Indeed, I think part of the path to impact for far-UVC will be that adoption will hopefully be driven by, e.g., employers like Google equipping their offices with far-UVC lamps because they expect this to reduce the total number of sick days of their workers and therefore increase productivity + profits. Getting this type of evidence for efficacy would be great since it would be an excellent sales pitch to companies whose employees earn a lot, meaning sick days are costly. Ideally, you would be able to tell them something like, "Installing these far-UVC fixtures in the whole office will cost you $30,000, but based on existing evidence and our best models, you'll likely recoup those costs after approx. 18 months due to a reduction in sick days of your employees."
Presumably, that would be a big boost for demand and competition, thereby reducing costs and increasing R&D. It could help to make far-UVC widespread enough to make a difference in stopping future outbreaks or slow down the spread of disease during the next pandemic.
but could it exacerbate pandemic risk by reducing immunity, thereby making it easier for a bioweapon engineer to create a scary pathogen?
There has been very little research on the interaction of far-UVC and the immune system. It is a topic that often comes up in discussions around far-UVC safety and is related to the well-known "hygiene hypothesis," which says something like, "If you're not exposed to enough germs as a child, you might get more allergies."
I want to see more research on this, but so far, it hasn't been as much of a priority. First, people wanted to figure out things like whether far-UVC could give you skin cancer or make you blind. By now, we know those things won't happen, so we can turn to more "second-order" type risks like immune system effects.
However, I have a few intuitions about why this seems unlikely. First of all, it is an "end-game" worry in the sense that it seems like it would only become relevant once far-UVC is almost ubiquitous. Even if it becomes widespread, it would be installed in places like hospitals, shared offices, public transport, etc., but you probably wouldn't have it in your home or anywhere outside. Let's say you would spend ~10 h per day in environments that have much more sterile air than nowadays, but the other ~14 h, you're at home or wherever and still exposed to the germs of, e.g., your partner or children.
Also, I expect that even widespread far-UVC wouldn't reduce fomite transmission much because its disinfection works by line of sight and is easily shielded. So your immune system would still be challenged by that type of transmission.
As I wrote in the post, we only really care about far-UVC if we can find a path to really widespread adoption and high enough doses to slow down or even stop the transmission of extremely infectious agents like measles. If we actually achieve pathogen suppression that strong, I find it hard to imagine a malevolent actor engineering a pathogen so scary that it overwhelms this system. Remember that far-UVC would only be one of our defenses against pandemics and would be combined with PPE, ventilation, medical countermeasures, etc.
I also haven't seen any convincing evidence that a reduction in your exposure to germs dramatically worsens your immune system. While I haven't looked into it deeply, the hygiene hypothesis seems to be somewhat controversial and concerns things like allergies, not, e.g., doubling your susceptibility to common infections because of a worse immune system.
Similarly, I have heard claims that due to all the social isolation, masking, etc., during the Covid pandemic, peoples' immune systems got worse. Yes, the flu + RSV season peaked earlier last winter and was decently bad, but I don't see how this can be attributed to a broad decrease in immune competency. Rather, it just seems like many people weren't exposed to these specific pathogens that they would have typically been challenged with more frequently. I'm not terribly knowledgeable here, so might be mistaken, would be curious if other folks have more insights.
One thing I would like to add is that the field will need to find significant (>20x) cost reductions to deploy at a scale relevant to pandemic suppression. This seems very doable, if investments in R&D are made. What's the level of current & planned investments?
Also, I would expect the indoor chemistry issue to require decent ventilation/filtration at any relevant UVC intensity? This would unfortunately raise the cost and limit the flexibility of UVC
Re. cost reductions: That's a bit tricky. With the current lamp tech (KrCl excimer lamps), 20x is not on the table. Their cost floor is closer to 1/3 of the current cost. Next-gen (read: solid-state) emitters can achieve 20x in principle but are often still bottlenecked by fundamental academic research; we're eventually talking about ~5–10 years and 10s to 100s of M of $ to get to fab scale. There are two startups around a different promising approach that might be a bit faster but will require the same money.
For any technologies that have a market, $100M of investment are doable, but far-UV faces a bit of a circular problem: Missing data (safety/effectiveness) → No official recommendations → No market → No emitter R&D and high product prices → Insufficient deployment that limits real-world data. There are now some market-shaping initiatives that will hopefully ameliorate this dynamic so that R&D money flows naturally. But as Max wrote, OP will hopefully also address some of those points after their RFI.
Re. IAQ: The ozone/VOC data are still somewhat contested and in flux, so it remains to be seen what the far-UV impact on real-world IAQ will actually be. But you're generally right; it's best to view the IAQ interventions holistically. Ventilation/filtration can complement far-UV, and the best deployment scheme will depend on the environment. But I still don't worry too much about cost/flexibility limitations, as most environments in which far-UV would be first installed already have decent air handling systems (hospitals, airports, etc.)
I really loved this! I have basically no knowledge of the underlying context, but I think this symmary gave me a feel for how detailed and complicated this is (reality has a lot of detail and a lot of societies for air conditioning engineers!), a bit of the actual science, as well as some of the players involved and their incentives.
It's helpful and interesting to look at what small scientific communities are like as analogues for EA research groups.
