- Healthier office spaces can only help people stay safer and companies more productive.
- The new spectrum of UV rays can kill almost all pathogens in specific indoor areas.
- New epidemics and bioterrorism remain concerns; this can help us stay safer.
Imagine walking into an office, library, or hospital and knowing that most pathogens in the room, from COVID-19 to the common cold, are being actively eliminated.
That's the reality for startup Lit Thinking's Visium product. These UV spectrum lights can kill all airborne pathogens that make people sick without harming humans.
"If you think from a technology perspective, you have things like air conditioning, internal combustion engines and antibiotics. The new pillar, then, is germicidal ultraviolet light," co-founder and CEO John Rajchert said in a Zoom interview.
UV light killing pathogens is nothing new, Rajchert said. We've known about this effect for over a hundred years. The problem is that it's bad for us.
“[UV wavelengths] penetrate into the basal layer and may have carcinogenic effects,” Rajchert said. "So, we've always thought that it's very good at disinfecting, very good at killing germs, and [we need to] stay away from it."
He said that somewhere between 2014 and 2017, Columbia University professor David Brenner discovered a specific wavelength of ultraviolet light (around 222 nanometers) that did not penetrate or harm the skin but was still very effective against pathogens.
Then the pandemic happened, Rajchet said, and that accelerated research and interest in this specific type of UV light.
The action of light is logarithmic, Rajchert said. In other words, it can remove up to 50% of harmful pathogens in a room in the first 20 seconds, and longer over time. His company's lighting systems have an app that serves as a control and visualization panel. The app shows you the percentage of pathogens removed from a given room based on exposure time and some algorithmic statistics.
"This is huge in terms of eliminating and really reducing infection rates for things like the common cold, the flu, tuberculosis, hospital-acquired infections, surgical site infections and obviously the two big diseases that we worry about," he said.
Rajchet said the next pandemic may be around the corner, and bioterrorism is an ever-present threat. He believes the technology his company has implemented can help make us safer than ever before.
Rajchert makes it clear that germicidal UV rays are not the only solution to keeping people healthy. Various other environments we have been to do not have this technology installed.
One thing it does help with, though, is reducing our reliance on air conditioning, which is also an effective way to prevent pathogens from building up in the air. For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends five air changes per hour in enclosed spaces.
However, this can be expensive and uses a lot of energy, which we should conserve. So, if you are unable to exchange the air in your room to the levels recommended by the CDC, these types of lights can help control the levels of airborne pathogens.
The air could be recirculated rather than exchanged, and airborne pathogens would then be killed by more energy-efficient germicidal UV light, Rajchert said.
“Our job is not to say turn the air conditioning down, but we can certainly provide opportunities so we don’t have to turn the air conditioning up,” Rajchert said.
He said those standards are currently being developed and the U.S. government has been proactive in developing them.
Rajchert said there are two main issues people have when installing these systems. Is it effective and safe?
"We have hundreds of independent studies that show it works," he said. "Again, [we] have hundreds of studies [on exposure safety] and currently there is a cap published by the American College of Governmental Industrial Hygienists, and we have been within that cap."
The company is preparing to deploy its system in some offices at a large research hospital, and they have a cooperative research agreement with the U.S. Navy. They also have scientific agreements with Cornell University and Nagoya University in Japan.
“What’s interesting,” Rajchet said, “is that [we are] getting into agribusiness, particularly livestock, [and] the dependence on the cost of antibiotics.”
He said many of the diseases found in large herds of livestock and chickens are airborne. This technology could help kill these pathogens, helping farmers reduce their reliance on oral medications, which is critical for both cost and the long-term health of animals, not to mention better for human consumption.
The lighting fixtures not only deploy germicidal UV light but also measure temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide and ozone levels in the room and create a score for indoor air quality. Third-party proprietary devices are embedded in the lighting units.
"This requires mixing volatile organic compounds, carbon dioxide measurements and a certain level of nanoparticles and combining them into a proprietary score," Rajchert said. "Anything below 100 for indoor air quality is very good."
Ultimately, he said, this gives us all a broader perspective as we return to the office environment.
“Not only do you get this cool lighting technology, but you also get a more complete picture of what’s going on with your indoor air quality,” Rajchert continued. “I think for people who want to get back to work, who are willing to go back to the office instead of putting It’s definitely great for people to take home with their kids. I think it gives an incredible sense of peace of mind to be able to see their lobby dashboard when they walk into the office.”
Correction 7/12/24 : Updated paragraph 6 with correct nanometer measurements.
