Is that still a thing? I'd love to know their exit plan when they cash in and buy actual yachts, in a market based entirely on the "bigger fool" theory. Then again it's not like actual stock markets, and the better part of the world's economy, isn't depending on the same theory.
I've stopped two artists from using UVC lighting in their installations and after they watched your previous video they changed all their equipment and were very grateful for this advice.
They need to put better labels on the boxes they sell these in, and perhaps some warning on the cap of the tube. Maybe a compulsory verbal and written warning to anyone hoping to purchase them.
@@MadScientist267 Well.... yeah. Yeah I know completely what you mean in 1 word, and the different aspects of what it means in this case. But besides the corruption, and the scamming, which we might sum up with "sewer oil", there's the incompetence and lack of regulation, or selective enforcement of it. But in this case I think "Aliexpress" or "Shenzhen" might also be good words. You can buy everything and anything, from the vendor-tinkerers in the markets, when they're not digging through the reject bins round the back of the factories. Might be somebody got a good price buying almost-direct, and the stuff didn't come with any sort of information or proper packaging cos it wasn't intended to be sold to end-users. Not that it would matter, probably if it was, but we can at least hope that a proper lighting supplier would know not to sell germicidal UV-C lamps to someone holding a concert. Ordering over the web would be another missing link in the chain, as far as proper information getting passed down. So yeah, "China" covers a multitude of fuckups, even ones that aren't scams.
When I was about 16 years old I was given an old military UV light. I played around with it for about 30 minutes. I was fascinated because it would make regular window glass glow green and other interesting phenomena. The next morning, my eyes felt a bit irritated, and then I went to go outside and instantly I have severe pain in my eyes. My friend convinced me not to go to the hospital. It took about two weeks to go out in daylight and six months to stay in daylight. It took about 20 years for my eyes to fully heal.
I can attest it bloody hurts. I once was an absolute idiot and by reflex looked into a UV lamp to check if it was on as it wasnt illuminating things....... thankfully I only felt like my eyeballs were on fire for about a week and it was a very short exposure but honestly I wish it was better labelled, It looked quite a bit like a normal light and I was not paying attention.
@AIuzkythe funny thing about ethics and morality education is that people will still intentionally do what they know is unethical and immoral if they personally feel it's justified. you can teach a student math for 13 years but you can't make them like it
If, in fact, it is found that unfiltered UV lighting was used at this event, the producers need to be held to account for exposing people to potentially harmful UV radiation with no warning. Good work Clive!
The reckless use of lasers is increasing. Some of the stuff being sold online, and used by DJs with utter disregard for safety is already causing permanent eye damage..
I got a heavy dose of arc flash decades ago in my welding apprenticeship. My instructor simply smiled and oddly enough told me to go home and rent a bunch of videos. Why? Because for the first 24hrs it hurts more to close your eyes than to leave them open and the only thing to do was stay up until the eyeball sunburn started to heal. Never made that mistake again. Thanks for bringing up a painful memory Clive! 😂Cheers.
1:06 I appreciate that you explained very non-judgmentally to those who might not have understood that their phone screen can’t reproduce the damaging light. It seems obvious to some but those who don’t spend much time thinking about or understanding tech might not know. Your videos are so approachable even when you speak to technical aspects. It’s a rare gift to understand how to explain things to laypersons in a way that can help them potentially not be laypersons in the future.
You actually did that disaster (well, event) teardown! I _had_ been wondering about the bored ape debacle. I would reckon that these tubes were _cranked_ out because of Covid-19, then became surplus to requirements, and got sold and resold through some dodgy channels, winding up in a party/event organizer's stock.
That is a good point I'd imagine the manufacturing of UVC tubes spiked because of the pandemic. As you say, I'd imagine companies had a lot of surplus and so sold them on marketplaces such as Alibaba (so not necessarily dodgy). The lurid blue glow and the effect it has on UV-reactive surfaces, plus the fact that they were probably fairly cheap, likely swayed people into buying them who had no real idea about the dangers of these lamps. Also, those fluorescent fixings were likely already installed so they probably just took the original tubes out and replaced them with the UVC ones.
I'm still suffering from the effects of an accidental arc flash over 17 years later. To me, when a flare up occurs, it's not just like somoene has thrown sand in your eyes but it is like someone has taken that sand and jammed it up under the eyelids so that every time I blink it's like I'm sanding my eyeballs with 60 grit sandpaper. There is a reason I generally walk around outdoors, even on cloudy days, with a really dark pair of wraparound sunglasses, rated at UV400, on. Very highly sensitive to the UV wavelengths.
@@incandescentwithragenone of the optometrists/opthalmologists over the years have mentioned that. And while I do get dry eye from time to time, particularly after a long time looking at a screen, it's not a recurrent thing.
Have you mentioned the flare ups to your optometrist? They might be able to help identify any possible triggers and/or prescribe eyedrops that will help pain relief
In my youth I had a factory job where I was assembling some parts while standing in front of a sheet of unfinished gray steel. Behind me another worker spent the day welding bits of steel tube together. I never looked at the arc of his welding. The next morning I was frightened to discover bloodshot eyes. It seems that that flavor of sheet metal was reflective in the UV, but not in the visible spectrum.
@8:46 - I have told this before, but I had occasion to observe a welder doing some hard facing of a crusher rotor as I was going to do a second shift welding the same. During my lessons, I ended up holding a rectangle welding helmet glass in front of my eyes as there was not an extra welding helmet. The next day, I came in with a slightly askew white rectangle over my eyes in the middle of a face that was very red and sun burnt. The welding lens had protected a perfect rectangle size section of skin around my eyes. The fellas in the shop sure got a kick out of that. I learned a valuable and quite painful lesson.
