On this episode of Aerospace Unplugged, we'll be talking to an orthopedic surgeon who found his way into aviation in the most unusual way. It's a fascinating story that was brought to light during the early stages of the pandemic, but the work of our guest, Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg dates back much further than that. Dr. K is the inventor of what is now called the Honeywell UV Treatment System. It's a device designed to roll up and down in an aircraft aisle and use UV light to treat surfaces on an airplane on the light that's emitted from that device is highly effective in eliminating pathogens and viruses. Dr. Kreitenberg, who is both an orthopedic surgeon and an engineer originally called this product, the Germ Falcon before his company Dimer, partnered up with Honeywell in 2020 to take his vision to a wider audience. This technology is now being used by airlines and aircraft operators around the world, but it was a heck of a journey for Arthur to get to this point.
On this episode of Aerospace Unplugged, we'll be talking to an orthopedic surgeon who found his way into aviation in the most unusual way. It's a fascinating story that was brought to light during the early stages of the pandemic, but the work of our guest, Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg dates back much further than that. Dr. K is the inventor of what is now called the Honeywell UV Treatment System. It's a device designed to roll up and down in an aircraft aisle and use UV light to treat surfaces on an airplane on the light that's emitted from that device is highly effective in eliminating pathogens and viruses. Dr. Kreitenberg, who is both an orthopedic surgeon and an engineer originally called this product, the Germ Falcon before his company Dimer, partnered up with Honeywell in 2020 to take his vision to a wider audience. This technology is now being used by airlines and aircraft operators around the world, but it was a heck of a journey for Arthur to get to this point.
Adam Kress:
Welcome to Aerospace Unplugged. I'm Adam Kress. Hello, and thank you for joining me for the Aerospace Unplugged podcast brought to you by Honeywell Aerospace. I'm your host, Adam Kress, and this is your behind the scenes look into All thing's Aerospace. On this episode of Aerospace Unplugged, we'll be talking to an orthopedic surgeon who found his way into aviation in the most unusual way. It's a fascinating story that was brought to light during the early stages of the pandemic, but the work of our guest, Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg dates back much further than that.
Adam Kress:
Dr. K as many call him is the inventor of what is now called the Honeywell UV Treatment System, it's a device designed to roll up and down in an aircraft aisle and use UV light to treat surfaces on an airplane on the light that's emitted from that device is highly effective in eliminating pathogens and viruses. Dr. Kreitenberg, who is both an orthopedic surgeon and an engineer originally called this product, the Germ Falcon before his company Dimer, partnered up with Honeywell in 2020 to take his vision to a wider audience. This technology is now being used by airlines and aircraft operators around the world, but it was a heck of a journey for Arthur to get to this point. So without any further ado, I'd like to welcome in Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg to the podcast. Thanks for joining us today.
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
Thank you, Adam. It's really fun to be here.
Adam Kress:
All right. Let's jump right into it here. So for the lay person out there who may not know what UV light does and how effective it is, take me through the 101 level. What does UV do and how does it eliminate these viruses?
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
Sure. UV is actually ultraviolet and it's produced by the sun. It's divided up into three bands A, B, and C. A and B get through the Earth's atmosphere and cause things like sunburn. And of course, plants use it to do photosynthesis. UVC is a narrower band of wavelength of the UV light that doesn't penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. So microorganisms and people have never developed a mechanism to protect themselves from UVC. Hence, UVC can really kill microbes. It's been used in healthcare for about a hundred years.
Adam Kress:
Okay. So I imagine that's probably how you were inspired being a doctor yourself. How did you make the transition? If we go back in time a little bit to say, okay, the medical field knows that UV light is effective, but how can we use it in other areas? What was that transition for you or the spark of an idea?
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
It actually started during H1N1 epidemic we had 10 or 12 years ago. My daughter was playing volleyball at a high level. And because of H1N1, the NCAA said nobody should shake hands before and after a match. And I looked at a volleyball match through the eyes of a surgeon. I said, okay, they don't give high fives, but the next thing they do is scratch their leg, bounce the ball on the dirty floor. They serve it, they bump it, they set it, they spike it. And within a minute or two, everybody has effectively shaken hands through the ball. So I looked at how we could effectively and rapidly disinfect a volleyball. Chemicals are hard because there's a four minute wet dwell time that's required to be effective and it's going to leave the ball sticky and wet and going to be a problem. So I looked at UV as a solution, which is very good for surface disinfection. And through several prototypes, we actually built a device that can disinfect a volleyball, basketball, or playground ball in about 20 seconds with about a 99.99% kill rate of those germs.
