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In the Covid-19 era, employers are looking at a range of innovations aimed at making workplaces safe. One company is developing layers of material with tiny, spike-like particles that puncture and kill viruses within minutes. It can be added to desks, walls, and other surfaces and rupture anything with a membrane that lands on them. The technology is untested for coronavirus. But when it was piloted for a year on a Royal Navy ship it removed more than 95 per cent of bacteria, such as E. coli and MRSA.
Germicidal ultraviolet irradiation, on the other hand, is a decades-old technology. Beams of UV light kill micro-organisms by mangling RNA in viruses and DNA in bacteria and fungi. However, there are real concerns that UV radiation causes skin and eye damage to humans. That means it has to be placed high up and encased in light fixtures or air conditioning systems.
Another option is real-time environmental monitors, which already exist. They can assess things like CO2 levels and could be retuned to focus on the virus. Swiss researchers have developed a sensor set inside a chamber that emits a light signal if it comes into contact with the virus's RNA.
But a simpler, quicker, and cheaper alternative to high-tech solutions could involve improving heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems. These can play a key role in preventing the accumulation of tiny, airborne micro-droplets. Some buildings have a ventilation flow rate of just 1 litre per person per second, while the recommended minimum is 5 to 10 litres.
Finally, one British company is developing a system to destroy airborne particles in confined spaces by circulating cool indoor air into a viral furnace. There it is heated to more than 95 degrees Celsius to kill any pathogens and then cooled and filtered back in. There are options out there, but many of these innovations will not come cheap. And not all of them will prove effective in the real world.
