Survey Results: Far UVC and Glycol Vapors

A dance organization I help run, BIDA, recently ran a survey. Several of the questions asked how folks felt about using far UVC and glycol vapors to reduce risk from COVID, flu, and other airborne pathogens. There were 208 respondents, which is pretty good!

When asked how their attendance would change if BIDA used these interventions, the response was:

There were also free response answers, which you can read in the full writeup, on the BIDA blog. Summarizing them:

• On far UVC, the person who said their attendance would decrease didn't give a comment giving more detail. The other comments were broadly supportive (~54) people, followed by neutral (~18 people), uncertain and wanting more information (~11 people), and skeptical that the lamps would actually reduce infections (~9 people).

• On glycol vapors, the most common response was generally positive about more ways to reduce infection (~37), followed by wanting more information (~19), not caring (~17), strongly disliking the idea (~14), and more complex views (~10).

These results show a community that's strongly in favor of far UVC, which makes a lot of sense to me. The efficacy of UVC is proportional to sight lines, since it's beams of light, so it's a great fit for a big room with a tall ceiling. We'd need four lamps, which would cost $2,000. This is a meaningful amount of money, but with a total of 5,400 admissions at our dances in the 2024-2025 season and the lamps lasting at least 5y it's ~3¢/person-hour. For comparison, we spend about ten times that much per person-hour to provide people with disposable N95s.

The situation with glycol vapors, however, is much less clear. The evidence on safety is if anything stronger than on far UVC, and it's incredibly cheap (a $50 gallon of Triethylene Glycol is good for about 2y of dances). But we also have a significant number of people who don't like the idea (8% saying they'd attend less; ~14 negative comments out of 97). Reading through the comments I think some objections would turn out not to be an issue once people had experience with glycol vapor:

• "I don't know much about them, but the CDC says they can irritate eyes and lungs": the level in the air is very low, and no one reported irritation at the trial dance.

• "I have a sensitive nose and an aversion, sometimes reaction, to strong scents, especially chemical ones. I am deeply grateful for the fragrance free policy and am worried that this may adversely affect my experience and ability to attend and that of those similarly situated": Similarly, no one reported being able to smell the vapor at the trial dance. But BIDA also doesn't prohibit fragrances, and it's common for dancers (especially newer dancers) to wear scents, so I'm a bit confused about their reference to a 'fragrance free policy'.

Other objections, however, are from a perspective where experience wouldn't be relevant:

• "I absolutely would not attend any event that had this in the air."

• "I'm not comfortable with chemicals being deliberately pumped into the air by a DIY project. If there is a commercial system on the market using this technology, that would change my opinion."

All this has me feeling like I shouldn't push for us to deploy glycol vapors now, and the key thing is getting a commercial system on the market to address concerns. But then I go back and read the comments of people who are really positive on them:

• "It would GREATLY improve my safety, comfort, and enjoyment!!! I hope other dances can also take these same precautions! Thank you for doing this work. (I LOVE SCIENCE when it's used for good. Thank you for this work!)"

• "I would be more comfortable and feel safer, to the point where I might be okay with dancing unmasked."

• "Also strongly in favor, for the same reasons. Let's do both!"

• "Increase safety comfort and enjoyment so so so much!!!"

Overall I'm really torn on glycol vapors: the community is, on balance, in favor of them, and I think the evidence is really positive. On the other hand I also respect people having a high bar for evidence for things you breathe in. The board hasn't met to talk about this yet, and I'm not sure which way I want to push. Thoughts?

EDIT: in the comments people brought up the idea of having glycol vapors at only some dances. This could allow people with strong opposition the option to keep dancing while others could still get the benefits about half the time. If we did this, it could be either just the masked dances (to offer an extra safe option) or just the unmasked dances (to bring up the level of safety): which might be more popular? I categorized the responses (script) to look at the relationship between whether someone preferred more vs less masking and whether their attendance would go up or down with glycol vapors.

I started with the full 208 responses, discarded two people who said they didn't dance at BIDA because they didn't live in town, and then discarded another six who didn't answer all four of "I currently attend BIDA: ___", "If we started requiring masks at all our dances, I would attend: ___", "If we stopped requiring masks at any of our dances, I would attend: ___", and "If BIDA added Glycol Vapors, my attendance would: ___". This left me with 200 responses. I considered a response as inconsistent on masking if they said they'd attend more if we always required masks and also more if we stopped ever requiring masks, and also as inconsistent if it was the other way around. Here's what I found:

Looking at the table, if we were going to have glycol at only either mask-required or mask-optional dances it should be the mask-required ones: 30% of dancers who prefer masked prefer glycol vapors, vs 9% of dancers who prefer mask-optional and 8% of who said masking changes wouldn't affect their attendance. I also looked over the free text responses, and a large majority of the people with the strongest objections to glycol vapors preferred less masking.

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