Adam Kress:
All right. So definitely a much more effective solution. So after you did that then, what was the leap from that to thinking about airlines?
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
I have kind of an aerospace medicine background and part of the Aerospace Medical Association. I was actually a finalist in the astronaut program bunch of years ago, but I was flying from the West Coast where I lived to the East Coast where my kids were in college. And it got me to thinking, how often people get sick after they fly? And this is back in 2014, well before COVID and how do airplanes now deal with the hygiene and sanitation issue? Because it's difficult on an airplane with so many surfaces at so many angles and such time, such tight time constraints. And again, then I said, hey, maybe we could use UV and got in my basement workshop and actually went down to what we call the airplane graveyard in Mojave and bought some old airline seats and some overhead bins and built a mock up of an airplane cabin and started to play with different designs. And that's how we kind of came up with this.
Adam Kress:
Okay. Very interesting. Now, before we get into some more details of the Germ Falcon and the Honeywell UV treatment system, take me back one step further. What got you interested in medicine in the first place and why did you become a doctor?
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
As a little kid growing up in the sixties, I was fascinated by the United States Space Program and wanted to be an astronaut. Most kids give that up by the time they're nine or 10 years old. I did not. And when I was in college, I was in ROTC for a while, hoping to become a fighter pilot. And I decided I didn't want to be a fighter pilot, good grades and things. So I applied to medical school thinking that they would need doctors in space and actually understanding that bone and muscle wasting is a big problem with prolonged space flight. Chose orthopedic surgery as my specialty. So, that's kind of the short version of how that all came about.
Adam Kress:
All right. Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. Lots of new and exciting things.
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
And actually at the end of my residency, I was selected to go down to Houston for an interview and had an opportunity to become a finalist in the astronaut program and got really close. That's another story.
Adam Kress:
Save for another podcast that we'll do on space, for sure. All right. Jumping back now to your product. You're developing in, you're literally in your basement trying to piece this thing together. Tell me about that process and the sort of research you had to do to work, to get a product ready for this aviation market.
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
Well, I understood the time constraints that airlines were under. We were talking to Virgin America airlines at the time before they were bought up by Alaska and they were really enthusiastic about the project, thinking that it would be a differentiator for them to actually have disinfected aircraft before people bored. So, but they said, "Hey, it's got to be really fast and it's got to be really thorough." And again, UV light can do that. And so what we did was as we flew commercial, I actually, my son and I were working together at this time, we actually took a tape measure and started measuring interior cabin dimensions of different airframes. So the distance between the seats, how high the seat backs were, the dimensions of the overhead bins, the laboratories, et cetera, to kind of reconstruct our airplane mock up for different airplane configurations. And then we started to build a design that would hit all of those surfaces, really using the same UVC physics principles that we learned, disinfecting sports balls with angle of incidents, how the light hits the surface, how much exposure is needed.
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
And in our mock up, again, I smeared germs on every surface that's commonly touched. The seat backs, the seats, the tray tables, the overhead controls, all of those things and started to figure out where the lamps need to be, where the UV is going to be most effectively shined and exposed, literally from the floor to the ceiling on all these commonly touched surfaces. And we came up with the device that we called the Germ Falcon after about three or four prototype iterations. We named it that because Falcon is aviation and it's literally a winged predator of germs.
Adam Kress:
Yeah. For people who haven't seen this, the device itself, the light emits from wings that extend from the center that kind of hang over the seats as it goes up and down the aisle so that it could shed light, shine light on the seats like you said, on the tray tables, if they're down up above to the controls for the air conditioning vent and that sort of stuff. Right?
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
Right. Well, you made a good point when you said, if the tray tables are down and what we realized is that, and we talked to people who actually do the cleaning of airplanes at night and what we did, we designed it in such a way that there are two passes. So one pass where it's going one way down the airplane, all the tray tables are down, the overhead bins are open, the armrests are down, the window shades are down. And then quickly the crew or the cleaning crew goes ahead and reverses all those things and takes the other pass. So we get both sides of the tray tables, the armrest, the overhead bins, the window shades.
Adam Kress:
Okay. So, people are going to compare well, you could spray and you could wipe things down. There's different ways you could try to treat and clean things. What would be the advantage to doing it this way, compared with what the airlines have traditionally done?
