If far-UV is so great, why isn't it everywhere?

There are very few providers, and hardly any of them sell an off-the-shelf product. You usually can’t just buy a lamp to try it out—you have to call the company, get a consultation, and often have someone from the company come install the lamp. It’s a lot of overhead for an expensive product that most people have never heard of.

This has changed! You can buy an Aerolamp for $500. I have one for my own use, and my dance organization uses four.

[EDIT: expanded this into a post]

Nathan Young

@Gavriel Kleinwaks, do you back these?

I do! (Not in the financial sense, tbc.) But just want to flag that my endorsement is confounded. Basically, Aerolamp uses the design of the nonprofit referenced in my post, OSLUV, and most of my technical info about far-UV comes from a) Aerolamp cofounder Viv Belenky and b) OSLUV. I've been working with Viv and OSLUV for a couple of years, long before the founding of Aerolamp, and trust their information, but you should know that my professional opinion is highly correlated with theirs—1Day Sooner doesn't have the equipment to do independent testing.

I think it's the ideal outcome that a bunch of excellent researchers took a look at the state of the field and made their own product. So I'm not too worried about relying on this team's info, but you should just have that context.

Fwiw, Mox (moxsf.com), run by Austin Chen, has installed a couple of Aerolamps and they were easy to set up and are running smoothly.

Thanks so much for flagging this update!

peterbarnett

Could/should big EA-ish coworking spaces like Constellation pay to have far-UV installed? (either on their floors specifically or for the whole building)

I think they should, and have spoken directly to Constellation about this, but it would probably help if people who actually use the space also express enthusiasm about the idea. My suggestion is to install far-UV in rooms that host gatherings where lots of people are regularly talking in relatively close quarters, like communal dining areas and rooms used for talks/presentations.

(I think it's a good idea not only because of direct disease reduction, but also to increase social proof/normalcy.)

Benevolent_Rain

I would really recommend to look into pre-schools in the Nordics. They have high sickness rates and importantly: The government pays parents to stay home with sick kids. Even a 5% reduction in absence is worth millions and the government explicitly asks for solutions to this.

But there is more, anyone can set up a nursery, and the authorities track absence rates across pre-schools (I know, because kids who are immunocompromised get preference in pre-schools with the lowest absence rates). Setting up one's own pre-school is paid for by the state - they are called cooperatives. So one can literally possibly set up a pre-school running far-UV at almost no cost.

There is a challenge in the ethics of this: Is it ethical to do this? I have not checked but would be happy to either myself, or find someone even better positioned to figure out if this is actually possible. I know from talking to many parents that parents are extremely motivated to have their kids be sick less often. Another thing about the Nordics: It is quite evidence based and the freedom of choice for individuals has weight in government decisions - if parents are fully informed and still opt in, it might not be a problem.

MatthewDahlhausen

ASHRAE has long had standards and working groups on UVC, and recently published standard 241 on Control of Infectious Aerosols. The goal is to reduce transmission risk, not to support any one particular technology. Filtration is usually cheaper than Far-UVC and easier to maintain for the same level of infection control. Far-UVC/UVC is better in some niches, particularly in healthcare settings that require high air flow rates.

I suggest getting involved in ASHRAE and the research community that has been working on and developing standards for infection control for over a century.

From an EA perspective, I think it is more effective to promote adoption of ASHRAE Std 241 than the adoption of Far-UVC specifically.

-perspective of a Ph.D. mechanical engineer and ASHRAE member with experience in IAQ

I have colleagues in other organizations who are involved in ASHRAE; one contributed to the development of 241! 241 is great, and to be very clear, my job is not to promote far-UV, it is to promote indoor air cleaning. Far-UV gets a lot of attention in my social circles because it is exciting and new, and people have a lot of questions about that specifically--this post is meant for the very narrow case of answering questions I've directly gotten about far-UV.

Jason

Do you think the general superiority of filtration over Far-UVC is likely inherent to the technologies involved, or would the balance be reasonably likely to change given further development of Far-UVC technologies? In other words, is it something like solar, which used to be rather expensive for the amount of output but improved dramatically with investment, economies of scale, and technological progress?

(Of course, we could improve filter technology as well, although it strikes my uninformed eyes as having less potential room to improve.)

MatthewDahlhausen

Far-UVC produces ozone. That's inherent to the technology. That can be managed with ventilation, so places with already high ventilation rates where you don't want the added static pressure in the air supply from greater filtration are a good fit for UVC. In other places, in-room air cleaners tend to be cheaper to operate and maintain. The "best" technology depends on space constraints, ventilation rates, first cost, maintenance, etc. If far-UVC gets cheaper, I expect it will become more widely used. But I don't think it will fully dominate the space.

