What is Ultraviolet (UVC) Light and How Does It Work for Disinfection?
Related Questions:
What is ultraviolet disinfection?
How does UVC help indoor environments?
Does UV disinfection help you improve indoor air quality?
Ultraviolet (UVC) light disinfection is gaining popularity today, especially as interest in community wellness grows. Ultraviolet light is natural and nicely fits into best practices for any facility. It is chemical-free, extremely effective, and becoming more affordable as more organizations throughout our communities adopt the technology. The popularity growth is due to the long list of microbes UV light can disinfect and the recognition of its effectiveness by major government agencies.
Ultraviolet - As in the Sun?
Yes, you got that right!
You have already heard of products like glasses or sunscreen that block UV-A or UV-B sunlight. These bands of the ultraviolet spectrum can make their way through Earth’s atmosphere, creating the need for these products.
On the other hand, UV-C cannot make its way through our atmosphere, so few people are aware of it. Using ultraviolet light to disinfect air and surfaces were invented nearly 150 years ago but is being adopted across many industries for its ability to inactivate the pathogens that can harm your humans.
What does the “C” in “UVC” stand for?
The letter designations associated with the ultraviolet light spectrum help to convey which part of the spectrum they exist in. The image below provides a visual, showing that UV-C has the shortest wavelength of the UV light spectrum, with a peak performance level of 253.7 nanometers (nm).
Image of the light spectrum with ultraviolet wavelengths divided.
As you can see, UV-C light has the highest amount of energy which is why it is such a strong disinfectant. Since it cannot penetrate the ozone layer, the only way to use UV-C to disinfect a space is through the use of artificial UVC light. All of our products utilize UV-C technology in some way. That’s precisely what our products do. They artificially produce the UVC light at exactly 253.7 nm for maximum strength against the microbes that can lead to contamination.
For instance, Our SolarStorm Emitters blast a room with UV light, while our AirShield 120 uses UV-C and bipolar ionization to clean the air in a room and prevent contamination.
How does this light disinfect viruses, germs, and pathogens?
Visual of how a photodimeric lesion impacts the DNA or RNA of a microorganism.
We’ve all spent that overcast day on the beach or in the yard, only to find that we still got a sunburn. UVB rays cause sunburn, and the redness you are familiar with comes as a result of damage to your skin cells.
Similarly, UVC light damages the cells in a virus, bacteria, and spore. The UVC light waves disrupt the atomic makeup of the microorganisms you want to disinfect. This process is referred to as “photodimeric lesions.” These lesions are made in the nucleic acids of the DNA or RNA - causing the microorganism to be unable to function or reproduce itself.
As you can see in the image, the atomic makeup of the organism is broken, and, therefore, it is disinfected.
It is essential to know that different microorganisms may require more or less time for the UVC light to create this disruption in the nucleic acids, DNA, and RNA.
How Ultraviolet Disinfection Protects Your Plants from Harmful Microbes.
The problem with preventing pathogenic outbreaks is that many sources can introduce microorganisms into a facility. Some of the most common sources are the employees (on their hands, clothes, or shoes), the facility’s air, or the external items carried into the environment.
Many organizations depend on very manual processes to keep contamination in check. The problem is that manual processes are automatically flawed. Many studies have shown that human error can account for missing up to 25% of the surfaces that must be sanitized. That is a very large risk to take!
Using ultraviolet disinfection in any space significantly reduces the pathogens throughout the building. It removes manual errors and comprehensively disinfects the space from more than 100 different microorganisms.