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
Well, when you say traditionally done, I'm reluctant to say that they have rarely, if ever sought sanitation on airplanes. It just wasn't a pain point until COVID. After COVID, they were scrambling. The airlines were scrambling for an effective way to disinfect an airplane interior. There were a number of chemical proposed solutions out there with different techniques that spray and wipe or use these electrostatics sprayers. The problem with all of the chemicals is that in order for them to be effective, the EPA requires a four to 10 minute what they call wet time or dwell time. So that surface has to remain visibly wet for at least four minutes to be effective against these germs. Now, it doesn't matter whether you're spraying it or using electrostatic sprayer or a wipe. It's very, very difficult to keep a surface visibly wet for four minutes. That's particularly true in the low relative humidity of a commercial airliner. And it's particularly difficult in something like an overhead control.
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
So now it's a horizontal inverted surface that drips like crazy if you try to keep it visibly wet for four minutes, it's virtually impossible. And then that dripping happens onto the seats. The other problem is that all of these chemicals are approved for hard non-porous surfaces by the EPA. If you look at a commercial aircraft cabin, there are lots of surfaces that are not hard, non-porous, for example, the seat covers the carpet, the arm rest, the inflight entertainment system screens. Harsh chemicals are very harsh on those. So up to 50% of the surfaces are not compatible with chemicals. Unfortunately, the airline industry really kind of clung to these chemicals, because they're cheap and supposedly fast. But the problem is they're not fast if used properly, whereas UV light is very fast. Once you get to the dose, you've killed all the effective germs. It turns out that SARS COVID2 and the other Corona Viruses are relatively easy to kill compared to some of the hospital germs that we deal with. Takes roughly a third to half the dose of say MRSA that we deal with in healthcare.
Adam Kress:
Interesting. Okay. So if we go back to summer of 2020, when the pandemic has set in the world has changed dramatically. There's obviously in a strange way, this created an amazing opportunity for you in the technology that you created. At the same time, I know you were looking to scale and that's where Honeywell came in. So how did you initially get connected with Honeywell and how did these conversation start about bringing this product to market and trying to get it to a big wide audience in a hurry?
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
Sure. It was really, like you said, in a hurry, it was a very rapid sequence of events. Honeywell, as well as a lot of other companies reached out to us because we had this technology that had matured over five years and was really pretty good and just about ready for scalability, but Honeywell, especially their aerospace lighting people who were really very talented group of engineers understood the physics of light. And they saw what we were doing compared to some of the other UV solutions that were generally vertical stationary towers that can't possibly be effective, even in healthcare they're not very effective, but when they understood about things like the angle at which the light hits the surface and the dosing required and where our lamps were, they looked at it and said, wow, this company has saved us five years of research.
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
And they came in and because everything was closed down during COVID, we actually met with Honeywell, a team of about five or six at our house. And it was a real scene. They were at our house for a week and one team of engineers literally took apart one of our Germ Falcons to write down all the part lists and see how everything got put together. And then the business people were sitting in the breakfast room, hammering out the details of an agreement and it was a whirlwind and it was just a pleasure to deal with professionals.
Adam Kress:
Yeah, that's excellent. I remember it as well and was working to help promote the product and get it out there to the world. When it came to the re-engineering and some of the redesigned work, the tweaks and improvements that had to be made, what were some of the things that needed to be done and were accomplished to get the product ready to a place where airlines would be happy to adopt it?
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
Sure. We'll understand. Even though we were on our fourth or fifth prototype, a lot of the components came over the internet or literally from Home Depot. So it was, it was a big, heavy beast. Some of the products, although they carried a UL or CE certifications, those were fake certifications, which is a lesson for me. I mean, I'm an orthopedic surgeon. I don't deal in this world. And when I went to engineering school, I literally used a slide rule. So, things have changed a lot in the engineering field. And so, they took the basic concept, our machine was bulky and heavy, but the basic dimensions were there. And it was really, they designed it for manufacturer to scale, which our machine had not, even though we had a contracted manufacturer to build a final Germ Falcon, there was still a lot, they were not aerospace engineers, but again, it was really a pleasure to watch the product evolve with such a talented group of engineers.
Adam Kress:
Yeah, definitely. If you're dealing with any aerospace engineers, I'm sure they're going to want to cut weight first, right?
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
Yeah, that's right. And efficiency and time and reliability. So it was really, it was just fun to watch them. I mean, I learned so much in the process.
