Earlier this year year, I sent a Works in Progress piece about Far UV to a friend who is a material science engineer and happens to work in UV applications (he once described his job as âliterally watching paint dry,â e.g. checking how long it takes for a UV lamp to dry a coat of paint on your car). I asked
Iâm interested in the comment that thereâs no market for these things because thereâs no public health authority to confer official status on them. That doesnât really make sense to me. If you wanted to market your airplane as the most germ-free or whatever, you could just point to clinical trials and not mention the FDA. Does the FDA or whomever really have independent status to bestow thatâs so powerful?
Friend replied:
Certain UV disinfection applications are quite popular, but indoor air treatment is one of the more challenging ones. One issue is that these products only can offer âthe most germ-freeâ environment, the amount of protection is not really quantifiable. If a sick person coughed in my direction would an overhead UV lamp stop the germs from reaching me? Probably not...
...far-UVC technology has some major limitations. Relatively high cost per unit, most average only 1 year lifetime or less with decreasing efficacy over time, have to replace the entire system when itâs spent, adds to electricity cost when in use, and you need to install a lot of them for it to be effective because when run at too high power levels they produce large amounts of hazardous ozone...
NIST has been working on establishing some standards for measuring UV output and the effectiveness of these systems for the last few years. Doesnât seem to be helping too much with convincing the general public. Covid was the big chance for these technologies to spread, and they did in some places like airports, just not everywhere
You can/âshould take this with a grain of salt. On the other hand, I generally believe that some EAs tend to be very credulous towards solutions that promise a high amount of efficacy on core cause areas, and operate with a mental model that the missing ingredient for scale is more often money than culture/âmechanics: that everything is like bed nets. By contrast, I believe that if some solution looks very promising to outsiders but remains in limited useâe.g. kangaroo care for preemies in Nigeria or removing lead from turmeric in Bangladeshâthere is likely a deep reason for that thatâs only legible to insiders, i.e. people with a lot of local context. Here, I suspect that many of us donât have a strong understanding of the costs, limitations, true efficacy, and logistical difficulties of UV light.
Thatâs my epistemology. But if someone wants to fund and run an RCT testing the effects of, say, a cluster of aerolamps on covid cases at a big public event, Iâd be happy to consult on design, measurement strategy, IRB approval, etc. (Gotta put that university affiliation to use on something!)
most average only 1 year lifetime or less with decreasing efficacy over time, have to replace the entire system when itâs spent, adds to electricity cost when in use, and you need to install a lot of them for it to be effective because when run at too high power levels they produce large amounts of hazardous ozone
I think this is true for many options, but not the Aerolamp:
It is built around the Ushio Care222 B1. This is a long-lasting design, rated for 10,000 hours before falling below 70% output. Thatâs one year of 24â7 usage, five years of working hours, or much longer if run less often.
They do use electricity, but at 11W itâs a negligible 1-2¢ per hour.
Even one Aerolamp cleans a lot of air. You can model efficacy with Illuminate.
Well filtered lamps do not produce a lot of ozone. Unless your building is incredibly well sealed ozone levels would go up if you opened a window. If youâre very concerned you can run an air purifier that includes an activated carbon layer, which many do.
Thanks for clarifying! I do think in a context like this one, where people are thinking about why offices etc donât install far-UVC, your friendâs phrasing is likely to confuse people. For example, if I recommended someone not buy a car because it only had a one-year lifespan, I think theyâd be grumpy if they later learned I meant it would only last one year of 24â7 operation. When we talk about âlifespanâ weâre normally bringing in assumptions about expected usage.
Hey Seth, thanks for the comment. Very reasonable point on the importance of considering insider legibility/âlocal context. I think far-UV doesnât fit the pattern youâre describing, though, because the people writing about it are âinsidersâ and itâs a very small field where everyone is talking and sharing informationâthere isnât an equivalent to local context that someone working in the field wouldnât quickly discover. Richard Williamson (who wrote the article you linked) works for Blueprint Biosecurity and is a leading expert in this field.
