The development story
What was tested, how it was measured, and what was found.
Science / 01Science
One candle. Tested whole.
A finished candle. A room-sized chamber. Seven surrogate organisms. An independent laboratory.
Begin with a chapter
Virus and bacteria surrogatesMatched no-candle controls
The candle
How it works
Leave the flame
As the candle burns, wax particles leave the flame and move into the air around it. Each one carries a trace of silver.
Attract
In the air, those wax particles attract other particles, the ones already floating there.
Contact
Where the wax touches another particle, the silver inactivates it. That starts the moment they meet.
Fall
Joined together, the particles grow heavy and fall out of the air. It works only while the candle is burning.
Glow Guardian is tested as a complete system. Current evidence supports the performance of the finished candle, while research continues to quantify how much each individual pathway contributes.
Read the testing03 / The proof
One whole candle. Controlled chambers. One organism at a time.
Choose a surrogate. The figure, the time point and the report are its own.
99.99%net reduction
Gram-negative bacterium surrogate
Klebsiella aerogenes
Klebsiella aerogenes · 99.99% net reduction · after 120 minutes · vs. untreated control.
A whole candle, burning. The figure belongs to the candle, not to anything in it.
Open laboratory report ↗Complete article
A finished candle, burning before the challenge entered the chamber.
Matched control
Results are reported net of an untreated control chamber.
Repeated measure
Duplicate candle trials, with samples cultured and counted in triplicate.
Study-specific
Phi 6 followed a shorter 15/30/45-minute schedule and is shown on its own terms.
In controlled room-sized chamber testing, every tested virus and bacteria surrogate showed at least 87.9% net reduction after one hour and at least 99.15% after two hours.
Broad-range study. The figures describe the whole candle, burning.04 / Chain length
Three waxes. Three chain lengths.
Soy, coconut and unrefined beeswax. Each is built from carbon chains of a different length. Coconut is the shortest, beeswax the longest, soy between them.
Carbon chain, drawn to scale. One node per carbon atom.
Coconut35% of the blend · C12 · lauric acid
Soy55% of the blend · C16–C18 · palmitic, stearic
Beeswax10% of the blend · esters to C46 · unrefined
Chain lengths are the dominant species in each wax. Soy is drawn to C18; its C16 fraction is marked.
Coconut C1235%
- Cocos nucifera. Fruit oil.
- Dominated by C12 lauric acid.
- Shortest chain of the three.
Soy C16–1855%
- Glycine max. Bean oil.
- C16 palmitic and C18 stearic acid.
- The largest share of the blend.
Beeswax C4610%
- Apis mellifera. Unrefined.
- Long-chain esters, running to C46.
- Longest chain of the three.
05 / Non-toxic
A non-toxic candle starts with what we left out.
No paraffin.
Petroleum wax
A solid wax refined from crude oil. Long, straight carbon chains, and the most common candle wax sold.
In its placeSoy, coconut and unrefined beeswax.
No phthalates.
Fragrance fixatives
Plasticizing esters added to fragrance oils to hold a scent in the wax and make it linger.
In its placeNothing. The scent is the oils alone.
No dyes.
Synthetic colorants
Pigments dissolved into wax to give it a color it does not have on its own.
In its placeThe wax's own color, undyed.
No synthetic fragrance.
Lab-made aroma compounds
Scent molecules made in a lab, usually printed on a label as one word, "fragrance," with the formula left out.
In its placeEssential oils, named on every label.
05 / Safety, studied separately
1.01ng/m³ nanograms per cubic meter, at most.
Airborne silver during burn was measured under Good Laboratory Practice conditions in a residential-room simulation against a control candle, using filter sampling and ICP-MS.
- Analyte
- Airborne silver
- Unit
- ng/m³
- Reading
- Max, during burn
Exposure limits, log scale
Below the NIOSH recommended exposure limit.
Below the OSHA permissible exposure limit.
Deeper reading
Silver, exposure and what the safety study measured.
The method, the published limits, and what the number means next to them.