Welcome to the UV Tech Insights newsletter for Dec. 16, 2021. It’s our last ultraviolet-focused newsletter of the year, and we have some perspective on 2021 for you.

As chief editor Maury Wright had pondered earlier this year, the flood of new germicidal UV (GUV) product and business announcements has decelerated over the past months. Is the slowdown supply and logistics related? Is it due to the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines? Or are there other factors in play, such as more considered product design cycles, extended study into the application and performance of UV-emitting devices in action — what do you think? It’s possible the answer could be “all of the above.”

We can hardly report that COVID is vanquished, unfortunately. But the fact is that we have been reminded that some of the greatest challenges to human wellbeing are invisible to the naked eye. There are incredibly determined innovators out there who continue to work the problem of safely and effectively applying both UV and visible antimicrobial light solutions to the built environment.

Having looked back at our year in UV, we’ve collected the top four most-popular articles we published on GUV this year below. From industry commentary on transparency of manufacturers’ UV-C LED data to a primer on UV sources and dosage capabilities, readers have still flocked to content that delivers guidance and perspective to set proper expectations both in the market and on the user end.

I’ve also highlighted my personal pick for UV feature article of the year. I selected the special report on the use of GUV technology in healthcare. Maury certainly grabbed my attention when he stated that the concerns of those whom he interviewed weren’t primarily driven by the coronavirus. It is ever more important to be vigilant about people’s exposure to pathogens when they are at their most vulnerable, in the clinical environment.

We certainly can’t forget the excellent series of UV-focused webcasts presented in 2021. If you’ve missed any of them, I urge you to visit the LEDs Magazine webcast archive page for on-demand access to these free talks before they expire from our website.

Circling back to my comments in the opening of this column, I’m not suggesting that we are going to drop the topic of germicidal UV or other light-based disinfection technologies. In fact, in early 2022 we will run contributed articles on communicating proper claims and safety information regarding antimicrobial light systems for end users or operators, as well as more in-depth technical details on photobiological risk assessment, complexities of radiation exposure limits, and how to measure UV-LED performance when designing systems for disinfection.

You’ll find more of interest in the body of today’s newsletter. Please keep in touch about content we post or to pitch a contributed article.

- Carrie Meadows, (603) 891-9382, [email protected]