To be clear, those two units are different. 155.8 mW/cm^2, and 0.1 mW/cm^2/nm. So it’s not 1,558 times stronger than sunlight overall. Neglecting atmospheric effects, sunlight across all wavelengths is 135 mW/cm^2, so about the same total flux—it’s like we compressed the broad spectrum of sunlight to all be a single wavelength. My point is that it’s much much more blue-violet light (not much much more light total) than what we usually encounter. Blue-violet from sunlight may be safe for our skin, but that doesn’t necessarily imply that blue-violet light at germicidal intensity is safe.
Unless the novel coronavirus has porphyrins in its chemistry, I wouldn’t expect to this effect on the virus, as the paper notes.
This is an important point. Germicidal blue-violet would likely be ineffective against airborne viruses.
The reported data indicate that the effect is dependent on other elements of the mixture; something else in the solution may break down under the flux and attack the virus.
This is exactly my concern. What’s to say that the reactive chemical species that “attack” the virus won’t also be a problem for human cells? The mixture in which blue-violet light is more effective was made of “artificial saliva, artificial faeces and blood plasma,” so whatever is breaking down could break down exactly the same way in our bodies.
(To be clear, I’m not saying it’s necessarily unsafe for human skin. I’m just saying we shouldn’t assume it is safe.)
To be clear, those two units are different. 155.8 mW/cm^2, and 0.1 mW/cm^2/nm. So it’s not 1,558 times stronger than sunlight overall. Neglecting atmospheric effects, sunlight across all wavelengths is 135 mW/cm^2, so about the same total flux—it’s like we compressed the broad spectrum of sunlight to all be a single wavelength. My point is that it’s much much more blue-violet light (not much much more light total) than what we usually encounter. Blue-violet from sunlight may be safe for our skin, but that doesn’t necessarily imply that blue-violet light at germicidal intensity is safe.
This is an important point. Germicidal blue-violet would likely be ineffective against airborne viruses.
This is exactly my concern. What’s to say that the reactive chemical species that “attack” the virus won’t also be a problem for human cells? The mixture in which blue-violet light is more effective was made of “artificial saliva, artificial faeces and blood plasma,” so whatever is breaking down could break down exactly the same way in our bodies.
(To be clear, I’m not saying it’s necessarily unsafe for human skin. I’m just saying we shouldn’t assume it is safe.)