I once spent a shift doing tack welds in my booth. Stick the plate in position, turn head to the right, close eyes, squeeze trigger, repeat ad nauseam for about 10 hours. I woke up the next day with the worst sunburn I've ever seen a human being have in real life across the entire left side of my face, and closing my eyes be damned, I still got flash burn in that eye. It's been 13 years and vision is still noticeably degraded and on particularly sunny days my left eye will involuntarily keep itself closed and full of tears.
It's pretty scary to think something like this can just happen at an event you're attending. My mother as a child growing up in Bangladesh gave herself permanent eye damage staring at welders doing their thing outside of her family's home; in 1960s-1970s Bangladesh I can't imagine knowledge and safety precautions about such things were that widely known or practiced. Great video as ever; super insightful. Let's hope event organisers finally learn from these serious cases of negligence.
I remember as a 6 or 7 year old, walking with my father down by the local port. There were some guys doing some welding on one of the structures, and all of a sudden, my dad started screaming and yelling at me not to look. He went absolutely apeshit, telling me I would go blind. Ever since, I have never looked at anyone welding.
@@mrosskne I'd like to hope that even from a business standpoint they'd see the error of their ways here but, that is wishful thinking sadly so, good point. In that case, I hope other measures are taken to stop this from happening again.
i didn’t expect you to make a whole second video about this! both events were hosted by Hypebeast (it was a BAYC x Hypebeast crossover event), and it’s frightening that they did it again in only 5 years. my dad has UV-B tubes in a lamp for medical treatments for a skin condition, and as a kid (since he’s had the lamp my whole life), i was warned to never play with it and never enter the room when dad was doing “[his] light.” for the majority of the life of the bulbs, he can only expose the front and back of his body for 30 seconds each side, and those are only UV-B! the cyan glow - even just in the video - is beautiful, but i would just use RGB LEDs to get close enough
UVB is interesting; it doesn't burn you like UVC does, and it can be used for treating skin conditions, but because it penetrates deeper than UVC, it's very good at giving you skin cancer with overexposure.
I converted an old UV + IR sunlamp for PCB exposure (and EPROM erase). But when I used it, I set a timer and left the room as there was a strong smell of ozone. I can not imagine how sombody could have used this to voluntarily irradiate his skin with this lamp, eye protection given or taken.
@@goamartyif you're getting ozone you're probably in uv-c range UVB is normally enough to erase eeproms AFAIK I think even UVA will do the job. This guy's dad most likely had something that was basically a tanning bulb not a uv-c bulb. Again most likely, though the 30 seconds is a bit odd. The only thing I could think of that'd use uv-c would be some sort of treatment resistant microorganism but I've never heard of that. UV for vitamin d and a bunch of other stuff sure
@@zyeborm The lamp was intended as a tanning lamp and for Vitamin D production). It was really old (from the 1970ies). It had a high pressure quartz mercury arc lamp. The IR radiator was used as resistive ballast for the tube. I replaed it with two parallel chokes from old fluorescent tubes. Originally you could position two glass cylinders, probably soda lime for UVC-block, in front of the tube. There was a scale on this control, which suggested to keep 75 cm distance to the tube WITHOUT the glass cylinders and 50cm, if you close them in front of the tube. I know, the EPROM erasers used clear mercury vapor tubes and the dose for erasing them was specified at 254nm (so UVC). For PCB exposure UVA would have been sufficient. But this lamp was available and not used any more for it's intended purpose.
Props to Clive's printer for putting in the work and looking great doing it. His enlarged photographs are a major learning assist in all of his videos.
A colleague of mine ordered replacement lamps for the insectocutors in the kitchen at work. He fitted the lamps but was not impressed by the colour and asked my opinion, when I compared the lamps I noticed the warning makings on it and your first video came to mind. When I informed the big name brand British wholesalers, they were completely oblivious to the near miss situation. All the best Clive.
I worked in a science research lab and we had a entire cell culture room that ran through a sterilization cycle with INTENSE UVC after about 10PM at night. We had huge signs posted warning no entry but staying late one night I saw the janitors calmly working in the light.
I'm not an NFT guy but FYI the low for BAYC was in Early September and they're up over 50% since then. If I didn't think Ethereum was fucking stupid I'd probably have bought an ape on this news lol
Reminds me of this freakish room in our uni's botany department where they measured UV shock response of algae, plants and trees. The place was a polished stainless-steel box filled with UVC tubes and the door looked like an airlock into a space station. There were so many bright yellow UV radiation warning stickers it made quite the cool wallpaper.
There was a spooky dark section lit only with UV lights in a huge indoor play area I went to as a kid… twenty years later I’m extremely hypersensitive to sunlight, and I can’t help but wonder now if those pretty lights were why.
I really admire that you treated this teardown completely seriously, given the circumstances! It would have been so easy to dunk on the NFT bros for doing something irresponsible, but you’re right, it most likely happened due to lack of awareness of the danger of these bulbs. I respect your ability to hold any judgement and focus on the important parts.
There was a news report from someone who had been burnt by the UVC and they recalled the UV lights in the toilets. So your detective work seems to be on the money.
IIRC you often see UV lights in nightclub bathrooms because it makes it harder for people doing coke to see what they're doing. Maybe that's what they were going for.
@@superscatboyor,maybe the uvc is for the germs? Because bathroom has a bunch of airborne germs.... I highly doubt it was specifically to make coke less visible...
