Nukit at https://t.co/62nBfO0NBA
Distributing The Future More Evenly.
Jun 16 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Once again folks, blue accent lighting is not GUV.
Breathless misinformation about what specific mitigations are in place in any given location isn't helpful when we are trying to educate the public.
This is the amount of visible light you get from a powerful 60w KrCl excimer lamp placed against a wall.
Jan 25 • 4 tweets • 6 min read
To clarify a few things- no real-world Far-UVC installation has ever been found to exceed NIOSH or OSHA ozone limits. Those limits have been in place for decades, and if they are unsafe- that is not a Far-UVC issue. That is an issue that will require a massive overhaul of the industry to accommodate new standards- starting with basically a complete ban on photocopiers and laser printers.
Next, respiratory infections are the fourth leading cause of death in the world- ozone, isn’t.
.
There are few interventions without downsides, not vaccines, not antivirals. In the hundred-year history of GUV, the same number of people have been permanently harmed by GUV as have been by masks- exactly none. There is no real-world evidence to date that GUV causes any long-term harm.
There are countless industries that rely on GUV, and workers spend decades working around it- there is no “violet lung” that corresponds to what we see workers in other professions who chronically inhale dangerous compounds. Even kitchen workers- we now see from the lung damage they suffer that we need to be more careful in our homes. There are no corresponding respiratory issues with workers who spend decades around GUV.
That does not mean there is no need for caution- just that there is little indication of imminent danger from real-world data that hasn’t been ginned up in a laboratory to achieve a predetermined outcome.
Is more research needed? Absolutely, but jumping to discredit one of the most powerful tools we have based on studies that share the same questionable methodologies that anti-mask and anti-filtration studies have used is irresponsible.
We all know there are huge financial incentives to discredit costly infrastructure-based mitigations. When studies with dubious methodologies emerge declaring IAQ measures that would cost companies and landlords thousands of dollars per room conveniently come under attack- some skepticism is in order.
*For the record, I donated the Far-UVC lamps and ozone meters for the Pang et al. study but sell none of the products supplied.who.int/news/item/09-1…
>The studies above suggest that Far-UVC devices produce ozone at a rate that exceeds safe levels even in a lab
The “lab” in question is a hermetically sealed chamber- a giant plastic bag:
A ∼21 m3 Teflon reaction chamber (approximately 3 × 3 × 2 m, L × W × H) is constructed of 50-μm-thick FEP Teflon film
So, if you live in a plastic bag, Far-UVC is not for you.
Next the "office":
..the windows, gaps around utility penetrations, and supply/return vents were sealed with plastic sheeting or tape..
Is your office sealed with plastic sheeting and tape? So, how is this a realistic experiment and not one configured to achieve a predetermined result? Why have no similar measurements been taken at any of the countless places where Far-UVC is installed in the real world?
Next, secondary compounds:
..and via introduction of various components to simulate a realistic indoor environment..
This is the key sentence that should bother people- because they take really important research, and then simply rigged the test to get the result they wanted.
We know that many common cleaning compounds break down into harmful secondary compounds on exposure to UV. They introduced similar compounds, knowing they would break down into harmful secondary compounds, and they could say, “Ah ha! Far-UVC bad!”.
A lie by omission is still a lie- what they don't tell you is that "Goldilocks" mix of precursor compounds and regular old sunlight has the same effect-
Photolysis-Driven Indoor Air Chemistry Following Cleaning of Hospital Wards:
Of course, they also don’t tell you that the problem is addressed by simply using low VOC materials and cleaning compounds- as industry is moving towards, because the problem isn’t specific to Far-UVC. They are just bad news in general, and Far-UVC has nothing to do with that.
A modeling study of the impact of photolysis on indoor air quality
So if you put *any* UV source, including sunlight, in a room with compounds known to emit VOCs in response to UV, you have a problem. Even with no light and some of those same chemicals, you get VOCs.
But they really, really want you to believe that Far-UVC light is the problem that needs to be addressed not the VOC-releasing compounds? Why? Oh, right, because it's a massive potential expenditure that certain parties desperately want to avoid.
Unsurprisingly, the same business interests that have been pushing "personal measures" like handwashing so they aren't held liable for failing to pay for filtration and ventilation upgrades also don't want to pay for Far-UVC- and desperately need everyone to know how bad this really expensive intervention is. So, we get well-timed anti-GUV studies like this one to go with the recent anti-filtration studies designed to achieve the same objectives.
This is one of those simultaneously interesting and horrifying developments that Long-COVID has brought us- comrades unable to leave their beds but gamely taking the bull by the horns, flipping LC off, and cooking from there.
There's actually some potential for improvement since this is a huge, huge class of product here in China. This is because so many of us live in dormitories where, technically, cooking isn't permitted. But of course food from the canteen is not always from our region, to our taste, or available when we want to snack- and most of us don't consider anything but a hot meal to be a meal.
Usually, they are shown as camping or outdoor products- but basically, they are used almost exclusively in personal sleeping areas and designed to be safe there. Below is a pressure cooker for making rice and stews that runs off inexpensive self-heating chemical packs (they come with instant meals here) so that it doesn't flip cheap circuit breakers. It's also insulated so it doesn't cause burns.
If this (bed cookware?) is a class of product you are using, and there are problems- tag me, I might be able to find something better and cheaper for everyone. It sucks that we have to, but best to accept that and make sure people have access to better tools.
I know it can seem odd- the way Nukit solicits problems instead of going out and finding problems to solve, but this is a really important part of the design for marginalized communities.
The process has to be the marginalized community pulling- asking, for what it needs. Not push- you as an outsider, deciding what they need for them. As an engineer and designer- you make what you are asked to make, and only what you are asked to make. Even if that's not cool or interesting. Cool and interesting is about you getting a write-up in tech media- not them.
