Keeping it clean

All the goodness of ultraviolet light in your own home.

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If there’s one sure-fire way for a member of the public to give a health professional the irrits, it’s to complain bitterly about the inconvenience of wearing a facemask for an hour or two in these COVID times.

Even more annoying is the propensity of the non-medico masses to wear those masks in a random, and therefore fairly useless, manner and to reuse masks without properly sanitising them first (because that’s all a bit hard).

But help may be at hand, thanks to some clever thinking by a boffin called Patrick Grant at Florida Atlantic University in the US.

Grant, who is an associate professor of biomedical science, has come up with a compact, portable sanitising device for all sorts of masks (from N95s to home-stitched cloth creations), suitable, he claims, for use in the home or workplace.

According to a report in Newswise, the “portable hanging rack device” has been designed as an enclosed chamber that comes in two forms – a plastic container with a handle and a stainless steel compartment.

“The hanging rack and an ultraviolet-C (UV-C) light source is placed within either of these enclosed chambers and is capable of sterilising up to six masks simultaneously and quickly killing bacteria, yeasts, mould spores, and viruses,” the report says.

It’s the UV-C bulb that’s the key. Once the radiation hits the mask surface, the biological components of the pathogens lurking thereabouts are deactivated.

The device has been tested on a range of micro-organisms, including E. coli, and has proven to be effective after about one minute’s use. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has given the device a provisional patent.

“I created this device as a time-efficient way to sanitise facial coverings without damaging their effectiveness and enable wearers to safely reuse them in their daily lives,” Professor Grant said in a media release.

It is expected the device may be eventually available for a cost of under $100, with the potential to provide cost savings by extending the usability of existing masks.

What’s more, the handy gadget could potentially be used to sanitise other objects such as keys and smartphones in the luxury of the family home.

Clean-freaks and germaphobes, watch this space!

If you see something stupid, say something stupid … send pre-sterilised tips to felicity@medicalrepublic.com.au.