Is UV Light Effective At Killing Mold?

You can google UV light and mold and stumble onto a plethora of information and mis-information relative to UV (ultra violet) light and its attempt to control mold. According to the EPA, 92 million Americans live in substandard air quality. The concept of UV mold control sounds great! I can plug in an appliance and all my mold worries simply disappear. Well, it’s not quite that easy. UV light will indeed break up the DNA of mold, which will result in the death of the cell.

On paper, it makes complete sense. In reality, the light must be within 1-2 inches from the mold to remove just 99 percent of the mold. Couple that with the fact that it takes 2 to 10 seconds to kill the mold that is within 1-2 inches from the light. If you are like me, I am trying to picture the mold spores being “herded” to the light, then “corralling” them for 10 seconds so that the light will do its work. (News Flash – Herding mold and corralling mold is a very difficult thing to do, even for the best cowboys). Additionally, if we could herd the mold to within 1-2 inches from the light and then corral the spores for 10 seconds, the kill rate is only 99 percent. Thats not great. In fact, assuming that we were able to pull this off, and convince 1 million spores to hang out near the light, and convince them to have a little convention near the light for 10 seconds, there would still be 10,000 surviving spores. So this becomes one of the all time most ineffective ways to control mold in the home.

If you have high mold spore counts in your home or office, this passive attempt is going to be disappointing at best. If you are concerned with air quality, and mold spore counts are elevated in your home or office, Pure Maintenance two step VaPure fog system is the most effective, most economical method in the world, to return the home or office to safe air quality levels.