Bad design- vanity design that promotes the personal brand of the designer or their institution instead of making scalable, affordable, practical solutions, can quickly make a problem that a marginalized community is facing significantly worse.
Many people want to believe that the problems a given marginalized community faces are trivial or easily surmountable- so any product that plausibly claims to solve one of those problems can quickly receive a tremendous amount of publicity. If these theoretical solutions exist, people can comfort themselves that those marginalized who don’t avail themselves of those solutions are, in part, to blame.
Discussion of systemic obstacles- e.g. the unhoused being unable to receive mail, receive a fraction of the publicity and media coverage over yet another completely impractical $10,000 extra special cardboard sleeping pod.
Design and engineering for marginalized communities are, more often than not, spectacularly racist, ableist, and sexist. African engineers apparently do not exist- special white guys in their second year at MIT need to solve the problems for an entire continent. Likewise with indigenous groups, the disabled- there is a near conviction that professional eyes do not exist in these communities, have never examined these problems in detail before and that able, Western engineers, with a casual glance, can do better than any within those groups has managed in decades, often with far more training, and first-hand experience with the problem.
If folks in a marginalized community think you bring something special to the table- let them know you are available, and trust them to utilize that how they see fit. The assumption they are not competent to source assistance as they need it when it is offered is bizarre narcissism.
A vanity engineering project, which purports to solve a problem no one in that community asked anyone to solve, can easily draw attention bandwidth and scant resources away from problems they really do need to be solved. If you are not a member of that community, you don't know what the pain points and priorities are.
As a non-marginalized person, or even just someone marginalized differently, you may have resources that enable you to gain trust and raise funds in ways the community you want to help cannot. It’s not for you to raise funds for your fun project that solves a problem you find interesting at the expense of more important challenges that the community is facing. Those clumsy efforts, once they fail, can be held up as evidence the problems being faced are unsolvable or that the community is unable to handle funds. You can easily end up burning the bridges others desperately need- while yours remain intact.
Lastly “I was just trying to help” is the most cowardly of excuses and should never, ever come up. It blames the marginalized for your clumsy efforts and casts them as ungrateful for not submitting to further harm for the sake of your vanity and desire to feel good about yourself.
Say what you can do, do only what you are asked, involve community members in every aspect of the design cycle, do not expect good intentions to substitute for competence, and make sure the nature of distribution does not do economic harm.
Anything else, treat them like a focus group providing feedback on your product that you want to bring to market, and pay them accordingly- because you aren't doing anyone any favors, and they should not be asked to indulge you for free.
Jan 7 • 5 tweets • 5 min read
Well, I don't really have the option of not meticulously accounting for any donations I receive for that kind of thing- and the time I spent on the extra bookkeeping would be time I could not spend solving problems.
So I'm better off just trying to keep the business profitable enough to find the special projects. Although huge thanks🙏🏻
That said- I do have some ideas for stuff that people could be doing- other than being the last remaining COVID-Aware people in the world screaming at each other on Twitter for COVID heresy, as seems to be so popular😣
A lot of the problem with educating the public is that most people are basing their idea of "the science" on half-remembered lessons from middle school decades ago.
Unfortunately, very little is going to change because for both classrooms or homeschoolers, there are nearly no lesson plans- particularly Creative Commons licensed, that teach the best modern science knows of fighting respiratory infection.
Kids are mostly learning the same garbage they did a decade ago- and parents who see their textbooks and help them with their homework are having those old, out-of-date notions reinforced. This is going to really, really undermine efforts if we are saying something when "even kids" know "better". Someone needs to provide an updated curriculum- even if they can't widely deploy it, yet.
Now, US textbook politics being what I've heard they are, getting the best science about this in your average US school seems like it's going to be a nightmare- but more and more parents are home-schooling, and you can't fight for a better curriculum if you don't have it to offer.
A working group is needed for:
Lesson plans
Artwork
Workbooks and tests
Lab classes. (Ballons and N95s, showing how electrostatic attraction traps particles smaller than the hole in a mask, that kind of thing)
And above all- it needs to be absolutely, fully Open Source so anyone can use it. CC-BY-SA is the license I like for this kind of thing. You don't have to be "sciencey" just being a good artist or good at explaining stuff to kids would be huge.
This was the first product Nukit has made where it’s really designed with the adversarial mindset that we discussed earlier. Designing for residential use is easy- designing for all the issues that can come up in a commercial setting is something else. The Tempest draws from cyber and premise security so the design far more paranoid than you’d think an air purifier warrants, but the stakes are every bit as high as as data theft or a facility breech. A refused or disabled device means infectious air, potential disability and death- so why not build on a foundation of excess caution so we don’t have to go back later and patch weak points in response to stakeholder objections?
So, as part of the design cycle, when looking at @Vailima1’s initial template, we tried to see what could go wrong. How would we, as attackers- or simply detractors, exploit and abuse this machine? What would be even a remotely plausible justification not to have this machine installed in a government office, or a bank, or a school?
So we do a fair amount of R&D and most of it actually comes to nothing- but sometimes kind of interesting nothing.
Recently we did a deep dive on CLO2, aka Chlorine Dioxide, a popular, kind of scammy product that was pushed in various products as a mitigation early in the pandemic, to see if there was a tiny bit of science at the root of it all and if anything might come of it.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_…
We’re only going to talk about CLO2 gas as an airborne mitigation- but some people were ingesting it, which is a horribly bad idea. There is zero evidence if ingested, injected, etc., it will do anything but harm you and then eventually kill you in a really painful way.