I've wondered about the interaction between far-UVC and immunity:
Hi Sanjay, thanks for the comment!
Indeed, I think part of the path to impact for far-UVC will be that adoption will hopefully be driven by, e.g., employers like Google equipping their offices with far-UVC lamps because they expect this to reduce the total number of sick days of their workers and therefore increase productivity + profits. Getting this type of evidence for efficacy would be great since it would be an excellent sales pitch to companies whose employees earn a lot, meaning sick days are costly. Ideally, you would be able to tell them something like, "Installing these far-UVC fixtures in the whole office will cost you $30,000, but based on existing evidence and our best models, you'll likely recoup those costs after approx. 18 months due to a reduction in sick days of your employees."
Presumably, that would be a big boost for demand and competition, thereby reducing costs and increasing R&D. It could help to make far-UVC widespread enough to make a difference in stopping future outbreaks or slow down the spread of disease during the next pandemic.
There has been very little research on the interaction of far-UVC and the immune system. It is a topic that often comes up in discussions around far-UVC safety and is related to the well-known "hygiene hypothesis," which says something like, "If you're not exposed to enough germs as a child, you might get more allergies."
I want to see more research on this, but so far, it hasn't been as much of a priority. First, people wanted to figure out things like whether far-UVC could give you skin cancer or make you blind. By now, we know those things won't happen, so we can turn to more "second-order" type risks like immune system effects.
However, I have a few intuitions about why this seems unlikely. First of all, it is an "end-game" worry in the sense that it seems like it would only become relevant once far-UVC is almost ubiquitous. Even if it becomes widespread, it would be installed in places like hospitals, shared offices, public transport, etc., but you probably wouldn't have it in your home or anywhere outside. Let's say you would spend ~10 h per day in environments that have much more sterile air than nowadays, but the other ~14 h, you're at home or wherever and still exposed to the germs of, e.g., your partner or children.
Also, I expect that even widespread far-UVC wouldn't reduce fomite transmission much because its disinfection works by line of sight and is easily shielded. So your immune system would still be challenged by that type of transmission.
As I wrote in the post, we only really care about far-UVC if we can find a path to really widespread adoption and high enough doses to slow down or even stop the transmission of extremely infectious agents like measles. If we actually achieve pathogen suppression that strong, I find it hard to imagine a malevolent actor engineering a pathogen so scary that it overwhelms this system. Remember that far-UVC would only be one of our defenses against pandemics and would be combined with PPE, ventilation, medical countermeasures, etc.
I also haven't seen any convincing evidence that a reduction in your exposure to germs dramatically worsens your immune system. While I haven't looked into it deeply, the hygiene hypothesis seems to be somewhat controversial and concerns things like allergies, not, e.g., doubling your susceptibility to common infections because of a worse immune system.
Similarly, I have heard claims that due to all the social isolation, masking, etc., during the Covid pandemic, peoples' immune systems got worse. Yes, the flu + RSV season peaked earlier last winter and was decently bad, but I don't see how this can be attributed to a broad decrease in immune competency. Rather, it just seems like many people weren't exposed to these specific pathogens that they would have typically been challenged with more frequently. I'm not terribly knowledgeable here, so might be mistaken, would be curious if other folks have more insights.
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Great summary!
One thing I would like to add is that the field will need to find significant (>20x) cost reductions to deploy at a scale relevant to pandemic suppression. This seems very doable, if investments in R&D are made. What's the level of current & planned investments?
Also, I would expect the indoor chemistry issue to require decent ventilation/filtration at any relevant UVC intensity? This would unfortunately raise the cost and limit the flexibility of UVC
Re. cost reductions: That's a bit tricky. With the current lamp tech (KrCl excimer lamps), 20x is not on the table. Their cost floor is closer to 1/3 of the current cost. Next-gen (read: solid-state) emitters can achieve 20x in principle but are often still bottlenecked by fundamental academic research; we're eventually talking about ~5–10 years and 10s to 100s of M of $ to get to fab scale. There are two startups around a different promising approach that might be a bit faster but will require the same money.
For any technologies that have a market, $100M of investment are doable, but far-UV faces a bit of a circular problem: Missing data (safety/effectiveness) → No official recommendations → No market → No emitter R&D and high product prices → Insufficient deployment that limits real-world data. There are now some market-shaping initiatives that will hopefully ameliorate this dynamic so that R&D money flows naturally. But as Max wrote, OP will hopefully also address some of those points after their RFI.
Re. IAQ: The ozone/VOC data are still somewhat contested and in flux, so it remains to be seen what the far-UV impact on real-world IAQ will actually be. But you're generally right; it's best to view the IAQ interventions holistically. Ventilation/filtration can complement far-UV, and the best deployment scheme will depend on the environment. But I still don't worry too much about cost/flexibility limitations, as most environments in which far-UV would be first installed already have decent air handling systems (hospitals, airports, etc.)
I really loved this! I have basically no knowledge of the underlying context, but I think this symmary gave me a feel for how detailed and complicated this is (reality has a lot of detail and a lot of societies for air conditioning engineers!), a bit of the actual science, as well as some of the players involved and their incentives.
It's helpful and interesting to look at what small scientific communities are like as analogues for EA research groups.
Hello