Sharp unveils new anti-bird flu air purifier

AFP, August, 2008

TOKYO (AFP) — Japan's Sharp Corp. said Wednesday that it has developed an air purifier that eliminates 99.9 percent of the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu within 10 minutes.

The system has been improved from an earlier version which was shown in 2005 to have eliminated 99 percent of the H5N1 virus when airborne, Sharp official Kenji Ota told reporters.

The plasmacluster ion technology, developed in 2000, disables airborne micro-organisms by releasing positive and negative ions into the air.

Direct contact with infected poultry, or surfaces contaminated by their faeces, is currently considered the main cause of human infection with the H5N1 virus, according to the World Health Organization.

But influenza is a hard virus to beat and will need several lines of defence, said John Oxford, a University of London professor who heads Retroscreen Virology, a British research institute involved in the project.

"This kind ...