If that WAS actually a bathroom (modified for the event, though), is there any chance that those lights were already there FOR DISINFECTING, like they were designed for, but usually only run when the venue was closed? And maybe a staffer came in, saw that there were already "Blacklights" installed, and flipped the disinfecting light switch without confirming with anyone?
I think that if they were for disinfecting, they would have been mounted in a location which needed disinfecting - i.e. near the floor, rather than around the perimeter of the roof!
i got a very mild case of snow blindness once (from the actual snow, not from an NFT rave) and it sucked pretty bad. it made me take the whole thing a lot more serious and wear UV eye protection if i was going to be out on bright days with fresh snow. where i live, just regular sunglasses with UV protection is enough and its fairly rare to get a bright enough day for snow blindness, but it will sneak up on you. if i went any further north though, it would become a necessity to wear eye protection. we even learn how to make DIY eye protection for wilderness survival (you just cut some slits in something and stick it your face so you are looking through the slits).
A good few years ago we were on a tourist boat on Lake Titicaca in Peru on a bright sunny day. The UV reflection off the water at that high altitude caused a lot of burns under white European chins/eyebrows that day! 😱
I got sunburned from the bounced light off the snow where I had’t applied sun block. Chin , under nose, ear lobes, inside top of ear. I had 50 spf sun block marks that where white , and then it looked like I had red spray paint sprayed from below everywhere that would have been in shadow. 😳
I wanted to buy sunglasses once and no employee in the store could tell me what UV protection the sunglasses had or if they even had any to begin with. Needless to say, I did not buy anything from that store.
oh wow, I didn't even know this was possible but I'm fairly certain I've experienced this too. I don't like to wear goggles when I'm skiing the park because it makes the small contours of the snow more difficult to see (important if you don't want to eat snow). But I bet they probably make goggles that aren't so dark, right? Or maybe just some glasses with UV protection might work even better 🤷♂
I worked somewhere where we were making a medical device which was loaded with these tubes internally to self-disinfect its interior. Someone decided to swap a couple tubes for white light to temporarily make it easier to see inside. Likely 2 out of 8 tubes. The remaining 6 UVC tubes still in place. Every engineer came back the next day complaining of sunburns and sandy eyes. I found myself quite shocked that nobody on the team (including a MSEE) had a clue there were 3 defined levels of UV and the dangers of UVC...
It's also called snow blindness. I got it once as a kid watching arc welders at work. This being the 1950s, they took little precautions to protect the public.
ah done that one once well you only really do it once dont you :) painful experience and no 90's was just being stupid the good old fuck around and find out scale we all visit it sometimes
My grandpa had a friend who never seemed to look at you directly. Always ever so slightly to one side. Turned out he watched the welding of streetcar tracks for days as a kid and got a permanent blind spot in the center of his vision. At least that was what he said. I guess in the 1930s nobody cared.
When I was 17, me and my classmates at school were intruduced to arc welding. One girl in my class was a bit careless with the use of the welders mask. After this she didn't come to school for a few days, and for a week after that, her eyes looked like she had gone a number of rounds in the ring with Tyson. Wasn't pretty...
Hence the name, this also happens if you’re not careful in the mountains. Especially at high altitude. This happened to my wife when we went to Colorado this summer and stayed up around 10,000 feet. Crazy!
This reminds me of another interesting fact that carbon arc lights emit significant UV radiation. A science group was attempting to create one in the lab and was satisfied with the super bright arc it produced, only to experience sore eyes and extreme skin rash indicating UV burn damage in the following days.🤕
I think properly designed mercury vapor bulbs are actually designed to burn themselves out if the UV glass breaks, because they are basically a type of arc lamp but have glass that blocks UV around the actual bulb making the light.
@@filanfyretracker Another one I have read about was Mercury Arc Rectifiers which were commonly used before high power semiconductors became available. On those the light is an unwanted by-product and they should be used in a lightproof cabinet.
@@MrDunclMercury arc rectifiers are made of ordinary glass that blocks UVC though. Looking at one shouldn't cause arc flash or sunburn as only UVA can make it through the gass, still it can cause eyestrain and contribute to cataracts and macular degeneration later on, therefore it's still better to not intentionally look at a mercury arc valve for extended amounts of time and this also applies to blacklights by the way.
My dad used to get it all the time in the power stations in Britain welding in cramped conditions they couldn't use the masks. Back in the 70's they were very bulky. I now live in Bulgaria and the trick they use here is to pee in a cup and wash their eyes out in urine. And bizarrely it seems to work
Fortunately, I haven’t been through that experience, but I’ve seen a few people who have been hired to do some home repairs in our neighbourhood who almost certainly have. It seems their approach to on-site safety is to just sort of shield their eyes with one hand while the other hand is welding.
Same here back in the 1970s. I tried the old spud trick and it seemed to work. Although the discomfort doesn't last long, UV exposure will excelerate formation of cataracts which I now have.
@@86BEAMS Usually if you're welding in confined spaces, even if you have a mask on it can reflect off stainless steel vessel behind you and enter the mask. Or if there is a team of welders working you get it from their arc whilst your mask is up.
the moment I heard what had happened at that event, I immediately thought "oh, it was UVC tubes", immediately thinking of all the videos you've made over the last few years. I'm very glad you made one about this, and hopefully there's some accountability and prevention of further incidents in the future
Similar annoyance that many lower budget productions skimp on laser safety and don't take pains to position them correctly so they don't hit people in the eyes!
@@bigclivedotcomThat I got unfortunate enough to experience when going to a party a couple days ago. Should I try reporting the place to the authorities or not ? Green laser, got me in the eyes quite a few times, I tried closing them when the beam was coming but still got a few exposures nonetheless. Let's hope I'll not get permanent damage to my eyes. Other people also got hit quite good as I could see but they didn't seem to care in the slightest.
