Blue LEDs to kill bacteria and preserve food

Copied with a hat tip to Soylent News (one of several groups attempting to replace Slashdot with a better news-sharing collaboration, recommended)

Blue LEDs Are the Future of Food Preservation |

from the blue-lightsaber-to-the-rescue dept.
posted by janrinok on Friday August 07, @15:44 (Science)

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[0]AnonTechie writes:

Blue LEDs, once confined to the world of digital displays and Blu-ray players, have just found a new calling: food preservation. New research at the National University of Singapore shows the potential of using blue LEDs as a chemical-free method to kill bacteria that lead to spoilage.

Earlier this year, public concern about artificial preservatives pushed fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s, Subway, and Panera to seriously [1]rethink the ways they keep their food fresh. Using blue LEDs could potentially kill the same bacteria that preservatives do without any of the scary, outrage-rousing chemicals.

The researchers looked at the effect of blue LED exposure on three of the major colonies of bugs that cause food to rot and stomachs to turn: Listeria, E. coli, and Salmonella. Their paper, published in the journal [2]Food Microbiology, showed that the blue lights succeeded in inactivating the bacteria, with even better results in cold temperatures and acidic conditions. Foods like fresh-cut fruit, chilled meats, and ready-to-eat seafood, like sushi and lox, could all someday benefit from the pathogen-killing lights.

[3]Blue LEDs Are the Future of Food Preservation


[4]Original Submission

Discuss this story at:
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=15/08/07/0815244

Links:

0. AnonTechie - SoylentNews User

  1. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/01/02/us/ap-us-fast-food-real-food.html

2. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0740002014003116

3. Blue LEDs Are the Future of Food Preservation

4. Blue LEDs Are the Future of Food Preservation: SoylentNews Submission

Haven’t heard that in the news yet though hmmm

Nice find, hopefully the testing will show solid and persistent results…

limited to 2015 papers:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2015&q=National+University+of+Singapore++blue+LED+bacteria&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5

personally i believe every webpage i read on the www

You should, I read on a blog that it is international law that everything, and every photo on the internet, has to be totally true and absolutely real.

Sounds like somebody is mixing UV and blue leds. Hard UV can get rid of bacteria, but not the type with a lot of blue light (It is not hard UV).

I’m afraid AnonTechie doesn’t have a clue what he’s writing about. Even at the first sentence.

Blu-ray players use 405nm near UV lasers, not blue and not an led. H) Blu ray does not mean it uses blue light rays. It’s a marketing name. :ghost:

The actual published science (at the Google Scholar link above) will help.

As to lasers and diodes: laser diode - Google Search

Note also there are quite a few acne treatments now using blue light:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=acne+blue+light

turns out the bacteria that are sensitive contain a pigment that absorbs that wavelength and heats them up.

Worth reading a bit. I often find my opinion can be updated by looking at something written since the last time I learned about a subject.
Which was usually about 40 years ago, admittedly. YMMV.
Exhausting, tho’.

Most reporters don’t know what they are talking about and Brian Williams was there.

Does this mean we can have refrigerators that are simply a box with blue lights? :smiley:

No.

Anything beyond surface bacteria is beyond reach of the UV/LED :wink: