We’re excited to share the final version of our far-UVC Blueprint

Almost two years ago, what began as a 3–6 month project turned into a deep, joyful, and complex journey into the far-UVC field. Today, we’re thrilled to share the final product — a collaborative roadmap to help accelerate the development and adoption of far-UVC.

The Blueprint is built around a simple hypothesis: that coordination across disciplines and sectors can speed up progress on promising technologies. The report’s central purpose is to advance the far-UVC field. It does this through two approaches:

1. Offering recommendations for answering critical questions facing far-UVC, and coordinating the field around them.
2. Providing a comprehensive educational resource for capturing the current state of knowledge of far-UVC

Read the full report here

DOI: https://doi.org/10.64046/8nbdnaqs

What’s new?

In March we published a preprint of this report, giving us the opportunity to gather and incorporate feedback from leading experts ahead of today’s launch. This final version reflects that very generous feedback from researchers, engineers, designers, policymakers, funders, and more. Thank you to all who have contributed — we’re grateful beyond words.

Two important changes we’d like to highlight here include:

1. We added a new recommendation to create cost-benefit analysis frameworks for deploying far-UVC. 

To support informed decision-making, researchers and building design professionals should:

• Develop cost-benefit analysis frameworks and tools tailored to specific deployment settings, starting with high-risk, high-impact environments like healthcare facilities, public gathering spaces, and schools.
• Regularly update these frameworks and tools with the latest research and data on far-UVC technology’s benefits, costs, and implementation needs.
• Ensure that these cost-benefit analysis tools are adaptable for use with other disinfection and air-cleaning technologies, enabling fair and consistent comparisons across different solutions.

2. We added a new section in the introduction explaining why accelerating far-UVC matters

The science of far-UVC, and the availability of commercial far-UVC emitters, has rapidly evolved since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many uncertainties, highlighted in this Blueprint, remain. However, preliminary analyses suggest far-UVC could prove highly cost-effective on a few different dimensions:

• One analysis of the costs and benefits of implementing ASHRAE 241 air cleaning targets estimated a 10-to-1 return on investment, even when considering only seasonal illnesses.
• An analysis of the use of far-UVC in indoor public spaces in Switzerland estimated a benefit cost ratio (BCR) of 30–290x in a normal winter respiratory illness season, and higher in pandemic scenarios.
• Finally, another analysis of the use of conventional UVC in aircraft cabins found a 1,000 percent annual return on investment and a cost of $10,000 per life saved. This analysis focused only on reducing the transmission of endemic influenza and SARS-CoV-2. Far-UVC could offer similar benefits with fewer safety and operational constraints.

Additional rigorous cost-benefit analyses need to be developed and tailored to different contexts and use cases, and updated as both our scientific understanding of far-UVC and the costs of commercially available devices evolve (see Recommendation 9). But these early results are highly encouraging.

About the Blueprint

The report examines far-UVC’s efficacy at inactivating pathogens within safe human exposure limits, its photobiological safety for skin and eyes, and potential concerns like ozone generation. It outlines key recommendations for accelerating development, including research priorities to establish effective installation designs, identify biological effects, understand indoor air quality impacts, and obtain real-world effectiveness evidence. The report also details current emitter technologies, regulatory frameworks, UVC’s effects on materials, and considers ozone mitigation strategies. Overall, the report suggests that far-UVC technology could be a significant advancement in airborne infection control if certain research priorities and implementation guidelines are addressed.

The science behind far-UVC has advanced rapidly, and we hope this document supports even faster, better-coordinated progress from here.

If you’re interested in supporting the far-UVC field, please reach out to us. If you’d like to submit a proposal to advance one of our report’s top recommendations, find our call for proposals here.