I just want to mention that there are over the counter eyedrops (at least in the US) which probably do something quite similar to the potato trick only they're actually, you know, intended for eyes. The brand I get is TheraDrops but it's basically just water with an eye-safe starch in it which I assumes helps retain the moisture on the surface of the eye longer. I use them because I just have chronic dry eye, but my son accidentally got a bit of snow blindness skiing last winter and the drops really helped him too, they're very soothing. (He'd put the drops in and then put a cool damp compress over his eyes.)
What timing! Buddy of mine brought the story to my attention and I responded by showing him your video about UVC bulbs from about 5 years back. Then a brief bit later and Big Clive is Johnny on the spot!
Yep, there's multiple accounts saying that people who were "near the toilets" got sunburns. Couldn't have happened to nicer guys, but they'll live. Reddit and Slashdot I believe also both pointed back to your channel on the UV lights when this story popped.
Some friends of mine, over in Dubai ran a nightclub for the ex-pat community (the authorities turned a blind eye to alcohol made and drunk by foreigners provided they didn't sell it to the locals) and decided to buy some UV lamps for it. They ordered the wrong sort. They ordered the sort used in tanning salons. Quite a lot of people had sunburn in the morning.
There are also images showing that the vertical lighter coloured stripes along bottom of the stage (at 4:43) are also UV tubes, however they appear to be off in images in Clive’s video… The picture posted in The Verge clearly shows emitting what appears to be UV.
Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice. I guess the organizers should be subject to inspections on the matter now, as public safety is at risk.
@@VeraTheTabbynx Actually, proper decentralization would solve this problem. That would require people (a separate party) to say, confirm safety regulations are being followed, and when confirmed they would receive a reward. If the host was found to be in a breach of the set safety regulations they would be fined. I know it can be hard to think rationally for some people, so I hope this explanation helps, and that you get some help :)
@@mrrooter601 Thank you but I don't need help. And you're correct! Proper decentralization would actually have a lot of oversight from multiple independent agencies, none of which are given veto power. Unfortunately the idea has been badly misconstrued as free of governing or regulatory bodies, as those are seen as centralized. Kinda funny a community like BAYC itself follows a central leadership.
I read part of the Slashdot regurgitation article and thought: "man, this really sounds like that fashion event Clive talked about with the UVC lamps".
An old Ophthalmologist once told me the following, knowing that I fabricate stuff and was looking at him with red arc eyes (crack in the helmet glass): Ultraviolet is highly irritating but non penetrating, but beware, Infra-Red is non irritating but highly penetrating. So don’t gas weld without eye protection too.
I think the issue is more that for IR, non-irritating intensities are not damaging, whereas damaging (burning) intensities are irritating. So there’s no overlap between damaging and non-irritating with IR, unlike with UV.
I don't think that's true information at all. IR has very low energy (lower than visible light) and can't cause ionization and molecular damage. The only thing IR can do is heat up your skin(and cause conventional burns in extreme cases). Now, there is still hidden danger in it - you can't see IR, so you can't tell how bright the IR source actually is. You might be staring at the equivalent of 200W IR flashlight not knowing that because you can't see IR. UVC, on the other hand, has much higher energy than visible light, let alone IR. UVC borders X-ray on the spectrum, and has a potential to cause ionization and molecular damage, and provoke skin cancer. Pretty much any dose of UVC is unhealthy, although it can't really avoided, because sun radiates it too. Also it is quite penetrative. Not as penetrative as X-rays or gamma radiation, but much more penetrative than visible light.
Normal open fire mostly produces IR, some visible light, but no UVC. It can be very hot near the campfire, but it's impossible to get a "sunburn" from it, no matter how long you've been near it. "Sunburns" are specifically UV damage.
Well, okay. I might need to correct myself. IR might be slightly more penetrative than UV due to wave effect... stuff. But the point stands - IR can't ionize, cause molecular damage and can't generally cause cancer. It's really near harmless. But UVC is not, it's very harmful.
Bug zapper tubes were also called "white black light" because it was all the UV of a blacklight, plus a wider spectrum. The queue for Space Mountain at Disneyland Anaheim was lit with them in the 80s. And I used them for deco at home with a 15" desk lamp. I also remember swapping them into a battery powered camping lantern that supported flo tubes.
Great investigation! I'm going to be on the lookout for clear UVC tubes from now on. Also I think its great that you've emphasised that the effects are not good but temporary, I can imagine a lot of people getting quite worried after leaving the event.
I appreciate the consideration that those who are underinformed might think that the harmful radiation is coming through their phone, and you aknowledged that without sounding condescending at all. Truly a gem of a channel 💙
i really like this channel quite a bit, its kind of amusing to see you taking the time to explain that filming a UV light wont project UV through the phone / monitor.
I used to work with lighting balloons, and they would usually have HMI lights in them to provide the cold white part of their spectrum. You never wanted to be able to see one while it was on, even for fairly brief testing, but all it took to filter out the high UV was a thin sheet of the airtight sailcloth we used as a diffusion and outer envelope.
Interesting story Clive, thanks. I used a big UV tube to erase EPROMs for many years, but never got a burn as I kept them in a drawer, and was always careful not to look at them. I have managed to zap myself a few times with my welder though. Not fun at all.
I'm genuinely curious how can UV light wavelength can erase EEPROM memory. Maybe the radiation does? Was is to actually erease to then reprogram the chip or to destroy the chip?
