Notes & Transcript: https://chloehumbert.substack.com/p/stay-far-away-from-avoidable-uv
A written post similar to this podcast can be found in my pandemic newsletter. There is also a transcript of this podcast below the notes.
Reference notes:
Mehta I, Hsueh HY, Taghipour S, Li W, Saeedi S. UV Disinfection Robots: A Review. Rob Auton Syst. 2023 Mar;161:104332. doi: 10.1016/j.robot.2022.104332. Epub 2022 Dec 9. PMID: 36514383; PMCID: PMC9731820. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9731820/
Buonanno, M., Welch, D., Shuryak, I. et al. Author Correction: Far-UVC light (222 nm) efficiently and safely inactivates airborne human coronaviruses. Sci Rep 11, 19569 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-97508-9
Buonanno, M., Welch, D., Shuryak, I. et al. Far-UVC light (222 nm) efficiently and safely inactivates airborne human coronaviruses. Sci Rep 10, 10285 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-67211-2
Transcript:
I'm Chloe Humbert, and I wrote this piece because I'm really concerned about people's safety. If it’s UV, it’s likely capable of harming human cells - there’s no long-term evidence otherwise. And exposing people to risks repeatedly while insisting IT'S MILD sounds awfully familiar.
It’s extremely concerning and odd that there are people being prompted to demand that government facilities, jails, and schools should implement a technology that has no proven long term safety, which is not FDA approved, and could have grave risks. Experimenting on prisoners, civil servants, children, and others with experimental medical technology which has potential for harm, little proven efficacy, and NO long-term safety evidence, flies in the face of the precautionary principle. And encouraging people to implement this in their homes to sell these products is so problematic.
There is a history of UV light disinfection done where people won't be exposed to it in ventilation ducts or vacated rooms. UV light not only kills viruses, but is also well-recognized as very dangerous to any humans and pets who get exposed. It's so treacherous to work with that robots are used to administer it in disinfecting formerly-occupied hospital rooms. Another long-standing version of UV germicidal irradiation (UVGI) is via lights near the ceiling of rooms that lack good ventilation -- high up where people don't go. That requires very carefully installed fixtures directed upwards to eliminate risk that people will be exposed to the hazardous light. And there have been incidents where workers at a university were harmed with eye damage because of improper installation of upper room UV.
“FAR UVC” is UV light, and we know UV light has known damaging effects on skin and eyes. It’s the reason UV has the potential to kill viruses. So if “FAR UVC” wavelengths also kill viruses, it’s not unreasonable to guess that there’s some danger to human tissues. And there has been NO long term evidence on the safety or dangers of this “Far UVC” wavelength of UV. When someone claims it’s safer than other wavelengths, they’re making this claim on the absence of evidence, not evidence it’s safe.
Some people, often promoting products - or just hyping this “new technology” - often have been pointing to studies that have been ridiculously small and that don’t actually back up the safety claims at all. Fraudulent Appeal to Authority - the tactic of citing sources that don’t actually back up a claim, is sadly very much rampant in marketing that happens on social media.
In one case a study that has been cited, it was one person experimenting on themselves! This person exposed their own skin and gave themselves a yellow spot sunburn with the “far uvc” wavelength. We have no idea what’s going to happen to that person some years from now, or the tissue on that person’s body that was affected. This is not a reassuring thing to cite as reason to trust exposure to UV at any wavelength is safe. The study itself includes the statement: “This single individual study does not provide a definitive answer to the question of skin safety. Our study is the basis for future exploration above the current ICNIRP limit values, which would allow quicker inactivation of the virus than is currently permitted in occupied spaces. Furthermore, what this research and other published literature clearly highlight is that the hazard of all wavelengths emitted must be appropriately assessed—it is too simplistic to state that far-UVC devices are “safe for humans.””
It's only appropriate to expose people to risks with uncertain benefits in the context of a research study with an appropriate consent process.
In 2020 Government Executive reported that during the Trump administration a union complaint to the IG objected to the Federal Bureau of Prisons spending $3 million on unproven UV coronavirus sanitizing portals because they hadn’t been studied enough to know if they’re safe or effective. A UV expert is quoted in the article as saying that there’s no research to show what are the long-term effects on humans of Far-UVC wavelengths. And the International Ultraviolet Association told Government Executive: "Based on currently available contract information, the International Ultraviolet Association understands the BOP has procured far UV-C devices (i.e., UV sanitary entry gates) that would be used to directly expose people to UV light, which IUVA cautioned against in April 2020.”
