Science

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Ultraviolet retained a small coterie of enthusiasts over the ensuing decades, focused narrowly on preventing transmission of tuberculosis — which has no reliably effective vaccine for adults — in its remaining hotbeds, like homeless shelters.

The biggest test it received, the Tuberculosis Ultraviolet Shelter Study of 1997-2004, demonstrated that “upper room” UV, in which UV-emitting lamps are placed at least 6.9 feet above the floor where they can disinfect air without harming humans, was safe.

It wasn’t — detective work from scholars including Linsey Marr, Jose-Luis Jimenez, and Katherine Randall in the middle of the pandemic determined that this conclusion was based on a misinterpretation of the Wellses’ research that had somehow persisted for decades in the medical profession.

“This is the most difficult talk I’ve had to give in my career,” Jose-Luis Jimenez, a distinguished professor of chemistry at the University of Colorado, told the audience at the first International Congress on Far-UVC Science and Technology this past June.

But 2020 was also an unusually brutal year for airborne disease: 49,783 Americans died from influenza in 2019, for instance (and none from Covid); 1 percent of that number is about 500 people, which starts to feel comparable to the air pollution cost Jimenez identifies.

Jimenez favors using UV in very high-risk locations, such as hospitals, but worries that construction companies, schools, malls, and the like will seize on the potential of far-UV as an excuse not to invest in proper ventilation and filtration, leaving us with the ugly trade-off he identifies.

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