How does UV light sanitize surfaces?
In: Chemistry
UV light creates free radicals (they basically destabilize certain molecules) which will then go around and react with things. It may react with DNA and pull electrons off it. When it does that the DNA can physically kink or take on a conformation that makes DNA replication errors more common. When the DNA replication machinery comes around, it may a hard time replicating on a kink and may ‘stutter’ and insert the wrong nucleotide, which just amplifies the DNA damage in the form of mutation going on. If DNA is damaged extensively, cells may even commit suicide. That’s what a sunburn is, damaged skin cells taking one for the team so they don’t pass on crappy mutated genes that might turn into cancer.
That being said, it takes a lot of UV to damage something to that point and most UV sanitation wands are kind of a scam because just waving them around won’t expose microbes to enough UV radiation to actually kill most of them.
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