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Far UV-C: The Blueprint for Widespread Adoption

By David Carel, managing director, Blueprint Biosecurity

Despite remarkable progress in controlling waterborne, foodborne and vectorborne diseases, humanity continues to struggle against airborne pathogens. Even after a global pandemic that spread largely via aerosols, tools to suppress the spread of airborne disease remain deeply neglected.

Far UV-C represents one of the most promising opportunities in airborne disease and pandemic prevention that we are aware of. It can inactivate a wide range of pathogens, including influenza 1 and coronaviruses 2, bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus 3 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa 4, and even pathogenic fungi like Candida auris. 5 Far UV-C is absorbed by proteins in the outermost layers of the skin 6 and eyes 7, allowing for higher safe exposure limits and safe operation in occupied spaces. 8 Modeling shows that Far UV-C (222 nm) can be up to 450 times more efficient than ventilation and 40% more efficient than air purifiers (relative to 254 nm UV-C). 9 It runs silently, requires far less space than portable air cleaners or ventilation ductwork and is relatively simple to install.

But while the scientific evidence supporting Far UV-C’s efficacy continues to grow, Far UV-C faces significant barriers to widescale adoption. At Blueprint Biosecurity, we have spent the past two years outlining the plan for accelerating Far UV-C’ s widespread adoption in the Blueprint for Far UV-C. 10It’s the culmination of nearly two years of work, consisting of an extensive review of published literature and hundreds of conversations with experts across multiple disciplines – photobiology, atmospheric chemistry, indoor air quality, building science, environmental engineering, epidemiology, public health and many more. This report details a comprehensive set of recommendations to accelerate Far UV-C’s development and prepare it for widespread usage.

Strengthening the Evidence Base

The Blueprint first outlines critical research priorities for increasing public trust in Far UV-C’ s safety and efficacy. The author’s company believes these are necessary to earn the high level of public trust required to eventually reach significant scale.

The four most urgent priorities are as follows:

  1. Establish how Far UV-C installations need to be designed in order to effectively suppress airborne transmission. Researchers should obtain pathogen inactivation data from actual human respiratory aerosols, conduct studies on how environmental variables such as humidity affect pathogen susceptibility, understand the causes of experimental variability and use modeling to determine UV dose distribution in different environments.
  2. Identify different biological effects induced by Far UV-C compared to solar UV and conventional GUV. Researchers should mechanistically understand the effects of protein absorption, study other pathways through which higher-energy Far UV-C photons might cause different effects and use this knowledge to identify biomarkers and action spectra for exposure limits.
  3. Understand the unintended air quality impacts of Far UV-C and options for mitigation. It’s crucial to determine if the complex indoor air chemistry observed with Far UV-C is solely a result of ozone generation or if other byproducts are relevant to air quality. Researchers should conduct field measurements of indoor chemistry, replicate lab measurements of ozone generation from Far UV-C devices, quantify the potential health effects of indoor ozone and its byproducts and investigate cost-effective ozone removal solutions.
  4. Obtain high-quality evidence of real-world effectiveness. Successful cluster-randomized controlled trials (CRTs) are necessary for widespread adoption. Researchers should ensure clinical trials are sufficiently powered for plausible effect sizes, use effective UV doses while remaining within safety limits and collect additional data such as temperature, humidity and pathogen concentrations to aid interpretation.

Gathering this additional evidence will take years and should happen in parallel with Far UV-C making inroads with earlier stages of adopters who don’t require such a strong evidence base to start using the technology.

Advancing Device Innovation

Alongside advancing safety and efficacy research, the Blueprint identifies several key priorities for industry, manufacturers and private sector funders to help drive adoption:

  • Improve diffuser technology, as this has the potential to reduce cost per mW and increase the energy efficiency of fixtures designed for lower ceiling heights.
  • Develop mitigation solutions for ozone and indoor air chemistry byproducts, such as catalysts and activated carbon filters.
  • Evaluate the use of proximity sensors or cameras, combined with the capability to dim or boost output, allowing for dynamic output regulation based on room occupancy.
  • Develop cost-effective filters that are as transparent as possible to Far UV-C wavelengths and opaque outside that range. Such filters are useful for multiple different types of Far UV-C sources, and filters can be a significant cost component of lamps.
  • Extend lamp lifetime to reduce both maintenance and effective cost per mW.
  • Develop next-generation emitters, such as semiconductor technology. These may outcompete current sources on cost and also provide different features for different applications.
  • Continue to develop markets for Far UV-C outside of indoor air disinfection.

Bringing These Recommendations to Fruition

To accelerate the implementation of the most urgent recommendations and rapidly support progress toward Far UV-C adoption, the author’s company is launching the Airborne Infection Resilience (AIR) Program. 11 AIR is an ambitious, coordinated five-year effort to generate additional real-world evidence on the effectiveness of reducing disease transmission, create evidence-based deployment guidelines, characterize biological effects with diverse populations, support technological innovation and optimize installation designs.

With strategic, coordinated investment, Far UV-C could transform how we approach preventing airborne disease in the built environment, potentially averting millions of deaths, billions of infections and trillions in economic costs before the next major pandemic strikes. We look forward to working closely with academia, industry and other interested partners to advance this highly promising technology before the next major airborne outbreak. 

David Carel is a Rhodes Scholar and the managing director of Blueprint Biosecurity, a nonprofit dedicated to achieving breakthroughs in humanity’s ability to prevent pandemics. He has spent more than a decade building mission-driven organizations that tackle some of society’s toughest challenges. For more information, visit blueprintbiosecurity.org.

References

  1. Far UV-C light: A new tool to control the spread of airborne-mediated microbial diseases, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29426899/
  2. Effectiveness of 222-nm ultraviolet light on disinfecting SARS-CoV-2 surface contamination, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196655320308099
  3. Far UV-C (222 nm) efficiently inactivates an airborne pathogen in a room-sized chamber, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35322064/
  4. Experimental analysis to quantify inactivation of microorganisms by Far UV-C irradiation in indoor environments, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360132325002161
  5. Evaluation of an Automated Wall-mounted Far Ultraviolet-C Light Technology for Continuous or Intermittent Decontamination of Candida auris on Surfaces, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11110956/
  6. Germicidal Efficacy and Mammalian Skin Safety of 222-nm UV Light, https://bioone.org/journals/radiation-research/volume-187/issue-4/RR0010CC.1/Germicidal-Efficacy-and-Mammalian-Skin-Safety-of-222-nm-UV/10.1667/RR0010CC.1.full
  7. Safety Evaluation of Far-UV-C Irradiation to Epithelial Basal Cells in the Corneal Limbus, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/php.13750
  8. Assessing the safety of new germicidal Far UV-C technologies, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/php.13866
  9. Comparison of effectiveness and energy use of airborne pathogen mitigation measures to meet clean air targets in a prototypical office building, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360132324003081?via%3Dihub
  10. Blueprint for Far UV-C, Richard D. Williamson, et al, https://blueprintbiosecurity.org/u/2025/06/Blueprint-for-Far UV-C-V1.0-6.9.25.pdf
  11. Airborne Infection Resilience (AIR) Program, https://blueprintbiosecurity.org/air-program