UV lighting the road to recovery
Clifford Saunders, Aermec UK’s Senior Applications Engineer, explains how fan coils offering both comfort and sanitisation of indoor air can make workplaces safer.
The Covid-19 outbreak has made us all aware of the importance of good hygiene practices but it has also turned the spotlight on air movement and the health of a building’s occupants. We breathe in various types of micro-organisms all the time; many can be tolerated with no specific health care issues. But some viral infections such as SARS and Coronaviruses can easily spread and cause serious harm. One way of managing the spread of viruses is to inactivate them and break them down biologically and one of the most effective methods is the use of a UV lamp.
It has been well documented that effective ventilation can play a critical role in controlling airborne viruses in ventilated spaces. The UK’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, explained the importance of ventilation in buildings: “There is a definite truism across all of the science literature that ventilation is a most critical part of reducing transmissions for respiratory viruses.”
In the Unites States, ASHRAE created a task force to assess the effects of HVAC systems and the transmission of viruses in buildings, commenting that changes to a building’s operation could help reduce the risks of pathogen transmission.
Researchers at the University of Oregon’s Biology and Built Environment Centre have conducted extensive studies and outlined a number of steps buildings owners can take to mitigate transmission and protect a building’s occupants, including exposure to ultraviolet light, which can reduce the ability of some viruses to survive.