A science-backed, virus-killing mist is making its way to businesses near you.

Key Food Market in Beacon is among the first businesses in the Hudson Valley to be disinfected with hypochlorous acid, also known as “electrolyzed water.”

What You Need To Know

  • Key Food Market is one of the first local businesses to be disinfected with hypochlorous acid

  • The mist, previously used mainly in the food industry and in nursing homes, may be catching on in other sectors

  • Key Food Market has stopped using everyday, harsh chemicals to disinfect the store

While professionals from the company Pure Spaces perform a treatment with a spray device akin to a proton pack, some customers did double-takes.

“It’s all water,” Pure Spaces sales executive Adam Napell explained to one customer.

Napell introduced Key Food employees to the product, which can be sprayed from large devices for full treatments, but also from the handheld devices he gave them.

The product is essentially water and salt that is put through electrolysis, resulting in a solution proven to kill bacteria and viruses, including the coronavirus.

“The other sprayer does make me cough sometimes when I spray it,” cashier Courtney Smith said. “It’s very strong-smelling. It (the Pure Spaces product) is neat that it’s easy to use like this, especially during times like now.”

Deli clerk Shirley Price told Napell that customers often handle the packaged meals and move them around, prompting Price to clean off each package one by one.

“They always get their hands all over everything,” she said. “I wash it down and I wipe it all off.

Price had several questions about storage and handling.

The bottom line, Napell said, is that the hypochlorous acid product is 99.8% water, and can be stored and handled as regular water.

Price marveled over the handheld spray device Napell provided for her workspace.

As demonstrated, the product mists into tight areas, requires no wiping, and does not leave streaks.

“I didn’t really think about it until he started telling me about it, but I’ll use the damn thing,” she said laughing.

Key Food Market owner Mo DaBashi has 40 employees to protect, along with several hundred daily customers.

DaBashi said he was skeptical at first, but the science led him to enter into the agreement with Pure Spaces.

“As you know, a grocery store is a pickup and drop-off place for germs and viruses or wherever,” he said. “We wanted a product that ends it at the drop-off place, kills it.”

Hypochlorous acid disinfection services and products are not mainstream yet in Hudson Valley small businesses, but Napell believes they will be.

Pure Spaces’ parent company, Viking, had been providing similar services on much larger scales for the food industry and nursing homes long before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The better we can do for the planet and ourselves — I think that’s very much on point right now,” Napell said. “This is something that’s going to resonate with everybody. We just have to get the word out about hypochlorous acid.”