A bright, blue beam lights up an empty room; the intensity of its wavelength so powerful it can destroy the DNA inside of a cell. And within a matter of a few hours, the space – its surfaces and the air inside it – is cleansed.
While the technology isn’t new, its application and the business venture behind it are – a product of the pandemic that has forced some businesses to pivot and others to shut their doors.
“I started calling people and saying, ‘Hey, you guys can’t open up and when you can open up people aren’t going to feel great about going in, you should really think about this,'” Michael Bird, PureBeam co-founder, told NTX Inno.
Prior to the pandemic, Bird was in the business of hosting corporate events. He said in early February, he began to hear word of people coming down with COVID-19. As March came and a global pandemic declared, Bird watched as event after event was cancelled or put on hold, losing almost $2 million in business in a 10 day period.
Looking for a way to pivot, Bird and his three-person team came across UVC light technology, which produces light with a wavelength that can destroy DNA, making it as effective as a sanitizer for bacteria, germs and viruses, including COVID-19. Bird took the lighting equipment that was being used for event production and retrofitted it with UVC light and created the recently launched medical-grade UV-light based sanitizing company PureBeam.
“People want to get back to work and everybody is going through the same thing, and if we can help out in any way, that’s really all we’re trying to do is make people confident and happy and excited to return to work and kids going back to school,” Bird said. “We’ve always tried to help people a lot and it just seemed natural to try to get this rolling and get as many people as we can to try to help people out and clean as many places as we can.”
Launched within the last month, Carrollton-based PureBeam sends a light technician to setup and sanitize a space, which may help small businesses keep customers and employees safe as they reopen. Originally the focus was on schools, gyms and small businesses. However, the PureBeam crew has since been hired to work in title and law firms around the DFW area, after they found that the disinfectant spray they had been using was damaging documents and wall art.
Bird said the goal of PureBeam is to help businesses reopen, but it has also allowed contract workers from the event business to keep a paycheck, training a number of its workers to use the UVC lights starting in May.
“A lot of these guys and gals were freelance and that was their only source of income, and now they’re at home… so we really started jumping and trying to get our guys working again because we’ve been friends with these people for 20+ years,” Bird said. “These are hardworking people, hardworking friends and family. We were just trying to figure out what we could do to get everyone back to work.”
UVC technology has been used for years to sanitize spaces in hospitals to disinfect rooms between patients. However, it has found new use during the pandemic to sanitize office and small business spaces. In New York, the technology is being used to help sanitize the city’s subway system.
Bird said he thinks the pandemic will have a lingering effect in people’s minds and those of business owners. He said many people will have a heightened awareness of health and safety, especially when it comes to high-traffic spaces. Currently, PureBeam only operates in North Texas. However, Bird said the company has plans to further expand in the region. Even if cases of the virus continue to drop in the coming months, Bird said he plans to roll PureBeam into the event production business, where he sees the focus on safety continuing for a long time ahead.
“What I have seen is that people have become very creative to get or give services… I really think that it shows that people can still do things and be safe if we're cleaning and masking and distancing,” Bird said. “When PureBeam leaves a clean site, or a clean zone as we call it, I can tell a lot of people are less anxious, they feel good about where they are."
