Dr Thomas Bone-Winkel, founder and CEO of oji Europe, explains the potential impact the company believes its hypochlorous acid-based oji active air system could have in eradicating harmful airborne pathogens in hospitals and other healthcare facilities, and thus significantly reducing the chances of infection for patients, staff, and visitors
SARS-CoV-1 and MERS are familiar terms to me because I happened to be in China when these broke out. I never wonder why Chinese tourists wear masks wherever they go. People from China have come to hate viruses, and want to protect themselves whenever and wherever they go. When SARS-CoV-2 became a pandemic in early 2020, I was head of the supervisory board of a live entertainment company, and knew our artists would not see a stage for the next years to come. That was not acceptable – so I started calling my engineering friends around the world. The best was my friend in civil engineering from the Punjab. Punjabi people can make ends meet with very little.
We took to the blackboard to discuss the requirements for a technical answer to infections in buildings: (i) it has to be natural, as anything chemical would not be acceptable, (ii) it has to be cheap, as it is a pandemic, and we need to take care of the poorest amongst us, and (iii) it has to be thorough, as just marginal betterments would not be good enough. Filtering does not comply with (ii) and (iii), so we would have to introduce an agent into the air, and any other substance apart from HOCl (hypochlorous acid) does not comply with (i); thus HOCl it was.
One stepping stone after another
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