@@samuhell14 EPROM, not EEPROM. EEPROMs are the Electrically Erasable ones, those do not need UV light to be erased and in fact cannot be erased by UV light, because they don't have a window exposing the chip. From the Wikipedia article about EPROMs: EPROMs are easily recognizable by the transparent fused quartz (or on later models resin) window on the top of the package, through which the silicon chip is visible, and which permits exposure to ultraviolet light during erasing. To erase the data stored in the array of transistors, ultraviolet light is directed onto the die. Photons of the UV light cause ionization within the silicon oxide, which allows the stored charge on the floating gate to dissipate. Since the whole memory array is exposed, all the memory is erased at the same time. The process takes several minutes for UV lamps of convenient sizes; sunlight would erase a chip in weeks, and indoor fluorescent lighting over several years.
@@samuhell14 not EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) but the predecessor EPROM (Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory). Here's the pertinent part from the wikipedia page on them: "The programming process is not electrically reversible. To erase the data stored in the array of transistors, ultraviolet light is directed onto the die. Photons of the UV light cause ionization within the silicon oxide, which allows the stored charge on the floating gate to dissipate. Since the whole memory array is exposed, all the memory is erased at the same time. The process takes several minutes for UV lamps of convenient sizes; sunlight would erase a chip in weeks, and indoor fluorescent lighting over several years." You can recognize an EPROM from an EEPROM in that the former has a transparent fused quartz or resin window on the top through which the silicon chip is visible and UV light can pass through.
Great investigation from the pictures, Clive! I think you're right on the money. I got welders flash when I was a young lass, my dad welded stuff and usually made me wear a mask but one day I looked without one and the sandy feeling later was not nice, thus learning why welding masks are used :D
All the welders I know refer to it as “burning your eyes.” My grandfather was a welder, and my dad and uncle are welders. I was probably 13 years old when, while working one summer at my dad’s shop, my eyes were burned. It’s hard to avoid catching those arcs, especially when two or three welders are working simultaneously on different projects around one shop area. I got it bad! The pain didn’t set in until later that night, whilst I was at church. There is definitely a delayed reaction. For a 13 year-old boy, it was excruciating pain. It kept me up all night long in absolute misery. I’ve been ever so careful, ever since. It’s an experience you shall never forget!
Hey I mentioned this yesterday! Thanks for doing a video on it. I think you're on the money especially with being able to see the standing wave pattern in the bathroom photo. I see another comment mentioned it was the same promoter as last time that helped with this event too (Hypebeast). That's crazy they made the same mistake twice especially with the bad publicity they received the first time.
I've had arc flash very badly when I was foreman of a 9 man + 1 woman crew working in tight quarters together. It was very painful. With strong sensitivity to light. To the point that I had to wear sunglasses at night because the brake lights from cars in front of me were too bright. It did cause permanent damage in the form of cataracts. My eye doctor said that it bloomed my existing minor Cataracts. I had to undergo lens replacement surgery in both eyes at the age of 41.
Great video! I loved your investigation! UA-camr Atozy did actually confirm that he was at the event and the event confirmed they were cleaning uvc lights, so your were correct. There's also been reports of people having much more severe problems while others, such as Atozy didn't have as big of a reaction, so if the lights were just in one area that would make a lot of sense.
i want to thank you for taking the time in this video to identify how germicidal lamps look to outsiders 🙏🏽🙏🏽 as soon as i saw the news and after doing further research into germicidal lamps and the other events involving them i was so scared of going to like a party and accidentally ending up even more disabled than i already am without ever being able to know 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽 so thanks for helping quell my anxieties
Man, I was really curious about that incident. You did such a great job explaining everything so simply. Such a great channel. I'm glad to be subscribed all these years. Happy holidays!
IMHO Someone needs to make fluorescent tubes that emit just those visible wavelengths as it is quite a cool colour and it seems a lot of set designers like to use it.
Philips first electronic compact fluorescent lamp (which was very complex) was promoted with a clear glass version in the electrical retailers. Because it was ordinary glass they were safe to view as they blocked the UVC.
@@bigclivedotcomthis reminds me of the tubes I've seen that were coated in fosfor on one side, and clear on the other. But I'm not sure if they were safe.
Thanks for bringing the UV, welding and sun burn topic up. I have been practicing optometry for 43 years and can absolutely confirm that there is something magical about waking up at 2 o'clock in the morning from the pain. The concept of using potato or cucumber slices over the closed eyes or potato juice in the eye works because they are cooler than the eye, which helps bring down swelling, and they also help to draw out some of the extra fluid from the cornea, which is causing pain by compressing the nerves in the cornea. The best solution though is don't get the exposure. Wear appropriate protection.
Good work, Sherlock, and as always a pleasure to watch. Complete sidetrack here… your repeated assurances about my display being safe reminded me… I do have a display that probably _can_ reproduce this… Some very early oscilloscopes came with a trace print option. The trace was replicated on a UV emitting tube, and the operator would place UV sensitive paper in front of it. Not photo print paper, as far as I recall there was no need for developing the prints, or keeping the paper in the dark. The paper came on a roll… it was all a bit haphazard :) Anyway, I rescued that tube and always wanted to do something ‘cool’ with it but who am I kidding…. I should find a UA-camr who will do something cool with it! ;)
In high school we used to kick basketballs up into the HID lights to purposefully pop the outer envelope, and most of the time, about half of the bulbs were missing their outer glass and the gym had that really cool blue hue to it. Never knew back then how dangerous it actually was to have them like that.
