New York,
\nContinuous low doses of far ultraviolet C (far-UVC) light can kill airborne flu viruses without harming human tissues and may help fight the spread of seasonal influenza, a study has found.<\/p>\n
The findings suggest that use of overhead far-UVC light in hospitals, schools, airports and other public spaces could provide a powerful check on seasonal influenza epidemics, as well as influenza pandemics.<\/p>\n
Scientists have known for decades that broad-spectrum UVC light, which has a wavelength of between 200 to 400 nanometres, or nm), is highly effective in killing bacteria and viruses by destroying the molecular bonds that hold their DNA together.<\/p>\n
\u201cFar-UVC light has a very limited range and cannot penetrate through the outer dead-cell layer of human skin or the tear layer in the eye, so it\u2019s not a human health hazard,\u201d said David J Brenner from the Columbia University Medical Centre in the US.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut because viruses and bacteria are much smaller than human cells, far-UVC light can reach their DNA and kill them,\u201d Brenner said.<\/p>\n
Influenza virus spreads from person to person mainly through fine liquid droplets, or aerosols, that become airborne when people with flu cough, sneeze or talk.<\/p>\n
The new study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, was designed to test if far-UVC light could efficiently kill aerosolized influenza virus in the air, in a setting similar to a public space.<\/p>\n
In the research, aerosolized H1N1 virus–a common strain of flu virus–was released into a test chamber and exposed to very low doses of 222 nm far-UVC light.<\/p>\n
A control group of aerosolized virus was not exposed to the UVC light. The far-UVC light efficiently inactivated the flu viruses, with about the same efficiency as conventional germicidal UV light.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf our results are confirmed in other settings, it follows that the use of overhead low-level far-UVC light in public locations would be a safe and efficient method for limiting the transmission and spread of airborne-mediated microbial diseases, such as influenza and tuberculosis,\u201d said Brenner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New York, Continuous low doses of far ultraviolet C (far-UVC) light can kill airborne flu viruses without harming human tissues and may help fight the spread of seasonal influenza, a study has found. The findings suggest that use of overhead far-UVC light in hospitals, schools, airports and other public spaces could provide a powerful check […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21592,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21593,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21591\/revisions\/21593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}