Government workers are typically represented by unions which I hope will continue to push back against being guinea pigs in a “let’s see how long it takes for a whole department of civil servants to need disability retirement due to vision loss and skin cancer” experiment.
Kaitlin Sundling responded to someone on Mastodon who had their interest piqued by the mention of FAR UVC with this caution: ”unfortunately Far UVC is not a good precaution - not proven to work, and not proven to be safe. It’s unethical to expose people to unregulated and unproven UV devices without consent.” Dr. Sundling has some good advice for questions that should be asked before even considering purchasing such products:
Here is my list of questions that I would need suitably answered before considering use of Far-UVC technology in any setting:
How can a consumer tell that the device is working?
How can a consumer tell that the device is safe?
Is the device approved by the EPA or any other government agency pertaining to safety and efficacy?
What organizations certify the safety and efficacy of the device?
What professional medical or public health organizations have endorsed the device?
What is the spectral power distribution (how much light is emitted at various wavelengths) of the device? How can a consumer verify the power of light emitted at 222 nm (Far-UVC) compared to the power of light emitted at other wavelengths?
How does the safety and efficacy of the device change over time?
Are ozone or other toxic byproducts generated during use (from the interaction of Far-UVC light and materials in the room) that would impact indoor air quality?
How can consumers be sure they are not receiving a counterfeit device?
Provide the peer-reviewed publications detailing the research data regarding the safety of the device regarding eye exposure (corneal damage and cataract development) and skin damage (sunburn and skin cancer risk). Have the results been independently verified in multiple, large-scale clinical trials? What was the length of follow up?
So far, none of the devices I have come across pass muster.
And yet, today there are still more pushing to implement such pandemic profiteering Trumpian privatization boondoggle experimentation on government workers and prisoners. It’s hard to square this as being in line with public health activism, progressive values, and, again, the precautionary principle that is so fundamental to the point of pandemic public safety advocacy.
To impose FAR UVC at government facilities would be experimentation. Nobody should be suggesting that we implement experimenting with this in jails and detention centers. It’s unethical to use experimental medical technology on prisoners. There’s a long history of gruesomeness in this area. Reported in 2022: “A prominent California medical school has apologized for conducting dozens of unethical medical experiments on at least 2,600 incarcerated men in the 1960s and 1970s, including putting pesticides and herbicides on the men’s skin and injecting it into their veins.”
I can just imagine that at the time somebody probably claimed that this was an exciting innovation. I can’t repeat enough that when you hear the word “innovation” it could be a glaring red flag that someone’s full of it and trying to promote or defend something dubious. History is full of examples, it wasn’t unique to Stockton Rush, famous for imploding himself and others in a shoddy submarine. Stockton Rush said he was "tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation" and then went to his watery grave in a weird submarine that many had warned was not safe. Processed food manufacturers in the 1960s argued that stipulating that peanut butter needs to be made out of peanuts would “stifle innovation” in the peanut butter market.
A lot of the hype around “FAR UVC” is done by scientists and engineers who are understandably excited about new technology and merely possible future usages for that technology. But history could give us a warning about people selling stuff based on scientists getting excited. A Behind the Bastards podcast about William Bailey told the story of how Marie Curie went around hyping excitement about radiation, and then a bunch of grifters used that hype to scam people with conditions and illnesses, selling them radiation quack “cures” that harmed and killed people desperate for treatment for various ailments. There’s a reason they covered this guy on Behind the Bastards podcast, Bailey was horrible - scamming people, promising cures, taking their money, and leaving them worse off dying of radiation poisoning. Marie Curie herself died of illness related to extensive exposure to radiation, and her body and her work notebooks are stored in lead because they’ll be radioactive for the next 1,500 years. One cannot assume that scientists and engineers working in their field, and speaking about it, are automatically experts on safety of their research focus.
Someone once sent me a screenshot from Facebook and what someone described as a copy pasted shipping email from a "Far-UVC" company claiming that their product had "completed and passed its final round of FCC regulatory testing" and had "consumer rated FCC approval" - which people took to mean some kind of efficacy or safety testing, but the FCC is not a medical regulatory body, they're the Federal Communications Commission, a government agency that issues radio licenses like for amateur operators of HAM or GMRS or commercial radio and television channels, their website describes the FCC as regulating "interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable."
