Introducing the AIR Program

The Airborne Infection Resilience (AIR) program is a five-year research initiative focused on speeding up the widespread adoption of far-UVC—a breakthrough technology for combatting airborne disease.

Accelerating Far-UVC Research and Adoption

Commercial far-UVC devices are available but deployed at a very limited scale. Several critical barriers are hindering the widespread adoption required to meaningfully reduce airborne disease and keep us safe from novel pandemics:

• Scientific validation requires additional real-world evidence
• Optimal installation designs are still being determined
• Full characterization of biological effects is incomplete
• Clear deployment guidelines backed by research are needed
• Cost reduction through technological improvement is necessary

Goals and Structure

AIR aims to address three critical bottlenecks preventing global scale-up:

1. Secure endorsements from global public health agencies
2. Develop real-world guidance for precise far-UVC implementation
3. Catalyze multinational public and private funding to support rollout

The program is structured into three primary workstreams:

Workstream 1: Randomized Controlled Trial

• Conduct the first large-scale RCT of far-UVC effectiveness in approximately 50 real-world settings
• Perform controlled bioaerosol chamber studies and computational fluid dynamics modeling

Workstream 2: Safety Studies

• Verify far-UVC exposure limits through multiple human and animal studies
• Measure indoor air chemistry effects across diverse environments
• Build scientific consensus around safety parameters

Workstream 3: Consensus and Deployment Guidance

• Develop evidence-based implementation protocols for diverse settings
• Create educational materials and evaluate communication strategies
• Initiate a National Academies consensus study to serve as a trusted, objective authority

Our Persistent Vulnerability to Airborne Disease

Despite remarkable advances in controlling water-borne, food-borne, and vector-borne diseases, airborne infectious diseases remain one of humanity’s most significant public health challenges. COVID-19 has caused over 27 million deaths globally, while tuberculosis and seasonal influenza continue to exact a devastating toll, 1.6 million and 700,000 deaths respectively. Respiratory infections and tuberculosis resulted in 350 million DALYs and 11.3 million deaths in 2021 alone.

The risks of catastrophic airborne disease outbreaks are not only persistent but increasing. Climate change, intensive agriculture, and human encroachment into wildlife habitats are creating more opportunities for zoonotic pathogens to jump from animals to humans, with experts estimating these factors have increased pandemic risks by two to four-fold. Meanwhile, rapid advances in biotechnology and synthetic biology, while promising many benefits, also create new vulnerabilities as the capability to engineer pathogens is becoming more widespread and accessible. Epidemiologists estimate a nearly 25% probability of a pandemic as deadly as COVID-19 occurring within the next decade, and a 13% chance of a pandemic three times the size of COVID-19 by 2050.

Our current tools are critical but severely limited. Even with unprecedented development speed, COVID-19 vaccines took about a year to reach widespread distribution in high-income countries and several years in lower-income regions. We need options that can be immediately and effectively be deployed at the start of a novel outbreak, as well as new ways to prevent them in the first place. Current air cleaning solutions like filtration and ventilation are important but insufficient. According to Department of Energy studies, typical office ventilation systems cannot achieve CDC air cleaning guidelines, and modeling from ASHRAE 241 shows that many higher density and higher risk environments – churches, restaurants, lecture halls – all fall far short of the clean air required to truly keep people safe.

The Promise of Far-UVC Light

Far-UVC (ultraviolet light of wavelengths between 200-235nm, typically deployed at 222nm) represents a potentially transformative solution for continuous environmental inactivation of airborne pathogens.

Key Advantages of Far-UVC

1. Pathogen-agnostic: Effective against a broad spectrum of bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms regardless of mutations
2. Proactive deployment: Can be installed before outbreaks occur, unlike vaccines and therapeutics which are reactive
3. Invisible and silent operation: Air purifiers are often noisy and create thermal discomfort, causing people to turn them down or off
4. Cost-effective: MIT researchers found far-UVC is cheaper than in-room filtration for equivalent clean air delivery
5. Easy installation: Similar to installing light fixtures without requiring significant building remodeling
6. Energy efficient: Estimated to be 450x more energy efficient than ventilation and 40% more efficient than air purifiers
7. Layered protection: Provides collective protection that supplements individual choices like masks and vaccination

Why This Work is Neglected

There is currently no funding source for this scale of far-UVC research:

• Federal government agencies won’t fund scale-up without more real-world evidence
• Private sector investment is limited due to uncertain market potential and high upfront costs
• The chicken-and-egg problem between evidence generation and deployment remains unsolved

Project AIR is specifically designed to address these bottlenecks by producing high-quality evidence to satisfy public sector requirements while derisking investment for private companies. Just as the sanitation revolution transformed our approach to water-borne disease, far-UVC could fundamentally reshape our built environment to be resilient against airborne pathogens.