lamps above you  and you accidentally cause a shadow to be there

the light can't hit it. So it's only as it's only  as effective as the amount of light it can see,

and this is where real world implementations  are a problem, because if you think about

HVAC systems they circulate air very  commonly, they circulate air around a room,

so they might move the air closer to the  lamp and then blow it back around again

and then it blows in your face. If it's got less  concentration of virus there that's a good thing

for you, but I don't think that anybody can say  that you can kill all of the bugs that are coming

out of a friend's mouth if you're sitting  there at a table at a restaurant and I don't

think we ever can, and that then creates  its own question about risk now some

companies have have considered whether  having much higher intensity

far UVC sources in between people, almost like  a curtain if you like, could be a much

higher power and because you're not in this, in  that illumination field you would kill more bugs

and I think that could work too and that would  reduce it again a bit more still. But the idea

that we can reduce it to zero I think is highly unlikely but you could reduce it to sub

threshold infection levels or comparable levels to  what you'd get outside which is pretty much what

the experiments in the UK's recently found so it's  a bit like what we've been talking about earlier

we need this I call it 360 degree risk reduction  pandemic mitigation and other people have called

it kind of a swiss cheese thing layer thing so you  need bits of everything so if you're sitting in

that restaurant you want to know that you want  to educate that population to get vaccinated

because that reduces your risk absolutely you  want an air filter or air ventilation a well

ventilated environment because that would remove  more you want people to test before they come

if you say that person who I'm sitting next to or  other people in the room might have gone to a big

football match or an indoor concert you'd want to  encourage them to test themselves before they put

themselves back into an indoor environment with  others, that would reduce the risk and then you've

got far UVC lighting which will reduce the risk  down further so it's that whole layered effect

of risk reduction that we need to educate the  population about so that they get on board with

doing it so they can get back to some form of safe  normal life that's more or less what you're saying

really absolutely I mean I think about cars, when  you drive your car hey you wear a seat belt so if

you do get in a crash you don't go through the  windshield, you make sure that your brakes work

so that you can stop if someone walks out in front  of you so you don't hit them, you make sure that

that you can see through the  windshield, so you're not driving blind.

You don't drink and drive. All of these things all  work together to improve the safety for all of us,

both the person that's in the car and the person  that is on the street, and take any of those out

of there and you increase risk so the important  thing is to understand how the risks work with

each other the interesting one that you that  you mentioned was far UVC and ventilation,

so this is a really key part of the equation  is if you get the ventilation profile

wrong. You reduce the effectiveness of  the far UVC rather than increase it, so

I actually think that in areas where airflow  can't be removed in a good way quickly,

in a meaningful way quickly, something like far  UVC is a really good thing to put in place.

So I have a colleague she does a huge  amount of advocacy for long-term care

and many of the long-term care buildings are are  kind of old and don't have good ventilation so if

you're thinking about some of those spaces they're  perfect candidates for things like far UVC because

they would just sit there passively and that air  that's circulating naturally through the room

would be somewhat sterilized and  that's the kind of thing where where

where we really need to have to think,  but it's like everything whenever you install

something if you get some electrical work  done, you make sure that the electrician

tests the installation before you go and start  switching things on so it's safe, so I think the

same is true when you install far UVC. The mistake  would be just to run down the store, get a lamp,

stick it on the ceiling and assume it's going to  work the way you think it is. That's the same with

everything. That's such an excellent analogy  you gave. The car and excellent examples there

with long-term care and where far UVC could be so  useful. I think for me this this whole series is

important so that the public can be educated and  demand the technology and then we need Government

setups really nationally and internationally  where people are trained we have trained engineers

trained that can go around and educate people on  how to facilitate these setups correctly I think

there needs to be a whole organizational network  to put this technology in place in my opinion,

I mean I could say it now  if you go back some many decades

you find much more common reference to  something called public health engineering,

and that doesn't seem to be something that we  spend as much time thinking about these days.

We think about public health and we think about  engineering but those two things intersecting,

I think is where the next 20 years needs to be. It  needs to happen now in my opinion. I mean, I' m not

saying that not saying that. What I'm saying is  you know, it's something that we should be doing. Yes!

