Industry News
LED Lighting As A Disinfectant
May 13, 2019
Hospital-acquired infections are one of the top preventable illnesses in medical facilities and a special type of LED lighting can act as a continuous disinfectant and reduce the opportunity for those infections. In a video, produced by the National Lighting Bureau and the EdisonReport, Colleen Costello of Vital Vio and Deb Zawodny of New Star Lighting discuss how a certain type of LED lighting is being used to disinfect germs in hospitals.
Vital Vio focuses on a relatively new disinfectant field, which uses violet wavelengths in the visible spectrum, as a disinfectant, as opposed to the Ultraviolet spectrum. Ultraviolet disinfecting has been around for years, but can be harmful to people if they are exposed.
Ms. Costello stated, “Surfaces play a big role in transmissions of germs and we looked at how germs interact with surfaces.” She went on to say, “We use violet wavelengths between 400 and 420 nanometers to target molecules in certain organisms and these targeted organisms are not present in human cells, so it is safe for people.”
Ms. Zawodny explained that LED lighting is meant to be part of the process, but it does not replace cleaning. The Vital Vio technology begins to have an effect after 90 minutes, and allows for continuous cleaning using white light with a high violet content and allows for deep cleaning with the pure violet spectrum.
Watch this fascinating discussion, free of charge, at https://youtu.be/vDk62wUjBjI courtesy of the National Lighting Bureau, an independent, IRS-recognized educational foundation that has served as a trusted lighting information source since 1976.