So blacklight is hazardous to your health, right?

[wallyworld]

So, of course, right off the bat I wanted to have blacklights in my gameroom (garage) to make everything glow, but from everything I've read it appears that blacklights are hazardous to your health--skin issues and what not.  A lot of sites say that blacklights are OK to use, but with limited exposure, except none of the sites/papers I've found give any definition to what a risk-averse limited exposure would be.

Just curious to know what you folks know.  What have you folks turned to as far as alternatives to blacklight in designing your gamerooms?

Any help/advice/comments are appreciated!

[ChadTower]

forget your health, they're detrimental to your artwork.

[CheffoJeffo]

forget your health, they're detrimental to your artwork.

Good to see a man with his priorities in order ...

Cheers.

[MonitorGuru]

BLB and BLW (Black Light Blue tube and Black Light White tube) are safer than standing out in the sun.

Are they without long term exposure risk? No, of course not.  Are they safer than a tanning bed? Certainly.

There are 4 types of UV light:

- UV-A Long wave (400 - 315 nano meters)  ("blacklight", sun/artificial TANning)
- UV-B Midwave wave (315 - 280 nm) (sun BURNing,  deadly skin cancer, some mineral flourescing lamps)
- UV-C Short wave (280 - 200 nm) ("eprom eraser", "food germicidal", DNA destroyer->deep cancer and mutations, most mineral flourescing lamps)
- VUV Vacuum UV (200-100nm) (deadly, absorbed by air and water, only transmittable in vacuum)


In UV-A, the closer you are to purple, the "safer" the UV is.  Therefore most BLB's are around 370 to 350 nm (where purple is around 400 nm).

Tanning lamps, still in the UV-A range are around 340 to 315 nm, much closer to UV-B light and cause more damage.


So should you be careful, limiting overall exposure (e.g. not spend 24 hours at a time under 160 watts of flourescent black lights?) of course.  But an hour or so shouldn't hurt anyone. It's in bowling alleys and skating rinks and raves and what-not.  It's been around since the 60's in wide public use. It's not the cause of any known cancer risk that can be proven, unlike tanning.

As the other poster said... Worry more about changing the ink colors on your art (side art, marquee, control panels, etc..)  But then again you don't leave them on all the time, and light from a normal incandescent lamp can change the color just as easily if not faster.

[RayB]

I think there's some danger to your eyes. Because you don't see the light, you keep your eyes open wide, letting UV light in.

[tristan]

Everything is hazardous to your health in high enough doses.

[Havok]

Just wear UV resistant sunglasses and put on lots of sunscreen before playing your games!

[bjk7382]

I have a 4 foot and a 2 foot black light blue light in my smoking/console game room. And they have been there for a few years, turned on every time I am in that room, and except for the arm growing out of my neck, I am fine j/k I don't think there is any real harm, but then again I don't really care if they do, the posters don't glow without them.

[Bones]

I have also seen these on display fishtanks.

I know we ain't fish and the water may also scatter/absorb some of the light, but I am led to believe this is harmless.

[MonitorGuru]

 If it's sold as "black light" it has to emit sufficient UV-A wavelengths to make things flouresce.

[PetitMorte]

That's the way *normal* flourescent lights work.  The current running through the gas inside of them creates UV light.  The tubes are coated inside with a "phosphor" compound that glows under UV light.  So you turn them on, they make UV, the UV makes the phosphor glow white.

http://home.howstuffworks.com/fluorescent-lamp.htm

http://science.howstuffworks.com/black-light.htm

w00ty w00t w00t!