While this post touches on biosecurity it's a personal post and I'm not speaking for my employer
If you want to prevent airborne spread of diseases you have a few options:
- Filter breath (masks, PAPRs)
- Replace the air (ventilation)
- Clean the air (filters, UV light)
Masks, fans, and air filters are widely available, but what about UV? The CDC recommends upper-room UV, it has a long history of successful use in with TB, and in many cases it's great fit for the space. Look on Yelp, though, and no installers come up:
Maybe people are missing a good business opportunity, or maybe it's the kind of opportunity that's only ok but is worth it for the altruistic impacts of directly reducing spread and normalizing UV? Seems worth finding out!
If you want to read more about how to set up upper-room UV systems, NIOSH has a serious document. At a high level, though, you want rooms that have a high density of people but also a reasonably high ceiling. Then you set up UV fixtures to shine so they clean the air above the people.
(Prompted in part by thinking that the Cambridge Masonic Hall would be a great place for an installation like this: crowded, tall ceilings, ceiling fans for circulation.)
Hi Jeff, I have been pondering a similar question: Why is there not more uptake of UV? I suspect it could be down to targeting the wrong initial, beachhead market. While this analogy will fail in many aspects, there was social media before Facebook. However, they did not try to start on elite college campuses, and thus make it "cool" to have social media. Similarly, I am not sure UV sufficiently targets a desperate market. It seems UV companies target cleanrooms, hospitals, etc. but these already have tried and tested methods, especially via air filtration, for achieving low contamination. There might be some cost savings from UV, but it is not clear cut - filters are extremely cheap as they last for years. And there is industry inertia connected with doing things differently. And cleanrooms, ORs and the like have a lot of regulation one quickly gets stuck in.
Coming at this from another and admittedly subjective angle, as a parent, and talking to others, I am intrigued by the possibility of using UV as well as other disease fighting tech in nurseries/pre-schools (I think you are a parent too). This user group is certifiably desperate to be less at home with sick kids (and also to not constantly feel tired and low-energy). I just wanted to put this out there as I would be keen to support anything in this direction as long as I have availability. It should not be too expensive to test out, and at least in certain jurisdictions there is little in the way of legislation stopping something like this. On the contrary, here in Sweden where the government pays parents staying at home with sick kids, there is a push to reduce sickness in this sector of the society.