Wasn't there a moving-head light, I'm thinking 90s, major name brand of the day like Vari or Icon or something, which used a short-arc Xe source, and had no permanent UVC filter because it had a wood or dichro black light position on one wheel... but if you customized the wheels you could select an open slot in each wheel and have direct exposure to the source... or something like that. I can't recall whether there was a whacking great lens on the front or not - that would help obv. I have this vague memory of there being some "forbidden position combo" or "forbidden code" which the luminaire itself was supposed to prevent somehow... damn my memory but maybe this will trigger something in yours since you've worked with smart lights and I have not. :)
My little condo here in Florida has 40-watt tubes in the kitchen and bathrooms, each in a single-tube fixture with a magnetic ballast. A couple of years ago I found LED replacements that work in the fixtures and replaced all the real tubes. Definitely have to have the proper side facing outwards. Some of the ballasts aren’t working properly and trashed any actual fluorescent tube in a few months of use, but the LED fake-tubes don’t care and work okay in all the fixtures. Great for a lazy man like me.
I wanted to do the same in my garage but somehow the prior owners managed to fit two tubes of varying sizes & neither one has LED replacements available. I had to dismantle the entire affair & put up two new LED tube lights, discovering what they'd done to the wiring in the ceiling below my bedroom.. Kinda glad I didn't give up on that one.
I just checked a hanging fluorescent magnetic ballast fixture in my basement which dates from the late 1960s. It is designed for two 48 inch self start T12 tubes. I have two warm white T8 LED tubes installed. The power consumption is 70 VA or about 69.5 Watts. That gives a power factor around 0.98. It surprised me to see such a good power factor. It doesn’t matter so much in a home setting because billing is usually actual Watts and a default power factor correction is applied to the bill. A business with a lot of lights could really benefit from the drop-in LED tube replacement to improve power factor even though LEDs don’t reduce actual Watts consumed by much. I also checked a hanging 5000 Lumen LED fixture which was LED from the outset. It is consuming 60 Watts and has a power factor of 0.89. You’re actually better off keeping your old fixtures with magnetic ballasts and swapping in LEDs as the fluorescent tubes burn out. That is something I did not expect to find.
I got to experience the eye burn that comes from UVC exposure a few weeks ago!! Intense pain, tears and/or snot streaming down my face, girlfriend demanding I go to the ER at 2am, etc., etc., etc... Good times, good times!!
Thank you for telling us things to look out for if we happen to be at events so we just leave. I don’t care how much I paid for a ticket my sight is priceless!
Standard safety glasses will block UV-B and UV-C, as well as most UV-A. They serve more purposes than just keeping flying bits out of your eyes, and are very helpful in a location where arc-flash/welding is possible.
I have to thank you for that first vudeo UVC a long time ago. Mainly because learnimg about the existence of UVC lights exist has been very helpful with my present projects and the video gave me the knowledge to handle them with care.
I'm wondering whether this would be worse or not as bad as getting sunburnt eyes? When my Dad was young, he experienced sunburnt eyes after a long day of sailing. He described it much like you did, woke up in the middle of the night feeling like he had sand in his eyes, but it lasted more than a day, and eventually the skin on his eyes actually peeled off like sunburnt skin. The upshot was that my grandparents admonished my parents for not letting me wear sunglasses while we were out on sunny days, since they were worried my glasses would somehow focus the sunlight and give my eyes sunburn. Eventually my parents did buy me sunglasses, which as a very young kid I thought were much cooler than glasses.
Clive, I don't know if you know this or not. But they do make clear florescent tubes for decorative use. The only difference between the two is that the CFT is made using ordinary glass as appose to using quartz, Which allows the dangerous 254mn UVC wavelengths to pass though. I'm wondering if the supplier of those tubes is not checking the labels and thinks the two tubes are the same thing. You can't tell the difference between a CFT tube and a germicidal tube by just looking at it. They both look "exactly" the same. YOU MUST CHECK THE LABEL. It's the only way you can tell the two apart.
UV eyeball burn is no laughing matter. During one of my earlier forays into circuit board making, I was using a UV lamp to expose the emulsion on the copper clad boards. Spent ALL day struggling to get the exposure times right and attempting to develop them with potassium carbonate. I found out around 1am that I was in big, big trouble... It was excruciatingly painful, and quite terrifying. I actually thought it was a chemical burn from the developer for a long time until I learned about the dangers of that wicked UV lamp. It doesn't take long to get a burn from it either, but it takes a long time for the effects to manifest. Be nice to your eyeballs. You will miss them when they are gone...
@@jonnyphenomenon If it was really UVA and not UVC you most likely didn't get sand in the eyes but more of an eyestrain like you can get from too much screen time but over only minutes instead of hours. It also depends on how powerful ther UVA source is and how far you are from it.
@@bigclivedotcom Can still hurt the eyes if powerful enough/and or you are too close to the source. You do not want to look at a 400W mercury vapor blacklight without protection at close range for example.
Hi Clive, I have had arc eye a few times, I noticed about 10 pm my eyes always feel a bit sore then as you said about 2am its like hell. its a sickly pain, I found paracetamol helped a lot but basically it does pass but takes a couple of hours. Back then I had not heard if the potato juice trick
I've gotten Photokeratitis once... But for me it was from being exposed to reflected UV Laser radiation. 355nm is UV-A, but it still gave me the same symptoms, probably from the higher intensities.
I've been to restaurants where the passage way in and out of the kitchen has a small very purple light hanging up on the wall. It's small like this. Is that legal for them to have that up there? is that suppose to disinfect the staff as they pass back and forth? What's the purpose of something like that in a restaurant setting?
The really baffling thing is why a decorative toilet room is even a thing. Not sure how that even fits the ape theme. Maybe it fits the theme because NFT prices are in the toilet?
