News Press
The article, “Lee Memorial Enlists Ultraviolet Light to Zap Tough Germs,” by Frank Gluck, talks about an experiment held at a Florida hospital. Its goal was to test to see if ultraviolet light emitting machines would be beneficial. Each machine has the capability of destroying the majority of diseases in a room. The hospital was sent two of the machines in order to test it out.
Steve Streed states, “We’re doing anti-germ warfare. We’ve had very few (germ) colonies that we’ve been able to recover from the rooms after we’ve treated them with this technology.” This shows how successful the results of the experiment have been so far. The machine is not intended to be a replacement cleaner, but rather a device to go back and zap away the remaining bacteria.
The machines give off UV rays and damage the DNA in cells. Without the DNA’s instructions the cells deteriorate. We recently learned the importance of DNA in my Biology class. It is the brain of the cell and contains all the genetic coding needed to sustain life. UV light, when absorbed by the cell, causes mutations in it. This causes the DNA's proteins to alter and not work properly. Since bacteria and germs are unicellular with one nucleotide of DNA, they grow weak when it fails and barely have a chance of surviving afterwards.
I feel that the machines are a great tool to help save many lives from fatal diseases. They can disinfect a room in minimal time and as a result keep the hospital patients safer. It takes a machine around 30 minutes to disinfect an average sized room. Also, the machines cost $30,000 apiece so they aren’t that available to everyone. Even though the machines come with a big price tag, I think that this could actually make the hospitals want to use them more. Knowing the large amount of money put in for them, dealing with the half hour of operating time would become more bearable. Hopefully, if the ultraviolet light machines are not in a hospitals budget, they can be donated. They are so important to have because the light can help to prevent infectious outbreaks in the future!
Very interesting article. The technology, though very expensive and probably over the budget of some hospitals, could be very effective if it was widely used. The article didn't mention whether or not there were certain strains of bacteria that could protect themselves from UV light, or if it was possible that bacteria could become resistant because of cellular organelles or a specialized cell membrane that protects them from it. Also, I was wondering if viruses would be affected by it, because they are not necessarily considered "alive."
ReplyDeleteGreat job Mia! I enjoyed how you connected your blog post to the topic we are currently learning about in class. This made the article more interesting to read. I also found this new technology very cool. Even though it's very expensive; the ability to destroy diseases could be quite useful. Having this type of technology in hospitals would help a lot.
ReplyDeleteGood job Mia! This new technology sounds great because it can destroy different diseases. One bad thing about this technology is that the UV rays destroy the DNA which causes the cells to deteriorate. That could be a major problem. Other than that I think this technology could be very useful in hospitals to get rid of diseases.
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