this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
65 points (82.2% liked)

Science

13192 readers
39 users here now

Subscribe to see new publications and popular science coverage of current research on your homepage


founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I have a UV lamp from when I was making sure the room was relatively sterile for our newborn.

So here's my say:

  1. The room rapidly stinks of ozone. Ozone is a free radical that fucks up everything, including your lungs. We didn't enter the room until about half an hour after the UV was off (Ozone recombines pretty quickly).
  2. UV lamps are frequently used to sterilise hospital rooms because people are usually immunocompromised. Our newborn was fine, but it may have helped.
  3. COVID turns up in the comments: you cannot emit UV everywhere anytime without, again I quote, fucking people's lungs up. And COVID was pretty good at spreading anywhere and everywhere, so haha, nope.
  4. Those fun UV lamps that make stuff glow in the dark? Pretty damn close to visible colour violet, and low intensity (we use them in the dark, no?). This UV lamp for sterilisation? Look at it for a couple of seconds and you are already burning a hole in your retina.