Using germicidal UV-C light in education facility settings will keep students, faculty, and staff healthier, but also reduce the use of harmful chemical cleaners, which can contribute to respiratory illnesses, like asthma, especially in children, as well as allergic reactions. Student athletes at all levels are especially susceptible to a host of health issues from athlete's foot to staph infections, because of the skin-to-skin contact required in most sports. Colleges and other higher education institutions are also at risk because students are often living in close quarters, ballooning the spread of illness. Missed school leads to poor outcomes for both students and school districts. Just consider the millions of schooldays missed due to illness.
Schools are hotbeds for viruses and infections. Pharmaceutical manufacturing facilitiesįind out which UVC disinfection products are appropriate for your healthcare facility.Nursing homes and other senior living facilities.Here are just some of the healthcare facility types that can benefit from germicidal UV-C light disinfection: In today's pandemic-stricken environment (read more about how UV-C lighting is helping with the novel coronavirus), you have to plan ahead and take advantage of our latest technologies, like UVGI products and systems. UV-C lighting can even kill "superbugs" (more here) as viruses and bacteria cannot become resistant to light-based methods of disinfection like they can with antibiotics and even chemical cleaners.
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Moreover, adding just two minutes of UV-C "cleaning" along with manual cleaning efforts has been proven to reduce bacterial load by 70%. It has been proven that manual cleaning, even with chemical cleaners, simply isn't enough. Healthcare facilities are perhaps the most obvious application for UV-C light disinfection, where infection and viruses run rampant and spread from patient to patient and room to room. Germicidal lamps are a type of lamp that produce the wavelengths of ultraviolet light (UV-C 200nm to 280nm) that have disinfection properties, like the ones used in this study to reuse N95 masks during the coronavirus pandemic.īelow are a few image examples of UV disinfection lighting at work: The first UV quartz lamp was invented in 1904 and resulted in the germicidal lamp. Shortly thereafter, it was proven that the UV portions of the light spectrum were able to destroy microorganisms.Īfter confirming UV lighting’s ability to kill pathogens, the next step was to find a way to replicate the UV wavelengths that would result in the disinfection of surfaces, air, and water. The disinfection properties of ultraviolet lighting have been known for over 140 years, since Downes and Blunt discovered the antibacterial effects of the shorter wavelengths of sunlight. Looking for UV-C disinfection systems? Click here. The UV energy triggers the formation of specific thymine or cystosine dimers in DNA and uracil dimers in RNA, which causes the inactivation of microbes by causing mutations and/or cell death as well as failure to reproduce. Exposure to the electromagnetic radiation (light) at certain UV wavelengths modifies the genetic material of microorganisms and destroys their ability to reproduce. Germicidal ultraviolet light kills pathogen cells by damaging their DNA. When implemented properly, UV-C lighting can kill up to 99.9% of pathogens. Germicidal UV-C light is commonly used to inactivate or kill microbes on surfaces, in air, and in water. Earth’s atmosphere absorbs ultramagnetic radiation with wavelengths less than 290nm, meaning that most of the UV-C and UV-B generated by the sun is blocked by our planet’s ozone. Germicidal means that the light can kill (inactivate) pathogens, just as it sounds. UV light with wavelengths less than 290nm are considered to have “germicidal” properties. The wavelength of this light ranges from 10nm to 400nm and is classified into three sub-bands UV-A, UV-B, and UV-C. UV light is electromagnetic energy with wavelengths shorter than visible light but longer than x-rays.
Ultraviolet light is a type of naturally present electromagnetic radiation that is in sunlight and actually makes up approximately 10% of the total light generated by the sun. We also have a whole blog post on the basics of UV here. Before we define germicidal UV-C light, we need to define ultraviolet, or UV, light.
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