Adam Kress:
Yeah, definitely. So looking ahead a little bit now, we're two years nearly to the day, at least in America, as a recording to the pandemic, do you see UV light playing a bigger role in slowing the spread of diseases are all moving forward?
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
I do. And Dimer has continued with a couple of other products and of course Honeywell's taken over the aviation sector for us, but UV has moved from the healthcare setting to the non-healthcare setting. So Dimer has offerings and has placed products into gyms, schools, restaurants, health clubs, kind of a variety of really interesting areas, beauty salons, for example. And so, we have those offerings. We have companies that are doing disinfection as a service where they'll go from store to store with one of our products and disinfect.
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
So I think broadly across the world, in the last two years, UV has really is finding its way. There are a couple of barriers to that. For example, the EPA and the FDA are slow to move on it. And one of the problems we've had at Dimer frankly, is that there are no standards for proper UV disinfection. So I say that anybody who has a fluorescent lamp and a ballast can start a company and say, "Hey, we disinfect and it's really cool," but they don't understand the physics. They don't understand what it means to kill germs and to disinfect. I'm in a unique position as an orthopedic surgeon, because we take our environmental hygiene extremely seriously in the operating room. And obviously in a preschool, you're never going to get operating room type sterility, but the same principles apply.
Adam Kress:
Okay. So you touched on it a little bit, but what are some of the bigger surprises you've seen or lessons that you've learned over these past two years during the pandemic, as there's been so much more attention on disinfecting and cleanliness as you've gone through this journey, what have you learned overall?
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
I think that the biggest surprise and the biggest transition I've had is that I'm not a big regulation's kind of guy. You I mean, I believe in free market and those kinds of things philosophically, but now I see that there's harm in a lack of regulations and standards so that, for example, we talked about chemicals and people will just kind of spray and not observe those wet dwell times that we talked about and think they've disinfected their environment when they haven't. Same thing with some of these cheap UV units that are out there that can't possibly be effective, but the public can be easily duped. And that's why we need standards. Dimer is probably the only company that's pushing for tough standards in healthcare. We published a paper in the journal of the national institutes of standards and technology.
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
We're also talking about standards for airplane hygiene, meaning that regardless of what method, whether it's chemical or UV or ions, or some of the other evolving technologies, there should be certain standards that achieve a certain germ kill over a reasonable period of time and adequate number of surfaces on the aircraft. And really that's going to benefit the airlines if we can get these standards in place, because the airlines, they're not healthcare, they don't understand the disinfection, but if they have an approved method, regardless of what that method is that has met a standard, that really aids the airline in picking a solution for sanitation of the aircraft, that they know is going to work to protect their crews and passengers.
Adam Kress:
Would that ultimately be something the FAA would have power on to set that sort of standard, or what are you guys doing now to try to help get that standard step that standards?
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
We have talked to the FAA, we have talked to some members of Congress about it, and everybody agrees. Yeah, there should be some standards there, but it's really hard to get those in place and get consensus. So I'll say that we've tried and it is an uphill battle, but I think ultimately, we need to have that to prepare for the next pandemic. I hate to be a negative person, but if you look at the way germs and pandemics have occurred throughout history, the major barriers that nature has provided to prevent the spread of disease are things like time, distance, mountains, oceans, and deserts. So what do airplanes overcome? Time, distance, oceans, mountains, and deserts. So not only does it transport people very rapidly around the world, but it transports their germs very rapidly around the world. And it's not a coincidence in my mind that there are very few pandemics and then look at things over the last 20 years we talk about H1N1, we've got MRS, we've got SARS, we've got Ebola. We've got COVID. Do we really think that's the last one to happen?
Adam Kress:
No, sadly, no. I think if it wasn't already obvious to people how small the world actually is and how easily connected it is in many ways by aviation, that should have become very clear in the past two years.
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
Yeah.
Adam Kress:
[crosstalk 00:21:50] people travel, their baggage, and everything else travels with them.
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
Right. And if you look at the way, the plague spread around the world in the 16 hundreds was very slow. It took months to years. Why? Because camel caravan and ships were the transportation mode of choice. Now, it's air airplanes. And that's again, it's very rapid travel well within the lifespan of these germs. For example, one of the very interesting things that we've noted, there's a Kyoto University came out with a study in January of 2022 that looked at surface survival of the various strains of COVID. And what they found is the initial COVID that we were dealing with survived on surfaces for two to three days. By the time we saw the Delta one, that had a surface survival of about five days, and that quickly became the dominant strain, just surface survivability. If we look at the Omicron variant, it has a surface survival of about eight days. So the fact that each one of these variants that has a longer surface survival, becomes the dominant strain. In my opinion, really underscores the need for surface disinfection and UV is the perfect avenue for it.
