Preventing Legionnaires' Disease with UV Technology

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. Well doctor Peter Mihllos with us today and live longer and prosper is o motto. Well, doctor Milos, how do we live longer? And listen. I don’t worry about prospering. I’m worried about living longer.

0:17 Speaker 2 Well, John, Today we’re going to talk about a fascinating topic, and that is Legionnaire’s disease. And Legionnaire’s disease has become a big problem in some places. As we know it happened also in New York and some of the cooling towers and some of the buildings. And Legionnaire’s disease is a bacteria. The good news is it does not spread

0:38 human to human. It grows in these hot water areas where there’s cooling tanks and hot weather, and the bacteria grows. And one of the problems is if you don’t catch it early, it can cause a severe pneumonia. You can end up in the ICU. And some people have even died from Legionnaire’s disease. And there are solutions. And in

1:02 places like Florida, what they do is they have ultraviolet sea germicidal lamps and what they do is they kill mold viruses and bacteria. The Nobel Prize in Medicine in nineteen oh three was killing skin infections using UVC light and before antibiotics. That’s how they treated sepsis, which is an infection in the blood. They used to let the

1:27 blood out, zapp it with UVC and put it back in the vessels. Now they use it in aquariums, they use it in dirty ponds, swimming pools, even use it because when you have an inline uv lamp and the water travels through, you don’t have to use as much chlorine.

1:44 And in the early nineteen hundredths after it got the Nobel Prize, there was actually a bunch of actually Greeks who lived in Marseille, France, who came up with the idea and they started using UVCED lamps through these clear glass lamps. So the water why that people would drink and shower in in Marseille, France, they zapped it with UVC.

2:05 So if you put like they do in Florida inside the cooling towers, submersible UVC lamps, and these lamps are like one hundred dollars you can buy them on Amazon. Actually they submersed them in the water and it killed because it disrupts the DNA of viruses, mold, and bacteria.

2:25 They also put it in the air return handlers and air conditioning system and hospitals and nursing homes and many of the buildings in Florida have it because it zaps the air and you and I actually used them during COVID if you recall, And we’ve been telling others to put it inside their hair handlers because it’s very inexpensive

2:44 to do so you constantly are cleaning the air from all types of mold, virus and bacteria. But specifically now we’re worried about legionnaires. Is these the other thing in Florida. What they do is they do random sample testing and cultures of these cooling towers, even whirlpool baths and hot tubs.

3:04 The legionnaires tends to want to grow in those two and I know of cases where people caught it in hot tubs. And then you just have these UV lamps or at night when you put the cover, for example, on hot tub, you have these subversible UV lamps and they’re all night killing all the bad bacterias. I think

3:22 every building in Manhattan, inexpensive quick solution is installed in the air handlers and all these large buildings, and also put it inside the cooling towers and also the people who service the cooling towers. If you have dirty hands or people who go to the bath and sometimes they don’t wash their hands and you’re cleaning or working on

3:43 these cooling towers, there should be protocols that people should wear a mat and glove.

3:48 Speaker 1 It kills the bacteria and the ultra violet the same way some of those were. During COVID we had those air filters with the blue light in them. Is that correct?

3:59 Speaker 2 Absolutely? Yeah, because it not only as a HEPA filter, but as the air passed by, it got zapped with the blue with the blue light and it killed the bacteria. And it is very important because when these bacteria spread they cause problems the good users. There are antibiotics to treat it, and of course we’re in a great New

4:19 York city and great hospitals like Columbia, Presbyterian, your hostel and YU. We have all these great medical centers man Sina and we have great access to great care. And fortunately, you know, if you catch it early and you treat it, it can be controlled. But I think that if people.

4:39 Speaker 1 At relatively inexpensive, right.

4:43 Speaker 2 Very inexpensive. The uv boats are basically one hundred dollars and they already use them in Florida. They can just copy what they do in the buildings in Florida and the cooling towers, and also what a lot of people do in a lot of swimming pool and even on my you know, whole house water filter. Some people have

5:02 it so as the water is coming, for example, people with well water, you can also zap it with this UVC germicidal light. You don’t want it to be exposed directly to humans. The reason we don’t use it for skin infections because it could cause cancer because it’s very high energy. But it does kill the bugs and the

5:18 bad bacteria in the water. It doesn’t harm humans when it’s not in direct contact with us. And that’s just something very important that we want the public to know about that there are solutions and to keep listening to WABC to learn more health tips on how to live long and prosper well.

5:40 Speaker 1 Doctor Peter Mihellos, thank you so much for coming on this Sunday morning. And that could save a lot of lives. And it kills the viruses, and it’s so strange that the ultra violets. So let me ask you a silly question.

5:59 If the yeah cooling system is outdoors and you took the top off and the sunlight hit it, is that enough ultraviolet rays?

6:10 Speaker 2 No, this is that’s UVA and UVB from the sun. This is UVC, which is a super high energy. That’s the one that the layer protects us. If we guys hit directly with UVC, we would die. And that’s why the mole virus and bacteria. It’s a specific wavelength of light called UVC, the one we get from the sun.

6:29 Make sure it doesn’t hit us, right, It doesn’t hit us. They wanted to be hitting the water tank and the water cool is not us directly inside the closed air handler to zap things in the air handler and in the portable units inside the chamber, those blue light chambers.

6:45 That doesn’t hit us directly.

6:47 Speaker 1 Understood, Doctor Peter Michillos, thank you for your wisdom and thank you for your to keep some of our listeners live longer and we’ll catch up again real soon.

6:59 Speaker 2 Thank you, John for all is getting the truth out on the Cat’s round Table