Good UV versus bad UV. All available on eBay.

this video is about ultraviolet fluorescent tubes and notably this dubious one called an ultraviolet seed UVC germicidal tube and the video was inspired by an event fairly recently in Hong Kong where someone inadvertently chose the wrong type of ultraviolet tubes and caused skin damage to people attending the event so let's take a look at ultraviolet now the visible spectrum extends from infrared to red and it goes on through the other colors yellow in the middle to blue and then it goes further into in for ultraviolet but the ultraviolet is actually divided into four sections there's UVA UVB UVC and then what could be classed as extreme ultraviolet interesting things to note if this is the planet Earth earth and this is our atmosphere around the earth and that's the sunshine over there which we don't get much of around here but having said that ultraviolet and infrared do come through the clouds then the wavelengths have different penetrating capabilities that for instance UVA which is the commonly one that's commonly used as a backlight sources is able to pass right through the atmosphere and get down to the earth that's quite a long wave ultraviolet UVB I should actually add note let's go UVA and the surf frequency range it covers is about 315 nanometer to 400 and 400 is actually starting to go into the sort of blue end of the spectrum it's that deep valley two colors a really nice color they used to have cell Christmas lights that they probably still do in the beyond the blue spectrum that it was just going into the deeper end it was just nudging towards ultraviolet and it was a really nice color quite hard to get though and also they don't last too long they fade quite quickly so then comes UVB which is commonly found tanning troops which they look like standard white ultraviolet troops of the me light the various other colors like pink or blue but they're pretty a mixture of UVA and UVB for tanning purposes it's kind of specialized but its wavelength is sort of 280 nanometer to 315 and its penetration is slowed by the atmosphere so it comes from the Sun and it gradually gets weaker and weaker and weaker so you've got a fairly small percentage of the UVB so that's a that's B and then we go into UVC UVC which is in the frequency range of 100 nanometer - I'm just smudging this everywhere that's alright that's the atmosphere absorbing the ultraviolet UV see it goes up to about the 280 nanometers mark and it's the clear tubes that are used for specialist germicidal applications and ozone generation and it's so easily absorbed by the atmosphere that very little UVC makes it from the Sun down to the earth that can tends to have to be generated quite locally it's quite an exotic sort of wavelength because I see come to the Sun and pretty much doesn't get far past what they call the ozone layer and UVC is absorbed by molecules like also an oxygen that partly the ozone is particularly capable absorbing it which is where the whole also and protective layer thing comes from but if there's any oxygen up there the action of UVC honor is to split the oxygen molecules apart into separate oxygen atoms and when they recombine they do form ozone so theoretically I guess as long as there's much oxygen in that atmosphere in that area it's gonna keep creating ozone and the main applications well the main applications from servile are special effects is one of the most common ones with black light blue no these two tubes our backlight tubes this one's called black light blue and this is what one's just called black light is even though it's Britt you know it's a white true--but lights up bright blue and it's kind of I used to mix these up when I was younger I used to think that this was the black light blue because it lights up bright blue when in reality it's to do with the color of the glass and the glass itself is woods glass and it's basically a glass with a diffusion of nickel oxide enter and it's this really interesting characteristic that it blocks most visible light but it lets through ultraviolet and infrared so for instance when you take a look at some of the the infrared flood lights that you get for CCTV it may be an ordinary tungsten lamp that's being under run to put a lot of long-wave infrared but by putting this filter in front it blocks all the visible lights you end up with that dull glow from it there but the cameras the CCTV cameras can easily see the wavelengths that are coming through and one of the weird things about these materials is that if you look at them with a infrared camera although they look black to the naked eye so to speak when you look at them with the camera the absolutely look transparent that's quite hard the same applies to cook a caller if you look at with an infrared camera and some black plastic bin bags that the black pigment is purely in the human optical spectrum as such and it's transparent to other wavelengths so this is the classic effect the black light blue node which is grubby were clear but this will do the job and have left the camera on auto exposure so you can actually see this effect so I'm gonna head like this of blame it's far too bright isn't it and you can see that the ultraviolet stimulates the fluorescent colors and you can also stimulate this with just ordinary blue late and I have to say that this is my some of the work we're and in the first day working in Glasgow particularly on a street called Buchanan Street where they had I don't have was for architectural anti drug use but all this street lighting was blue