My position is the same as last year - I think there is enough technology at great enough maturity where it makes more sense to push for ASHRAE 241 adoption. Why doesn't your local grocery store have airborne infection control technology? Is it because lack of sufficient technology development or cost, or more likely, because they don't even know that's a thing they should do?

Jason

Thanks! I may be thinking about it too much from the consumer perspective of owning a condo in a 100-year-old building, where the noise of filtration is a major drawback and the costs of a broader modernization of HVAC systems would be considerable.

I haven't polled grocery store owners, but an owner would bear all the costs of improving air quality yet may capture few of the economic benefits. Although customers would care a lot in a pandemic, they probably wouldn't otherwise care in a way that increases profits -- and managers are incentivized toward short-term results. Cynically, most of their employees may not have paid sick time, so the owner may not even realize most of the benefit from reduced employee illness. (Of course, regulators could require compliance -- but that's not an awareness problem. So maybe the candidate intervention is lobbying?)

MatthewDahlhausen

Just get a room air filter for your condo. There are different models and they are usually quite quiet unless on the highest setting. I can't hear mine on the two lowest settings (up to 100 CFM). UVC doesn't remove small particulates, which is the most serious air pollutant of concern from a health perspective for most homes.

Commercial buildings have to comply with locally required codes and standards. Code authorities could adopt some or all of ASHRAE Standard 241 in their jurisdiction just like they do with ASHRAE Standard 62.1 (ventilation) and 90.1 (energy).

Austin

If you are a mechanical engineer digging around for new challenges and you’re not put off by everyone else’s failure to turn a profit, I’d be enthusiastic about your building a lamp and would do my best to help you get in touch with people you could learn from.

If this describes you, I'd also love to help (eg with funding) -- reach out to me at [email protected]!

Seth Ariel Green 🔸

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 "literally watching paint dry," e.g. checking how long it takes for a UV lamp to dry a coat of paint on your car). I asked

I'm interested in the comment that there's no market for these things because there's no public health authority to confer official status on them. That doesn't 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 that's 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 "the most germ-free" 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 it's 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. Doesn't 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/should 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/mechanics: that everything is like bed nets. By contrast, I believe that if some solution looks very promising to outsiders but remains in limited use -- e.g. kangaroo care for preemies in Nigeria or removing lead from turmeric in Bangladesh -- there is likely a deep reason for that that's only legible to insiders, i.e. people with a lot of local context. Here, I suspect that many of us don't have a strong understanding of the costs, limitations, true efficacy, and logistical difficulties of UV light.

That's 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, I'd be happy to consult on design, measurement strategy, IRB approval, etc. (Gotta put that university affiliation to use on something!)

Jeff Kaufman 🔸

most average only 1 year lifetime or less with decreasing efficacy over time, have to replace the entire system when it's 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. That's one year of 24/7 usage, five years of working hours, or much longer if run less often.
They do use electricity, but at 11W it's 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 you're very concerned you can run an air purifier that includes an activated carbon layer, which many do.

Seth Ariel Green 🔸

Hi Jeff, I think we're talking about the same lifespan, my friend was talking about 1 year of continuous use (he works in industrial applications).

Jeff Kaufman 🔸

Thanks for clarifying! I do think in a context like this one, where people are thinking about why offices etc don't install far-UVC, your friend's 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 they'd be grumpy if they later learned I meant it would only last one year of 24/7 operation. When we talk about "lifespan" we're normally bringing in assumptions about expected usage.

Hey Seth, thanks for the comment. Very reasonable point on the importance of considering insider legibility/local context. I think far-UV doesn't fit the pattern you're describing, though, because the people writing about it are "insiders" and it's a very small field where everyone is talking and sharing information--there isn't an equivalent to local context that someone working in the field wouldn't 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 don't think there's a super deep reason for the lack of scale, and field insiders still debate the best path forward to scale up. I think what's going on is that it's at the "early adopter" tech stage and in the case of any early-commercial-stage tech, it's hard to say exactly what would speed up adoption and exactly why people aren't buying it faster. The most basic principle at play is inertia: it's always easier to not buy expensive, relatively unproven new tech than to buy it. Probably RCTs/a NIST standard/lower cost would help, but these things still wouldn't guarantee adoption.

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Seth Ariel Green 🔸