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UV Light Used Against Mites

By Corydon Ireland, Staff Writer

Pest Killer Operates Technology To Evict Allergens

(June 16, 2005) — In a Fairport household earlier this week, professional pest-buster Kennedy Brayboy used ultraviolet light to banish mites, the tiny creatures that inhabit household dust and trigger asthma.

UV light, widely used in medical settings to kill germs, is still experimental among ways to clean indoor air, which the Environmental Protection Agency says can be five times more polluted than outside air, even in urban areas.

UV as an air-purifying tool "is important, and people don't know it," said Brayboy, president of Fresh Air Pest Control in Penfield.

At the Fairport home, he made two quick vacuum sweeps over a bedroom mattress. One look at the filter yielded a diagnosis: lots of dust — the ubiquitous household composite of fiber, ash, dead skin scales, pollen, grit, dander, fungi and microscopic mites.

"Mites are the big one," though, when it comes to asthma triggers indoors, said Brighton allergist Dr. Roger Cass.

Up to 42,000 of the tiny spider relatives can flourish in a single ounce of household dust — and the average U.S. home generates 40 pounds of dust a year.

The jury is still out on the efficacy of UV light as a way to neutralize the mites, mold, fungi, bacteria and viruses that swirl in household air, said Cass, who called the idea "valiant."

"There are no good studies that indicate it's useful," he said.

Better proven, Cass said, are traditional strategies for eliminating dust and its host of allergens: vacuums with high-efficiency HEPA filters, plastic-encased mattresses, dehumidifiers (mites love moist air) and cleanable area rugs in place of wall-to-wall carpeting.

The UV light strategy is "very new to the United States," admitted Brayboy. But it's been the rage in Europe for more than two decades, he said — and is now commonly marketed by U.S. heating and cooling contractors.

UV light air-purification units can be mounted in heating and cooling systems in houses and commercial buildings.

Portable units come in sizes large enough to sanitize the air in up to 3,500 square feet of indoor space.

Germicidal UV light systems reduced sick-building complaints — headaches and fatigue — by 20 percent among office workers, according to a 1999 study done at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

But some air purification systems add ozone to indoor air, warned Peter Iwanowicz, chief policy officer for the American Lung Association of New York State in Albany. "It's a powerful respiratory irritant."

Brayboy agreed. He urged consumers to buy only UV light air purification systems that create no ozone.

Corydon Ireland, Staff Writer: http://www.democratandchronicle.com
Author: Corydon Ireland, Staff Writer

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