it was using blue metal halide lamps and that was just so embarrassing because when you walked in that wearing your Hovis work clothing it just made you light up really bright they're just loops layer so so embarrassing and psychedelic and I also want to mention with that regard to their what clothing that the grub eNOS of the work clothing if you choose jobs that are considered glamorous like the entertainment industry media the Internet then you'll find that there's a lot more competition for those jobs if you choose jobs perceived as hard and dirty and menial then there's not so much competition so engineering jobs are going to ultimately pay a lot more money in the long run they're just going to guarantee much better employment employability there's just less competition and as I was mentioned some others recently if you do work in a sort of monkeys of industrial environment it also means that people like the Health and Safety Executive or less late to turn up and grind their acts on you because they just don't like getting their hands dirty yes it's a Snape at the HSE I don't care they've they're not my favorite organization I'm all for safety but not when it's taken to extremes to the point of being silly so this is a the backlight ultraviolet tube with the woods glass that gives it the dark look and this does contain phosphorus this is actually pretty much the same force for coating inside but the difference is the black glass so this tube it is just standard black light and if I put this one in it lights up a freely bright blue and again it will stimulate the phosphorus this is probably gonna be quite cold this you have is fabric and again it stimulates the colors so it's a bounces it puts out a lot of visible light but it also puts out the wavelengths that stimulate the fluorescent colors and interestingly this is an insect killer troop well I see insect killer it's designed to attract insects and yet ultimately it puts out the same wavelength as this one the only difference is that outer glass is clear like an ordinary fluorescent ribbon you'd think surely it would be more expensive to make this tube with its dark glass then this one with its clear glass and yet the in secular troops are more expensive I'm not sure what the signs on that I guess it's just because they're aimed at an industry that you know you have to buy them to keep food hygiene things like that and although this is the point that some people will point out that insect killers actually blew the insects into pieces and this scatter little bits of insect debris all over the food depending where they're located so it's better to keep the insect killers bizarre as well away from food areas food preparation areas and so they said tube yep more expensive but ultimately puts out the same wavelength and some insect killers do use that just the black laid table and probably because it is ultimately cheaper one advantage of this one is that you can see it's working because it does lay up quite bright so let's say put in the next tube and this is where it all gets a bit shady you see this is UVC actually you know I should have covered UVB but let's jump straight to UVC I'm going to put this in a good a point out that I'm wearing glass glasses at the moment that's quite important because it's lighting up I'll have to turn the light off you to see it the fluorescent fabric again I can put it in the vicinity and all kind of stimulate it but it's not stimulating that well it is lighting up but not as bright as other ones and I can also smell always oh no because splitting the oxygen into the air into from the molecules of oxygen into atoms but oxygen atoms which are then recombining and this tube is hazardous it's if you if I place my hand in this tube now to expose it to the wavelength that's coming off it of you radiation and then I sniff my hand it smells like burnt flesh and ozone it actually smells damaged skin it smells porky so I'm going to turn this trip off right now before I expose myself to that wavelength any further I'll put the nice nap it I'll put yeah I'll put my favorite Ruben I'll pick the black light blue Chubin and it's the reason for this video is because this should because and a good put a link in the description down below there was an event in Hong Kong run by a fashion band called hate beast and someone chose the troops I don't blame them they thought they were interesting troops visually nice effects of that ghostly blue glue they didn't know there was any harmony they had said this mannequin it was all futuristic and spacing and they had these tubes I'm not sure where they used the pink ones I'm guessing it might have been tanning troops but the blue ones they actually used the germicidal troops and someone went back the next day when they experienced health problems shall we see into pictures revealing that it's a clear tube and I'll pair links that article in the description down below so you can read yourself but what's interesting is that the people that went to that event and were exposed to the UVC suffered eye damage and skin damage you see ultraviolet causes keratosis of the eyes and that's equivalent to welding arc if you expose your beer eyes to this and I have to mention this time that just ordinary glass will stop that happening if you remove the phosphor off this tube and just had the beer mercury vapor glue then it wouldn't actually pass significant harmful ultraviolet it would look ghostly blue like the tube does when it's lit at the moment but this glass is a quartz based glass it has to be a quartz