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Air Disinfection for Airborne Infection Control with a Focus on COVID‐19: Why Germicidal UV is Essential †
Author(s) -
Nardell Edward A.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
photochemistry and photobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.818
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1751-1097
pISSN - 0031-8655
DOI - 10.1111/php.13421
Subject(s) - airborne transmission , covid-19 , ventilation (architecture) , environmental science , room air distribution , transmission (telecommunications) , air filter , air movement , infection control , natural ventilation , mechanical ventilation , aerosol , air purifier , waste management , medicine , meteorology , computer science , engineering , infectious disease (medical specialty) , virology , intensive care medicine , telecommunications , inlet , mechanical engineering , physics , disease , pathology , outbreak , psychiatry
Aerosol transmission is now widely accepted as the principal way that COVID‐19 is spread, as has the importance of ventilation—natural and mechanical. But in other than healthcare facilities, mechanical ventilation is designed for comfort, not airborne infection control, and cannot achieve the 6 to 12 room air changes per hour recommended for airborne infection control. More efficient air filters have been recommended in ventilation ducts despite a lack of convincing evidence that SARS‐CoV‐2 virus spreads through ventilation systems. Most transmission appears to occur in rooms where both an infectious source COVID‐19 case and other susceptible occupants share the same air. Only two established room‐based technologies are available to supplement mechanical ventilation: portable room air cleaners and upper room germicidal UV air disinfection. Portable room air cleaners can be effective, but performance is limited by their clean air delivery rate relative to room volume. SARS‐CoV‐2 is highly susceptible to GUV, an 80‐year‐old technology that has been shown to safely, quietly, effectively and economically produce the equivalent of 10 to 20 or more air changes per hour under real life conditions. For these reasons, upper room GUV is the essential engineering intervention for reducing COVID‐19 spread.