How We Made a UVC Disinfection Chamber
Feel free to share your own set up.
Five years ago, public health agencies assured us we didn’t need to be disinfecting our groceries—that was just overkill. Maybe that was true, but the reality was closer to this: There was simply no simple, practical, cost-effective way to disinfect your groceries and deliveries without going insane.
People tried.
In May, one researcher explained how you could build a UVC disinfecting chamber. As they wrote, “there is no alternative [in most cases] rather than handling the essential food items which are purchased from the market,” which means viruses “can easily be transmitted from human to human through food commodities.” With H5N1 bird flu, that becomes more of a problem because, well, it can last much longer on surfaces than other viruses.
A study from 2022 confirms that UVC light effectively destroys the flu virus within minutes. The general consensus is that it takes anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour if you’re disinfecting a larger space.
You can buy UVC disinf…