UV lights and eye damage

[metalhed]

Thanks David_Campen, I didn't know that.

That would explain the severity of the burns reported in the story. Makes me think twice about the safety of lighting in poorly maintained places like warehouses and old gyms, although I realize that modern lamps have self-extinguishing features to prevent such accidents.

 

[David_Campen]

Makes me think twice about the safety of lighting in poorly maintained places like warehouses and old gyms, although I realize that modern lamps have self-extinguishing features to prevent such accidents.

The problem is when the outer glass envelope is broken but the inner quartz capsule containing the (mercury) arc continues to function. The outer envelope is made of glass and is coated with phosphor that converts the UV into visible light and then the glass absorbs any UV that the phosphor didn't convert. Without this outer envelope you get the many hundreds of watts of short wave UV being radiated into the room. When I looked at the National Electrical Code many years ago for mercury arc lighting it mandated that the lights be mounted at some minimum heigth reduce exposure in the evnt that the outer envelope was broken.

 

[Dawg]

http://jumpingchollajigs.com/nucli-eye.html among other new lights...

That is so cool. I don't go fishing too much anymore. But when I was younger, I would go down to Bull Shoals a lot and Night fish using the old battery operated flourescent blacklights. Your light looks very good. Anybody that has not tried night fishing with a black light does not know what they are missing.