The EPA actually issued a statement in 2020 to say: “Unlike chemical pesticides, EPA does not routinely review the safety or efficacy of UV light devices and, therefore, EPA has not conducted a human health risk assessment to determine the safety of these products.”
Another vendor has been promoting their products on their marketing website as a way to “expedite the return to normalcy” and suggested “widespread adoption” of their products was the ticket to that normalcy.
But this unproven technology, and possibly dangerous products being sold online without any guarantee of their wavelength and no way to be sure what the heck they are, are being hyped on social media by influencers who may not be disclosing compensation they’re getting to advertise these products. And if Kim Kardashian thought she could get away with not disclosing payment for hyping a cryptocurrency, imagine all the small fry that could get away with it because the SEC doesn’t necessarily investigate every small time influencer receiving a couple hundred dollars, like they do a Kardashian receiving a quarter of a million.
Unproven products of various types are being target marketed especially on “covid twitter” and “still coviding facebook” groups, where worried high risk people are desperate for anything in the absence of proper public health measures and mitigations, and they are being sold dubious products promising to protect people from covid.
Dubious actors have pushed quack cures mostly to right-wingers since the start of the pandemic, but more recently have been targeting Long Covid sufferers across the political spectrum who are desperate for answers and willing to try dangerous and even disproven cures like colloidal silver, ivermectin, and treatments being prescribed off-label based on a more than year-old preprint of a small study that had not been through peer review.
We are less likely to see our own cognitive biases being leveraged. It’s easy for many on the left to recognize how MAGA Trumpers are being manipulated by Qanon wellness influencers hyping products. But we forget that we may not notice our own confirmation biases and desires being targeted by manipulative advertising. An influencer may say “follow the science” and then link to an actual scientific study, but that is by no means a definitive robust support of their claims. Often in these instances it’s just some preliminary small study conducted years ago and never replicated, and in some cases bad actors or ignorant re-posters are guilty of straight up fraudulent appeal to authority and the linked item doesn’t back up the claim at all. Conspirituality Podcast has an episode that mentioned this, and other tips on what to look for and consider when reviewing a scientific study that is used to promote a health product.
Some of the FAR-UVC science studies that get promoted as proof of efficacy have direct conflicts of interest, and they’re often disclosed, if you know to look for that: such as “The authors declare the following pending patent” or the author “has a granted patent” or information about the funding of the study being funded by the manufacturer of a product. Many of the studies that get passed around as in support of buying these products actually in fact warn of the potential safety issues, such as that “there is no positive study on the impact of this radiation on human eyes” and that “stray emissions can greatly impact the total hazard.” The FDA had issued a statement that “long-term safety data is lacking”.
And then there are the people who are especially at risk from UV, so even if it might not be as huge a risk for some, for others, it can be far more serious, according to the American Cancer Society which has a list of factors that affect risk from UV rays, including organ transplants and medications that lower your immune system. So some people with high covid risk would be put especially at risk from UV light, more so than the average person, even light at supposedly less penetrating wavelengths.
UV lamps generate ozone, and that can adversely affect air quality. Ozone inhalation can be irritating to the airways. And there’s a report that says that FAR-UVC generates ozone in “amounts an order of magnitude larger than previous reports” had claimed. More evidence this isn’t settled science, not by a long shot.
And just in case somebody doesn’t know about the fake science, yes, that’s a thing - there are fake science journals and fake academic conferences, who according to a presentation at DEF CON 26 in 2018: “Until recently, these fake science factories have remained relatively under the radar, with few outside of academia aware of their presence; but the highly profitable industry is growing significantly and with it, so are the implications. To the public, fake science is indistinguishable from legitimate science, which is facing similar accusations itself. Our findings highlight the prevalence of the pseudo-academic conferences, journals and publications and the damage they can and are doing to society.”
The bullshit asymmetry principle makes it very difficult to counter the vast PR that’s being promoted, both by paid actors, and true believer converts that have been convinced by advertising or online cults. If that’s you or someone you know, there’s no reason to feel bad about it, advertising and targeted marketing works - nobody is immune. That’s why companies spend so much on advertising, and why straight up scammers spend so much on social engineering online. Unfortunately the sunk cost fallacy bias means that many people who’ve already invested thousands of dollars or thousands of hours on this or who are being paid to promote it, will not want to face the music of the problems here. Nevertheless, it’s a public health issue, much like the pandemic. Safety issues can’t be ignored, they don’t go away on their own.