In the case of far-UV, I donât think thereâs a super deep reason for the lack of scale, and field insiders still debate the best path forward to scale up. I think whatâs going on is that itâs at the âearly adopterâ tech stage and in the case of any early-commercial-stage tech, itâs hard to say exactly what would speed up adoption and exactly why people arenât buying it faster. The most basic principle at play is inertia: itâs always easier to not buy expensive, relatively unproven new tech than to buy it. Probably RCTs/âa NIST standard/âlower cost would help, but these things still wouldnât guarantee adoption.
Earlier this year year, I sent a Works in Progress piece about Far UV to a friend who is a material science engineer and happens to work in UV applications (he once described his job as âliterally watching paint dry,â e.g. checking how long it takes for a UV lamp to dry a coat of paint on your car). I asked
Friend replied:
You can/âshould take this with a grain of salt. On the other hand, I generally believe that some EAs tend to be very credulous towards solutions that promise a high amount of efficacy on core cause areas, and operate with a mental model that the missing ingredient for scale is more often money than culture/âmechanics: that everything is like bed nets. By contrast, I believe that if some solution looks very promising to outsiders but remains in limited useâe.g. kangaroo care for preemies in Nigeria or removing lead from turmeric in Bangladeshâthere is likely a deep reason for that thatâs only legible to insiders, i.e. people with a lot of local context. Here, I suspect that many of us donât have a strong understanding of the costs, limitations, true efficacy, and logistical difficulties of UV light.
Thatâs my epistemology. But if someone wants to fund and run an RCT testing the effects of, say, a cluster of aerolamps on covid cases at a big public event, Iâd be happy to consult on design, measurement strategy, IRB approval, etc. (Gotta put that university affiliation to use on something!)
I think this is true for many options, but not the Aerolamp:
It is built around the Ushio Care222 B1. This is a long-lasting design, rated for 10,000 hours before falling below 70% output. Thatâs one year of 24â7 usage, five years of working hours, or much longer if run less often.
They do use electricity, but at 11W itâs a negligible 1-2¢ per hour.
Even one Aerolamp cleans a lot of air. You can model efficacy with Illuminate.
Well filtered lamps do not produce a lot of ozone. Unless your building is incredibly well sealed ozone levels would go up if you opened a window. If youâre very concerned you can run an air purifier that includes an activated carbon layer, which many do.
Hi Jeff, I think weâre talking about the same lifespan, my friend was talking about 1 year of continuous use (he works in industrial applications).
Thanks for clarifying! I do think in a context like this one, where people are thinking about why offices etc donât install far-UVC, your friendâs phrasing is likely to confuse people. For example, if I recommended someone not buy a car because it only had a one-year lifespan, I think theyâd be grumpy if they later learned I meant it would only last one year of 24â7 operation. When we talk about âlifespanâ weâre normally bringing in assumptions about expected usage.
Hey Seth, thanks for the comment. Very reasonable point on the importance of considering insider legibility/âlocal context. I think far-UV doesnât fit the pattern youâre describing, though, because the people writing about it are âinsidersâ and itâs a very small field where everyone is talking and sharing informationâthere isnât an equivalent to local context that someone working in the field wouldnât quickly discover. Richard Williamson (who wrote the article you linked) works for Blueprint Biosecurity and is a leading expert in this field.
In the case of far-UV, I donât think thereâs a super deep reason for the lack of scale, and field insiders still debate the best path forward to scale up. I think whatâs going on is that itâs at the âearly adopterâ tech stage and in the case of any early-commercial-stage tech, itâs hard to say exactly what would speed up adoption and exactly why people arenât buying it faster. The most basic principle at play is inertia: itâs always easier to not buy expensive, relatively unproven new tech than to buy it. Probably RCTs/âa NIST standard/âlower cost would help, but these things still wouldnât guarantee adoption.