Sam Bowman on X: "We can use a harmless wavelength of light to kill nearly all airborne pathogens. The technology exists! It works! And now there is a plan for bringing it out into daily life. https://t.co/HAw2A5nQCC" / X

We can use a harmless wavelength of light to kill nearly all airborne pathogens. The technology exists! It works! And now there is a plan for bringing it out into daily life.

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Works in Progress

@WorksInProgMag

Mar 10

Far UVC can cut airborne bacteria by 98.4 percent, and could do the same for viruses, preventing diseases spread in public spaces. But it is held back because it is unpatentable, which means it is unproven, unregulated, and untrusted. We can fix this. worksinprogress.news/p/flipping-the

8:27 AM · Mar 10, 2025

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Sam Bowman

@s8mb

Mar 10

If you're worried that you might not get as sick as often as you'd like in a far-UVC world, rest assured that you can still wash your hands less or hang out with toddlers if you wish. It is really not hard to make yourself sick if you try!

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Siberian fox

@SilverVVulpes

Mar 10

Replying to @SilverVVulpes

'should I use a condom or not? hmm.. nah, I better train my immune system with what's going around' or 'should we treat the water so it's free of pathogens? surely not. we would destroy people's immune systems!'

I'm not sure this is a good thing. We need to get sick from time to time. Stopping this will only lead to bigger problems

You could offset it by washing your hands less, or spending more time with toddlers. It is quite easy to get sicker if you're worried about not being sick enough, it's much harder to avoid illness if you feel you get sick too often.

A first target application would be airplane travel. In my experience it’s one of the single biggest causes of pathogen spread (right after daycare centers). This is because you have drier mouth and noses (more conducive to being infected) while sitting in close proximity to

Not sure about harmless. Generally speaking, shorter wavelengths are more energetic and therefore more damaging, and the wavelength of UVC is shorter than that of UVB which causes skin cancer

Translation: Too expensive to get claims approved by the government for any company to invest in.

it's absolutely not harmless, UV-C is a cancer ray. however when encolsed properly there's nothing to worry about

What even if the idea? Stick a UV light into an aircon machine?

Things are *always* more complicated than we think. One suggestion (hmm, theory) is that the rise in allergies and autoimmune diseases is because of clean childhoods. Not enough priming, that is. If we make the environment much more sterile then... don't say it's true, but...

Definitely should be deployed in hospitals and retirement homes.

it's not without drawbacks

Germicidal UV lights could be producing indoor air pollutants, study finds

will they make regular light bulbs you could put in your house? Cause I'd be interested

Don't they need to still study the ozone potentially produced and the tradeoffs in play?

Yes, that is a really remarkable technology.

Do you have a few screws loose? The German Fraunhofer Institute sees it that way.

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Striekspoen

@Striekspoen

Mar 10

Replying to @bobscartoons

Here is an assessment by the German Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Technology, which in 2023 produced a summary of the efficiency, benefit-risk factors, costs and feasibility of far UVC systems. 1/- iosb-ast.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/io

I'm not sure you understand the word "harmless". If this light was used with humans present it would 100% harm them.

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