And the field needs to establish itself so that  we understand that okay you can reduce infection

by changing the way people walk, so rather than  have them snake next to each other so they're

cross pathing all the time make them go around  a different slightly different way and that then

changes the dynamics of the situation and the same  is true with far UVC you know, I think Professor

you Kirk and Jose Jimenez have really pointed  out that we need science and then scientists and

engineers to be more involved with Public Health  because how the virus and and other pathogens such

as bacteria act in the environment is really your  domain, the physics of the environment and how

things like aerosols light etc interacts is your  expertise and and as medics how the bacteria and

viruses work within our body is our expertise. So  the medics have done fantastic jobs, but it's only

half the solution to us living safely. I think  you've really highlighted that today, for sure

okay so we're running out of time and there's a  couple of important questions I wanted to ask so

currently far UVC bulbs are expensive  partly because there isn't a demand due

to the lack of knowledge about the technology  and partly because there isn't an LED equivalent

when do you foresee an LED version of the bulb  being made available so that they can mass

so they can be mass produced  for say our homes for example so

first thing is if we roll back a year or two  the lamps are what then were significantly

more expensive than they are now so there  are a lot more vendors on the market a lot

more people playing in this game I think we're  still not getting the message out well enough

as to the fact that they could be useful, and  I think in some people's minds they've they've

they've already moved on, and so they're not  investing the same kind of considerations they

were before they feel they've got their solutions  and that's that and I think that's flawed

but I think we're much more in a zone  now where we're in the comparable to

water sterilization cost range so that is still  expensive relative to your standard kind of

energy efficient light bulb that you that  you're sticking to your fitting at home

and I'd say we're still some ways away from  that the LED thing is interesting it's easier

to make LEDs for longer wavelengths and this  is fundamentally where it becomes a technology

problem and it might well be that you can make  far UVC LEDs and there are people that do work

on this already, but their efficiency and their  intensity, their output, isn't necessarily very high.

So I think if you really wanted to  speed things up you want somebody with  sufficient

money to scale the technology that already  exists, so that it's cheaper and can be

mass produced more quickly and whilst there are  big companies involved, what you need is you

need you need an Elon Musk or somebody like  that to come out and pump up a lot of money

to make it, so and then it will take off, and  then the market will do the rest because none

of this stuff is very hard to do. It's just that  it will scale to demand, so demand has increased

competitors exist prices come down already  price will continue to come down you know

if we if we went back and think thought about how  much cell phones cost when they first come out

and now think about that you can buy them in  almost disposable, that that cost can really

change quite rapidly so I think it's less about  waiting for the leds although the LED is a kind

of neat solution and they will come in time I  think it's more about getting the message out

there to the people that can influence purchasing  power and then the market will do the rest.

That's an excellent answer, Kirk. Thank you for  that.

You talked in the beginning about how the research  you and your team did enhance the research that

Professor Brenner did, in Colombia. Could you talk  a little bit about that what you've done? Sure,

so in 2018 and then in 2020 the group in Colombia  made some experiments with a benchtop chamber

this is before they managed to get access to  the one in the UK which I spoke about earlier

and this benchtop chamber had sort  of an inlet and an outlet and blew

some some air through it that had been seeded with  coronavirus it was a different human coronavirus

but it's very much representative and the way  this this system was set up it had a kind of

window and a lamp on the outside and some  structures and various things were happening

and they made a rough approximation about this  is the size of the chamber this is the speed of

the air and then when they they looked at their  results at the end for the amount of illumination

and the reduction in the infectiousness of of  the virus that was in the air so how many virions

have been killed effectively? They made in the sum  they made an estimation of what the susceptibility

of the coronavirus was to far UVC but it  neglected a lot of things, because when you blow

through for a tube you get drag at the sides so  that means it slows things down, so if any virus

that's near the edges is staying in the light  longer and actually the virus that's in the middle

being blown through the middle moves the quickest  so stays in the light comparatively less time

and then there's shielding effects and distance  effects that they hadn't really accounted for so

we were able to help them with that and actually  showed that their susceptibility was about half of

what it really was, and that was the key finding and we've had a couple of papers

out with them on on that topic specifically so it  shows that actually for coronavirus you know human

coronaviruses far UVC is exceptionally useful  and coronavirus is very sensitive now you'll

you'll remember I talked about the fact that  the far UVC couldn't make it through the skin,

because these viruses and these other pathogens  float around in the air they're so small.

Those far UVC photons light rays  they're able to get absorbed by them and

fundamentally that's what this thing  does and the susceptibility is really a measure of

how well far UVC or any other light how good  it is at killing that particular pathogen

for particular energy in particular the amount of  time or area great well we're practically out of

time and I just want to thank you, Kirk, for your  contributions today. I really wanted to inform the

audience of this amazing technology that has  a scope to change all our lives and help us to

live safely with this coronavirus and you have  really facilitated that. Thanks to you and your

colleagues for all the marvelous work that you're  doing to keep us safe. That's no problem,

You're welcome, I mean, I think there are lots of  people across the world doing lots of great stuff

and we actually talk to each other which  is a good thing, because that communication

is really a key thing sharing  the results will mean that we're quicker

to respond to threats. Very much. I think the most  successful aspects of the pandemic has been the

collaboration and the openness of science that's been facilitated.

Thanks for listening to this week's episode of  COVID-19 The Answers. If you enjoyed the episode

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