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  • Getting sick and having absolutely no way to prevent it from happening: not ideal.

  • While the medical community has made huge strides in understanding how pathogens cause

  • disease and developing treatments to fight against infection, detecting airborne viruses

  • and preventing them from entering our bodies remains unreasonably difficult.

  • And by difficult, I mean virtually impossible, because there's not a whole lot to protect

  • us when we breathe.

  • But there's hopeand it comes in the form of our fourth state of matter, plasma.

  • Engineers just demonstrated a proof of concept plasma reactor that inactivated or removed

  • 99.9% of a test virus from the air in a fraction of a second

  • Prized for its powerful disinfecting qualities, plasma has found applications in plenty of

  • industries to chemically extract particles from the air, but using it to target viruses

  • is a totally novel application.

  • Viruses are the most abundant biological entity on Earth, and some of them, like measles and

  • the common cold, travel by way of sneezing, coughing, and breathing.

  • And do they travel.

  • Sneezes can launch germs up to 8 meters in a matter of minutes, where many can remain

  • alive in the air for hours.

  • There's even a theory that viruses are able to hop on the backs of dust and soil particles

  • and coast around the world on high-altitude air currents.

  • The global air purifier market is projected to reach approximately 6.2 Billion U.S. dollars

  • by 2023, so clearly this is a thing.

  • And if you have one at home, it's probably either one that's designed to trap particles

  • in a filter, or deactivate them through a chemical reaction.

  • All have their downfalls.

  • Electronic air filters like electrostatic precipitators can be efficient for extracting

  • particles, but they don't remove gases and smells and can produce harmful by-products.

  • Mechanical systems, like HEPA filters, can have difficulty capturing and removing all

  • pollutants that enter an indoor space, especially one that's not air-tight.

  • They also tend to have trouble with microorganisms and bacteria bypassing the filter.

  • Another type of air purifier, like ozone generators, are specifically designed to deactivate or

  • destroy pollutants.

  • But they actually just release an inorganic molecule that's a toxic component of smog.

  • So what makes plasma so promising?

  • Let's break it down.

  • First observed by Sir William Crookes in 1879, plasma is the fourth state of matter after

  • liquids, gases, and solids.

  • It's comprised of a cloud of free-flowing ions, or electrically charged atoms, but the

  • cloud itself has no overall charge.

  • While plasma exists when molecules are heated to extremely high temperatures, it can also

  • occur at room temperature if the molecules are exposed to a strong electrical field.

  • This is known as cold plasma, aka non-thermal plasma, and it's the kind we want to use

  • if we want breathable air—I mean, normal plasma could make things clean too, we just

  • can't breathe air at that high a temperature.

  • Now, just to be clear, plasma is already being explored by industries to take pollutants

  • out of our air and water.

  • But using plasma to rip viruses apart?

  • That's a whole new ball of electrons that engineers at the University of Michigan just

  • unraveled.

  • Using a cold plasma reactor, they were able to inactivate or remove 99.9% of a test virus

  • from their experimental airstream in a fraction of a second.

  • It works like this: as the virus flows into the reactor pipe, a large voltage is introduced

  • to create an electric discharge, or spark.

  • A bed of dielectric beads sandwiched between the electrodes maintain the spark of plasma,

  • whose unstable atoms oxidize the virus as it moves through the pipe.

  • Upon exiting, the virus is merely a shell of its former selfwith an extremely diminished

  • capacity for infecting a host.

  • However, it's not entirely clear how cold plasma works to inactivate viruses: it could

  • be that the presence of the electric field causes their shells to expand and rupture,

  • or that the fragments of the air molecules chemically attack them.

  • But hey, it works.

  • This successful proof of concept holds a whole lot of promise for putting the brakes on airborne

  • viruses.

  • It combines both air purification and inactivation of airborne pathogens, making it a more effective

  • option for disease control than the air filters we currently have.

  • The University of Michigan team has already begun trialing cold plasma's effectiveness

  • at nearby livestock farms, where the risk of animals contracting airborne viruses is

  • extremely high.

  • Because if we breathe 3,400 gallons of air per day, it'd be great if it were virus-free.

  • And we humans breathe a lot, an average of 3,400 gallons per day.

  • Did you know that sneezes can launch germs up to 38 yards per second?

  • If you want to learn more about viruses, check out Sick,

  • Don't forget to subscribe for more Seeker.

  • I'll see you next time, thanks for watching.

Getting sick and having absolutely no way to prevent it from happening: not ideal.

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