Far-UVC at 222 nanometers inactivates airborne pathogens by being absorbed by their DNA/RNA and proteins, equivalent to adding 30-50 air changes to a room.

4:35chemical biological level um the special thing about UVC is it is absorbed by the DNA and RNA of pathogens as well as by essentially all proteins and this is uh very important because the fact that it's so heavily absorbed by proteins is a thing that makes it much safer than other germicidal UV wavelengths. So essentially a pathogen or any microorganism, anything without significant protections like humans and

5:08animals is going to be inactivated. So it's still in the air, but it can no longer replicate. And this works extremely fast. So, it's essentially like having an extremely strong air purifier running uh in a in a space except instead of maybe giving you an an extra air change or two in your space, you can get the equivalent of 30 to 50. >> And uh this is just a wavelength of

5:39light which happens to be invisible. So, it's something that we get in sunlight uh already presumably, right? >> Uh no, actually so yeah. So sunlight is primarily UVA and UVB. UVB in particular is what we're most worried about when we're worrying about risk of skin cancer and cataracts. But UVC is actually completely blocked by the ozone layer. And this makes sense because uh because UVC is quite efficient at inactivating

6:09microbial life, probably the surface of our planet would look very different if uh you know it was present uh here on Earth. So there is no UVC in sunlight. Uh sunlight is ger germicidal just like UVC but to a much lesser extent. So it's true that um while sunlight does kill germs, it does it because there's just so so so much more sunlight than than there is from any UVC lamp that um even