base glass to pass that particular wavelength of ultraviolet ordinary glass would block it and that's why I've always preferred glasses with glass lenses because they do offer by default they block the harmful wavelengths of ultraviolet light they will pass they have to pass these are foot chromic lenses they changed color with the ultraviolet but it's only the longer wavelengths that affect them that way I also want to mention that this tuba is a mercury discharge tube it's basically the quartz tube is getting the heated cathodes at the end of the coating on them and then there's mercury vapor in this and there is virtually no but you can't see matter in there it's invisible because it is just a tiny sniff of mercury vapor if you ever smashed a fluorescent tube the risk from mercury poisoning is pretty much zero and the mercury will just diffuse instantly the what's in there it's not the case with some of the older tubes that actually had a visible blob of mercury running back you have to try and clear that up the biggest hazard with mercury is the vapor and only in fairly large quantities the biggest thing from the past was the freezin mad as a hatter Hatters used to use a very hot tub america and they used to press Bell tinted stripper because the volume ass of the mercury meant you could really press stuff into and because it was heated it kind of acted like a liquid iron effectively but it's that mercury vapor that allows it to enter your body I would quite happily play with liquid mercury in the hand without any qualms about that it's the vapor and large quantities of vapor at that that caused the problem but there mount in a fluorescent tube if you break it I had been more concerned about the broken glass I'd be more concerned in older tubes about some of the phosphorus but I wouldn't be concerned at all about the mercury so let's talk about oh yes let's keep talking about the vent I hate beasts and what happened no someone attended it lots people attended it and it was basically the atmospheric lighting it was blow disco music dance music whatever there's DJ playing music appropriate to the event and people went home after the event had a good time and they noticed that they were suffering skin burn sunburn and that was including black people now black people have natural protection in their skin they've got a lot of I'm guessing mostly melanin in the skin because they're designed there are human optimized for use in sunny parts the world and I don't normally associate sunburn with black people but with the UVC because it's a completely unnatural on earth wavelength of ultraviolet a destructive wavelength they had all the symptoms of sunburn peeling the skin and blisters on their skin and the they also woke up in middle of the night with the keratosis thing where your eyes have been damaged but that which are violet it doesn't penetrate very deeply there's this thing that the longer wave ultraviolet is actually more harmful in the sense that it can penetrate deeper through the skin but the short wave violet ISM ultraviolet is the most reactive and causes the most well initial damage so to speak and the keratosis thing you wake up middle na and it feels like you've got sand in your eyes and there's nothing you can do you can't wash out you can't stop the discomfort of leg it's like someone is literally throwing a handful of sand in your eyes and it's there because the surface of your eye has actually been pitted slightly by the fact of the ultraviolet and it's not a permanent thing it will hopefully if you've not been exposed for too long and a regular basis if your I will recover it takes a few days adding anesthetic drops is can give some relief that can sometimes slow down the recovery process and when the person who attended that Club and got the characters of the eyes and they woke up in this sought medical attention they were told it can be caused by things that are flashy and welding it can be caused by ultraviolet light from the germicidal tubes they thought oh right okay and the wetbacks evently took that picture of the tube which is probably bad news the organisers because it means they can't hide evidence anymore more of the story if you ever do something like that if you guys things are going wrong hide the evidence really quickly because then it's much harder to tell what happened top tips mmm let's talk about UV E and B because there if you go to our Sun bed I was gonna I was hoping to get a UVB trip but to be honest what you actually get with the UVB tribe is mostly UVA which is the bright blue with a little touch of the UVB in the region of maybe just a few percent about maybe 10 percent and these are optimized for tanning and the two green applications for UVB are the Sun beds and the requirement of some reptiles to have a sort of emulation of sunlight and there's an interesting characteristic of UV E and B you can get facial solariums Philips used to sell them that were based on the standard backlight taped ribs but actually in the insect eye attractant tube and that basically they've got a cluster of the troops and a set of curve panel and you sit with your face thrust into for a frontal face tan not sure why people do that and the UVA is the bit that stimulates the melanin the natural pigment in your skin to actually change color and darken but it's very short term UVB actually stimulates a production of melanin in your skin so by combining the two of them in the sun beds the UVA is the bed that gives you that instant tan and the UVB is the bit that gives you that that prepares