Robust scrubbing by mass transit workers is producing something commuters rarely see: subway cars that look, feel and even smell clean. Such measures cut the threat of catching the coronavirus, experts say - but maybe not as much as you'd think.
A contractor cleans a subway car at the 96th Street station to control the spread of COVID-19, Thursday, July 2, 2020, in New York. Mass transit systems around the world have taken unprecedented — and expensive — steps to curb the spread of the coronavirus, including shutting down New York subways overnight and testing powerful ultraviolet lamps to disinfect seats, poles and floors.
In Chicago, rail cars are cleaned every day before starting service and are prowled at night by crews wearing backpack-style electrostatic sprayers that cover all interior surfaces with disinfectant. Cleaning a train car at a maintenance yard overnight — or even several times during the day, as New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority does — might not help the transit employee or passenger stuck in close quarters with a coughing person.
“But to what extent are we now overspending, or veering too far into security theater?” Executive Director Nick Sifuentes asked recently. That possibility may be on the horizon. A 2018 study and another published this month, both of which Brenner contributed to, concluded that low levels of a certain type of ultraviolet light, called far-UVC light, can be circulated continuously in an enclosed space and kill some forms of human coronavirus as effectively as conventional UV light — without the harmful effects to human eyes and skin.
Fred Maxik, whose company, Healthe, makes far-UVC light systems that are being used in office buildings and schools, cautioned that far-UVC light is not necessarily a panacea for anxious subway riders.
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