
Cold plasma can inactivate or remove airborne viruses, UMich study shows - arto
https://news.umich.edu/cold-plasma-can-kill-99-9-of-airborne-viruses-u-m-study-shows/
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giardini
Sounds like "air ionizers":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_ioniser#Ions_versus_ozone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_ioniser#Ions_versus_ozone)

see also "Ions versus ozone" (part of the same article):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_ioniser#Ions_versus_ozone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_ioniser#Ions_versus_ozone)

I'm fairly certain any plasma is harder to create than ionized air and the
plasma could be maintained only in a relatively small confined space, whereas
ions can be freely distributed into a room.

Air ionizers are one option used for cleaning up black mold, fungus, etc. when
a building suffers water damage. They're sometimes used to "mop up" after the
usual methods of cleaning (washing with anti-fungals, antiseptics, etc.) have
been exhausted.

Turn on the ionizer, keep the air circulating, and periodically measure
cooties (fungus, bacteria, germs, viruses, etc.) until levels are below
tolerance. You leave the premises if using an ozone generator but some models
claim to limit ionization to the unit itself, in which case you should be able
to live on the premises. Any released ionized particles travel to the remotest
parts of the air circulation system for mop-up.

Its old tech that has existed almost since the first spark coil.

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userbinator
_“In those void spaces, you’re initiating sparks,” Clack said. “By passing
through the packed bed, pathogens in the air stream are oxidized by unstable
atoms called radicals. What’s left is a virus that has diminished ability to
infect cells.”_

That sounds just like ozone sterilisation, something that's been around for a
very long time. What's new about this variation?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_barrier_discharge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_barrier_discharge)

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zzzcpan
Probably nothing new. Seems like just supporting PR for all those more
expensive "cold plasma" air conditioners at the beginning of the season.

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mateo1
In order for those "soft kill" technologies to work, you need to get all the
"big" particles out of the fluid. Similarly to how potable water needs to be
filtered and flocculated before chlorination becomes effective. So while this
is an alternative to UV or higher-order filtration, it's not replacing
filters.

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01100011
Yeah but what do those radicals do to human tissue? Ozone isn't all that great
for your lungs.

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sametmax
Not the point. The idea is that you can quickly sterelize a room buy pumping
the stuff then flushing it. It opens the possibility of regular automatic ER
cleaning without the need for human intervention and error, plus faster.

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da_chicken
Okay, so you sterilize the air and then pump the sterilized air out. Where do
you want to get the air to replace that air with?

What good is sterilizing the air if you've got to replace the air after you've
sterilized it because it's contaminated with ozone? Is this just a case of not
wanting to vent air with more parasites than the atmosphere outside the ER?

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pilsetnieks
Ozone has a half-life of a few hours to a few days, depending on temperature
and airflow, so the problem eventually solves itself.

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da_chicken
Not if you're using it after every procedure.

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sbzodnsbd
\- You can use catalysts \- you can pump outside air and exhaust the ozone to
the outside (creates smog though)

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foxyv
My professor in college was studying this. The big deal was that you could use
cold plasma to deactivate bio-films which are resistant to even autoclaving. I
guess biofilms are a problem when you are trying to clean hospitals, surgical
tools, etc...

The only issue was that she needed helium to ignite the cold plasma in the RF
generator. Helium is stupid expensive for this sort of thing.

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ape4
All hail the .1%

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undecisive
I remember watching a talk from a chap who started his own cleaning business.
They found themselves doing more and more "niche" cleaning - mopping up blood
spillages in nightclubs, working with police cleaning houses after gruesome
murders or just old guys who fell down the stairs and weren't found for
months. Apparently, getting brain matter out of stair carpets is a real
challenge.

Anyway, they were using off-the-shelf cleaners for this kind of thing, with
99.9% promises on the bottles. At some point, they had to submit samples of
their cleaning agents for testing.

Turns out, some of the 0.1% of viruses and bacteria happened to include the
really bad ones - Hepatitis I believe was one of the scariest survivors
(particularly problematic in nightclub blood cleanups) and some of them even
thrived in the chemicals.

That said, I don't think that's what this article is saying, as they aren't
testing different pathogens - they're testing a single pathogen, and only 0.1%
of the mass passed through remained viable. Still, don't underestimate that
0.1%. If it can multiply, it can kill you.

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ilsel
Yeah, make them immune to that too. Improves the chances of life spreading
across universe.

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mrob
Plasma isn't like antibiotics. There's no enzyme that can degrade it, and no
transporter that can pump it out of the cell. Its damage is untargeted, so the
only way to resist it is to become generally tougher, which has high metabolic
cost. The microbes that don't evolve this will out-compete them. Worrying
about resistance to plasma (or similarly indiscriminate antimicrobials, like
bleach or ionizing radiation) is like worrying about animals evolving armor
plating to resist bullets.

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tsmarsh
Seems like a really good way of creating a niche for plasma proof viruses.

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asaddhamani
Could this lead to mutated super-viruses?

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mic47
Could virus mutate to be resistant to that? Sure, why not. Will it be super-
virus? Depends on what is super-virus. If it means more deadly, then probably
not, since this resistance is most likely not related to deadliness.

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gpm
In fact the mutation is likely to make it slightly less deadly, since it's
likely to involve tradeoffs that make the virus less fit for other purposes.