that that just Prime's your skin for that and people who work outdoors all the time already have quite a high melanin content in their skin because they're they've been exposed to over their life and ironically that people who work in sunshine all day long a less likely to get harmful skin cancers the more destructive skin cancers then people who live in you know an environment where they're in office where they're sheltered from ultraviolet exposure and then summer comes and they go out in this sunbathe or they go to these sun beds and just burn their bodies with intense ultraviolet to get a fast tan that's where you're going to get those problems with these skin cancers the UM I've what is the what is the neem looking for of the skin cancer African name of that but it's probably a good thing because it's not very nice is it melanoma that's what I was looking for it's it's horrible but so I found myself that when I work outdoors for blood well I've spent most of our life working outdoors I find that ice because I'm Scottish after pill skin but after the winter if I'm exposed to a lot of sunshine I do routinely put on sunblock to try and block the initial exposure but once I've got a modest exposure again I'm quite happy to work in the sunshine because your body does it's designed to climatized to that what can I say about I think I've more or less covered everything I'm good and I tend to jump about a bit in the making these videos so there's a very good chance that I've I've missed this let's talk about UVC again and what its actual function is is that your function is designed to be used and fully enclosed fixtures for either air sterilization it's used in air conditioning to clean the air and sterilize the earth so create ozone and the other applications are for water sterilization it's all down to sterilization because of its destructive nature on just surrounding organisms and molecules is one of the it's the the prominent wavelength of ultraviolet that can actually split DNA it's quite destructive indeed so you get any water filters that the water is flowing across this you also get submergible ones that go into fish tanks and rely on the glass to shield it from the people look in the fish tank but they expose the water directly but most limits in a set of black or other colour enclosure with the water flowing through over the surface of the tube so it gets exposed to that ultraviolet and get sterilized and it's used for sterilizing well water and ponds and swimming pools and water treatment plants and there is another wavelength of ultraviolet another band and it's the extreme ultraviolet but it's only used in specialist scientific applications it's the one that extends from about ten to 100 nanometers and it can't penetrate even here very deeply so they have to if they're going to use it it tends to be used in sort of type environments I think I've covered just about everything I've covered I've covered not to use these oh here's the thing you go on eBay I got all these trips off EB and you type in ultraviolet lamp and it doesn't discriminate it doesn't actually give any warning in the Chinese listings it doesn't say these are harmful don't expose yourself to them it just sells them the key word here is germicidal and water treatment but there are no warnings on those listings and I even found one that actually referred to this tube as blacklight which is wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong because you don't want people to think that particularly if it's a cheap tube from China and they find that other options are kind of more expensive and they buy this one thinking it's going to be a great disco effect and then they put it in the room and then noticed well skin problems sunburn sore eyes and that strange smell it gives off the ozone smell as it breaks up the molecules in the air so yeah the moral of the story is if you want blacklight if you want ultraviolet you want to go for these the visual effect you want this blacklight tube if you're looking for tubes for your insect attractor you want to go for well the bright blue version called blacklight or you can use black light blue no there's no obvious indication it's you know still working it could go out and you wouldn't notice if you want suntan not I'd recommend it go for the solarium tape lamps but note that they tend to drive them really hard for a short lifespan from Max and ultraviolet and if you want germicidal applications only one that's going to work for the germicidal application is this tube that is often found in things like baking and catering equipment inside the Machine where at night time that goes through a cleaning cycle and all the conversion bathed by the ultraviolet light to kill bacteria on them and sterilize them so yes when you're buying ultraviolet troops be very careful what you get the clear one is actually really dangerous

Channel: bigclivedotcom

Views: 199,344

Rating: 4.9280024 out of 5

Keywords: uva, uvb, uvc, ultra, violet, ultraviolet, light, radiation, skin, eye, damage, sand, grit, keratosis, welder, arc, flash, fluorescent, tube, lamp, black, blacklight, germicidal, sterilising, sterilizing, bacteria, cleaning, ozone, air, water, aquarium, well, central, heating, melanoma, sunburn

Id: CpRMud6EFtE

Length: 23min 47sec (1427 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 11 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/back_ache]

Jump to the 11:20 mark to hear the consequences of bad-uv

[u/tx69er]

Ah, yes. Love bigclive's channel. Lots of really unique content there.