My father worked in a photolithography union back in the 90’s and used UV metal halide lamps for exposing large scale lithographic plates. Thousands of watts of these lights were used and the buildings interior was an intense violet purple color. I remember all the UV warnings posted everywhere around that place and the PPE my father had to wear
QUESTIONS!! Does it matter how far away from the actual tubes you are? Also, here in the US a lot places that prepare food (grocery stores, delis, etc.) have germicidal fixtures on the walls in close proximity to the workers and customers. Also, barbers will have UVC boxes where the combs and brushes and clippers get slid into. You can't see the bulbs directly but the reflection is quite obvious. There is what I'm assuming is a UVC tube within the fixture. You can't see the tube directly but you can see its reflection. How dangerous are those??
The devices in the food areas are usually using safe UVA tubes to attract the flies to sticky mats or a zapping grid. A diffused reflection is safer than direct viewing.
@@bigclivedotcom hey Clive, as an aside, I have a broken plug in 120 to 240V power adapter from China. I shake it and I hear a rattling and if I shake it enough it will sometimes work. I’d love to send it to you if you want to take it to bits. How can I get this to you if you’re interested?
Arc eye is no joke. I restored cars and motorcycles for most of my working life and the last time I had it I was welding the chassis on a prewar vauxhall. I was using the works mask but unfortunately it was faulty so, as I was happily flashing away doing the 200 odd stitch welds to add strengthening plates to the chassis and new suspension hangers etc, the mask wasn't reacting in time, just by a fraction of a second. Those fractions of a second added up over the day and I noticed the halo/corona effect around the headlights of oncoming cars on the drive home and then, late that night, the burning gravel started. Worst case of arc eye I've ever copped. My eyes puffed up like I'd told Mike Tyson a bad joke about his mum. Took a good few days to get going again. Don't mess with UV light/welding. Always wear a quality mask. I have a wide angle true colour mask of my own now.
Worked with UV lamps at three different jobs. First one was at a meat Packer where they had a special temperature & humidity controlled refrigerated room with UV lamps to age meat up to one year. Second time at a large candy plant where they had them in corn syrup storage tank room. In a huge 12 story ambutory care building they had them inside of air handlers. I noticed several not working and asked the building engineer when was the last time they replaced them in this 4 year old building. Said never. Told him we always replaced them once a year. They ordered replacements and first big wooden box of them cost over $5,000. We did have an e!ectrical burn his eyes some when he ignored warning label on lamp covers.
I used to work in a printing firm where we had purchased a flat bed printer. It used UVA and UVB to cure the inks. Wow were my eyes sore after the first day of use. We did have glasses to wear when observing the print head area where the light was located. We made sure to use the glasses from then on.
@@psirvent8 Sorry, that wasn't written well. Having to wear glasses for eye correction, I didn't use the protective glasses often enough due to having to swap over all the time. I did from the following day on though.
@@steveroberts1861Thank's for the reply. Yeah, I see the issue, maybe the protective glasses didn't fit over your prescription glasses so you had to swap them. But how did you manage to see when wearing the protective glasses ? I also play with UV lamps at home and wear ski goggles to protect my eyes however I don't see really well since I have to first remove my glasses. I'm currently looking to get a face shield that blocks all wavelengths of UV so I can keep my glasses on.
Yeah always swapping glasses. The reality was the UV was contained pretty well so we would only use the protective glasses when doing colour and detail tests where you were in close vicinity to the print head and lamps. As far as me being able to see, I am long sighted so I had to be quite close to the print I had just made. No real issue there.
The special difference is, uvc clear fluorescents are made from Quartz glass letting the uv(c) pass, (and probably sunbed lamps are too?), while all other fluorescents are not. Regular glass filters out most of the UV. That's also why clear blue tubes in neon signage are not harmful. Also you will see that "safe" clear blue tubes don't activate those fluorescent "neon" paints, the safety features in bank notes etc.
From what I heard sunbed lamps are made from the same ordinary glass as other fluorescent tubes. But unlike say for instance blacklights they also emit a bit of UVB, which is normally blocked by ordinary glass, so I'm not really sure. Reptile bulbs might be made of quartz glass though, with special phosphors to get UVB and also block UVC. UVA on the other hand isn't blocked by glass and is the reason why white plastics turn yellow after years of sunlight exposure behind windows as wallpapers and paintings fade over time for the same reason.
To put it in perspective, I use a UVC box to sterilise items. Whenever I get a new bulb, I use the banana skin test I learned on this channel. Well if a small UVC bulb can give a banana sunburn in 10-15 minutes, god help your retina after a few hours near a large bulb.
Wouldn't it theoretically be possible to produce a "decorative" variant of this, that uses UV-absorbing glass but no Phosphor to get the cyan glow without the harm? (not that I think it would be a good idea, as people would mix them upo again for sure)
Possible I'd guess, but then you'd end up with two visually identical lamps, one which is safe, one which isn't, and given people are getting this wrong already (where the difference seems to be clear tube vs black), adding more things to get confused with probably isn't the best idea :)
They have to use a special expensive borosilicate or fused quartz glass to get the uv transmission in the first place, ordinary glass cuts most uv so yes they could.
It would be fairly easy to filter out the UVC with just some polycarbonate plastic, right? That way you can enjoy the light as much as you want. There are also high intensity discharge lamps for street lighting, without phosphors, but with UV blocking glass. Get those if you want the bright blue-green light without that pesky ozone and painful eyes.
