Background As the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic accelerates, supply of personal protective equipment remains under strain. To combat shortages, re-use surgical masks and filtering facepiece respirators has been recommended. Prior decontamination is paramount to these typically single-use only items and, without compromising their integrity, must guarantee inactivation other contaminating pathogens. Aim W...

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a great deal of interest in ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) as an important means to disinfect air and surfaces. traditional lamp employed for UVGI been the low-pressure mercury-discharge that emits primarily at 254 nm photobiological band UV-C (100–280 nm). recent development even shorter-wavelength lamps, such Krypton–Chloride, 222-nm lamp, led gr...

Setting: Ten hospitals managing drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) in Pakistan. Objective: To assess the implementation of TB infection control (IC) practices and reasons for non-adherence to guidelines. Design: This was a descriptive study conducted between April and October 2016 with three components: 1) non-participant observation of service delivery areas (SDAs) (n = 82) in hospitals (n = 10)...

This paper compares the use of ultraviolet germicidal irradiaiton (UVGI) with increased ventilation flow rate to minimize the risk from airborne bacteria in hospital isolation rooms. Results show that the number of particles deposited on surfaces and vented out is greater in magnitude than the number killed by UV light and that the numbers for these two mechanisms are large compared to the tota...

Ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) is known to inactivate various viruses and bacteria, including SARS-CoV-2, widely applied especially in medical facilities. This inactivation results from the high photon energies causing molecular bonds break, but when nonpathogen molecules are affected, unwanted effects may occur. Here, we explored effect of a commercial high-intensity (?2 kW) UVC dis...

Ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) is a disinfection method that uses ultraviolet (UV) light at sufficiently short wavelength to kill microorganisms. It is used in a variety of applications, such as food, air and water purification. UV has been a known mutagen at the cellular level for more than one-hundred years. The 1903 Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to Niels Finsen for his use ...

OBJECTIVES We evaluated the safety of room occupants in the Tuberculosis Ultraviolet Shelter Study (TUSS), a double-blind, placebo-controlled field trial of upper-room ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) at 14 homeless shelters in six U.S. cities from 1997 to 2004. METHODS Data collection involved administering questionnaires regarding eye and skin irritation to a total of 3,611 staff a...