Really? An elevator button seems exactly the right surface for transmission.
Hard surface where the virus can survive for 3-4 hours
An elevator does not allow droplets to disperse, but settle on surfaces
It might be less common but it is certainly still a risk
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I’m waiting for someone to notice that the entire elevator car is an alcove that can be illuminated with UV light. Every time it does an empty ride between floors, drop a death ray from the ceiling and delete the shit out of everything in there.
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There was a TWiV episode a while back about using far UVC for exactly applications like this. This is UV light that is short enough wavelength that it is absorbed by the epidermis (i.e., skin cells that are already dead) and even the tear film covering your eye so it is supposed to be safely usable in human environments. It would be OK at sterilizing surfaces and also relatively quickly inactivate pathogens in aerosols or droplets.
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As I understand it though, the more typical hard-UV around 254nm, which is already in use in squillions of air, water, and hospital sterilization systems, is more effective at comparable time and distance. And in a very small box that already has hardware in use to empty itself of vulnerable primates every minute or two…
EDIT: Fixed frequency, but still unsure why my coffee came out so error-prone this morning.
Definitely:
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“normal” germicidal UVC is in the 250 nm range, 385 is soft-UV almost visible (visible is normally designated as ending at 400 nm). Even soft UV seems effective for inactivating most viruses including coronavirus but 250 is typically used for sterilization as it is more effective against a wide range of pathogens. It is sometimes augmented by 185 nm which produces ozone which also acts as a disinfectant.
The “far UV” stuff is IIRC around 220, which is a sweet spot for not producing ozone while also not penetrating enough to damage humans, at least when used on the outside.
It’s true that elevators are regularly empty, but normal applications of germicidal UV require interlocks or other safety measures to make sure they can’t be used when humans are around that might be tricky to implement in an automated public setting like an elevator.
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Derp, cranioverbal flatulence. Knew I should have checked before I posted that, but that number sounded right enough.
My only “complaint” about using the “fancy new” 220nm lights in elevators is that elevators are a setting that’s already just about tailor made for safe, convenient, and cheap implementations of old-school UV.
Now I want a Dance Dance Revolution elevator in my building.
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Such buttons are widely used in elevators, but they detect heat. If you’ve ever used an elevator button that had a very round plastic ring around a deeply depressed number that does not itself move when you touch it, that’s a heat button.
As kids we used to breathe on them as a fun way to activate the heat sensor. Nowadays that might qualify as reckless endangerment or something, but in the 1980s it seems harmless.
I always wondered why these buttons weren’t the standard. No contact, and no moving parts. Has to be good for maintenance and hygiene?
TIL there is an AncientBiotics team at the University of Nottingham, and they work with Anglo-Saxon language scholars in their research.
The world is full of wonders.
I’ve been bitching most of my adult life that this isn’t the norm in “first world nations”.
Keeping hard surfaces like telephones and elevator buttons sanitized is an important endeavor. Just ask the Golgafrinchans.
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I got curious about this idea, and went looking. A couple of major elevator manufacturers do offer it as an option, so it may catch on more as time goes on. It’s probably a lot more expensive though, because it’s much more difficult to build a mechanism that can survive the general public kicking and stomping on it hundreds of times a day versus something you can only “hit” with one finger. One only has to look at arcade games to see how terrible people are on mechanical equipment that they don’t own. Gas pedals in driving games are built extremely well but would fail about once a week in an active arcade.
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Previously on Boing Boing:
Made my own:
In addition to the duct tape I used a Sugru-like plastic adhesive. The lighter’s side is rounded, the screwdriver is round, the adhesive fills out the gaps on both sides.
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