Adam Kress:
Yeah, it sounds like it. What's the next big step when it comes to Dimer's plans overall as a company, and then also Dimer's work with Honeywell and aviation?
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
Well, we want to see this partnership go forward. We think it's not only good for Dimer and for Honeywell, but it's good for the airlines. It's good for the flying public. Dimer did a survey back in 2014 at a travel show of almost 1200 passengers. And we asked a few questions, and again, this is six years before COVID. Have you gotten sick from germs on an airplane? Yes, no, or maybe. Over 80% said yes or maybe. We asked them, should there be a regulation, a standard that airplanes be sanitized even once per day, 96% of people said yes. And I don't even know what those numbers would be after COVID, but they'd probably be higher than 96%.
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
So we do believe there's passenger demand and it's hard to prove when a person takes a trip exactly where the germs came from, but fortunately or unfortunately people stick it to the airlines. They just believe that the airline, the airplane is the source of their germs. We don't know if that's true or not, but even if we can change the public perception. And one of Dimer's initial mission statement said that we want to transform the airplane from the germiest to the cleanest part of the travel experience. And this technology that Honeywell is now producing has the capacity to do that. It's very exciting.
Adam Kress:
Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Switching gears real quick. You mentioned earlier that you work with your son on this company Dimer. So tell me how you guys started to... his name is Elliot, right?
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
Yes.
Adam Kress:
Yes. How you and Elliot started working together and kind of who does what, how's that going?
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
Well, I'll say that anybody who's participated in a father's son business know that there is some butting of heads, but the nice thing is that I am the kind of technical person and he's the business person. He was in business school on the East Coast when I was tinkering around to the basement with this. And he came downstairs and he said, dad, what are you working on? And I said, oh, it's just this thing. And he sees these airplane seats and overhead bins in what used to be a bating cage in our basement. And he says, what are you doing? And I said, I'm trying to see if I can disinfect airplanes and reduce the germs on airplanes. And he looked at me like, first, he thought I was crazy, which he's always thought. And then he said, do you understand that this technology can change a whole industry and change the world?
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
Like, ah, no, you're being a little melodramatic. And he goes, what if there's a pandemic? And this was in 2014 or so. He goes, he goes, the pandemic's going to spread around the world by airplanes. He goes, do you realize if this is adopted, you could prevent a pandemic. You could make this happen. And he, so he turned down Wall Street offers and some great business opportunities out of a great business school to say, dad, I want to start this company. And I go, come on. And he very quickly, like I said, reached out to Virgin America and they were all over it and they helped us to develop, encourage it. They let us fly on the airplanes doing cultures and checking efficacy and things. So, he jumped on it and I'm very proud of him for taking that risk.
Adam Kress:
No, that's excellent. That's excellent to be able to work together, father and son, family business, and watch something grow for sure. I have just one last question for you. We call this the Aerospace Unplugged Podcast. So when you unplug, you're not in surgery, you're not working on the latest version. What do you do to just have fun?
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
I'm a runner and I am involved in some charity groups. And for example, one of our latest things is our family brought in to our home a family of seven Afghan nationals who were refugees after the fall of Kabul in August of 2021, we invited them into our home. One of them had actually gone to Westpoint with my daughter and he was pretty high up in the Afghan army. And he was very wanted by the Taliban, as you can imagine. And we housed them and really enjoy the whole experience. They've since moved out, they spent a few weeks with us, but that's the kind of work that my wife and I really enjoy doing kind of giving back to the community and making a difference in people's lives.
Adam Kress:
Wow. That's absolutely amazing. Incredible work. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Kreitenberg for joining us today, it was a pleasure. We've learned a lot and we wish you nothing, but the best in the future, developing further technology and hopefully, Honeywell could help you get there and on aircraft, even more aircraft all over the world. So thanks again.
Dr. Arthur Kreitenberg:
All right, Adam. Thank you. Thank you to the audience. Appreciate that.
Adam Kress:
All right. Thanks for listening, everyone. We'll catch you next time. On the next episode of Aerospace Unplugged.