Today’s interesting fact has to do with Ultraviolet light.

This came about because of a question from my work colleague Saghir.

Ultraviolet light often abbreviated as UV, has shorter wavelengths than visible light.

UV is invisible to the eye, being filtered out by the lens.

It causes sunburn, cataracts in the lens, and has been shown to cause skin cancer by causing damage to the DNA of skin cells.

Much of UV light is blocked by the ozone layer.

Where this layer is depleted, increased skin cancers and cataracts have been noted in both people and animals.

They've been using UV light to deactivate micro-organisms in wine that would normally spoil the product.

The UV light doesn't necessarily kill the microbes but instead damages them in a way that they cannot reproduce and they stop growing.

Recently, this process has been used as an alternative to pasteurisation for milk.

The pasteurisation process currently used doesn't kill all the microbes that can be found in milk, and can cause chemical changes in milk, which some object to.

UV light does stop the microbes in milk that pasteurisation doesn't get rid of, and doesn't cause the chemical changes in the milk.

The use is being piloted and if all goes well it may replace pasteurisation.