Can .OH scavengers protect against direct UV-C damage in vivo?

It has previously been shown that ethanol and tert-butanol protect poly(U) against strand breaks from pulsed laser ultraviolet (UV) photons (lambda = 248 nm). This protection is believed to be based on a modification of direct DNA damage, not on scavenging hydroxyl radicals. In this paper, several .OH scavengers were tested in vivo with Escherichia coli DNA repair-deficient mutants to see if protection could also be demonstrated with non-laser UV photons (lambda approximately 254 nm). No protection was observed.