In the early days of cinema when arch lamps were used without filter, actors and actresses complained about severe eye sore because of the lights. I saw some actresses reporting on a documentary that they used Castor Oil in drops to alleviate the pain (this is also not a medical advise). This happened until an illuminator discovered that thick glass plaque absorbed most of the UV light. Once I worked and a office furniture factory (as a programmer) and a welder could not find his footwear protections (I don't know the name in English they are called here "polainas") and worked a day without them, they had to open a work injury incident because of the burning of his feet that got blisters all over it as tennis and even leather shoes that are not high enough and thick enough can't protect you against the UV ans surely your common clothes are transparent to shortwave UV.
What a tease! OK, thank you for all the important information for eye irritation and skin burn. I wanted you to shine a light behind the 400w bulb to show the inner quartz envelope, to change the tubes to show the illumination of the black UV and insect destroyer tube (never seen that before). How does that work?
How does what work? You could always look up a photo or video of a mercury-vapor lamp to see how the 400 watt one works; they were dead common for outdoor lighting until about a decade ago. They have uncoated and phosphor-coated varieties. As for the other tubes, you could find photos of a blacklight tube and a bug zapper tube.
It takes infrared light to see the inside of the large lamp. The white insect tube is purely for attracting them to a sticky mat or an electrified grid.
@@bigclivedotcom OK. I remember seeing the inner tube in mine, I guess it was powered up. So did I see a tungsten filament that restricted current flow to the mercury vapour lamp? Was a few decades ago 🧓🏼
@@tommiller1315The filament is only present in self-ballasted lamps. Can yours be plugged directly into mains or does it need a ballast ? The 400W one shown in the video requires a ballast, I know for having the same one and there is no filament inside it.
What if they didn't use UVC light, but so many people who bought ugly apes for like 300k$ already had severe eye damage to begin with and just want to recoup some losses?
im convinced its a cash kink. First they buy nothing and brag, then they blind themselves and pay a huge medical bill (standby, waiting to see if they brag). Im convinced this is just a money kink
@caffiend81 If one of these lamps were to break during use the biggest danger wouldn't be the mercury but the UVC light coming from the arc tube and at 400W or power it would be much more of a hazard than the clear fluorescent tubes. It would not only cause severe welder's eyes but also sunburns and even generate ozone as well. I happen to have a 400W mercury vapor bulb that I intentionally broke to turn it into a powerful germicidal lamp/ozone generator and every time I power it up I double or even triple-check that everything from the ballast to the extension cord to the remote control box is unplugged, I also make sure that nothing is in my way for when I'll be exiting the room, then I press the OFF button before plugging everything in while being ready to unplug it at any time if the light were to unexpectedly come on for a reason or another and I also keep a close eye both on the indicator light of the control box and on the remote control itself to make sure the ON button doesn't accidentally get pressed somehow. At this point the system is considered armed and therefore dangerous. Then I take the remote control, exit the room and close the door, put a warning sign on it and next I even shout Clear Prop ! before finally switching the light on with the remote control. Once I hear the ballast humming I move away from the door to not get UVC or ozone exposure from the gaps between the door and its frame or the floor. When the disinfecting cycle is finished I turn off the light with the same remote control and only when the ballast stops humming do I consider the light to actually be off. Before opening the door though I usually wait 1 or 2 minutes for the lamp to cool down, and when I enter the room I immediately unplug everything so it's safe again like before. Next I open the window and immediately leave the room, closing the door behind me as well. 3 to 4 hours later if not more the room can finally be reintegrated without too much concerns about ozone poisoning.
Good to see someone doing a sensible appraisal of the incident Thanks, hope this gets picked up by 'the algorithm' .. much good could be done. Well done for a calm informed voice of reason. Maybe (shudder) you could produce a 'short' in order to get it to the masses.
I've had my eyesight permanently damaged from calibrating indicia detectors that were installed in postal letter cancelling machines ( Automatic Facing and Cancelling System ). They were used to detect stamps on envelopes, postage stamps are tagged. They did not give us any warning about the devices nor did they give us any protective glasses to use. Be warned, these are not to be played with.
the thing I don't get is UVC doesn't make many materials fluoresce like UVA does. You'd think the people using those lamps by mistake would realise there was a problem and investigate and then there's the smell of ozone.... I do have some of those cheap paper indicators. My UVC lamps are the real deal. I do have glasses with plastic lenses so never suffered any arc flash like problems. I've found UVC reasonably useful for dealing with mold problems.
@@thebrowns5337 Maybe. On the stage with all the other light it'd be hard to see. decades ago I lit a whole dance floor with UVA and there was a forest of hanging glowing in UV boxes at eye level. Add some fog and it was very disorenting, a trip without the acid . We even had a UV strobe!
I think they might have been Ozone-free UVC bulbs, which has a coating on it to block the specific band of UVC that produces ozone. Still releases more than enough UVC to sterilize surfaces though, and burn people. I don't know how someone can think such lights are safe to have out in public though. I bought a bunch of UVC tubes to sterilize rooms in my house and basement, and there were warning messages written all over them.
“Computer enhance” with printed photos gave me a hearty chuckle. Never change, Clive.
We're living in a simulation, those "printed" photos are just being rendered by the GPU.
@@RFC3514 Does that mean I am God, cause for sure they are rendered by my trusty GPU at this moment.
@@Tuning3434 - Nah, you're just an NPC.
@@Tuning3434 I'm God.
I'm so completely unsurprised an incident like this happened at a Bored Ape NFT event.
right, comedy at it'a finest
I'm sure you can already buy the NFT rights to this incident.
*NPC 🙄
They only noticed something was wrong when big black spots started appeared on their JPG.
Is that still a thing? I'd love to know their exit plan when they cash in and buy actual yachts, in a market based entirely on the "bigger fool" theory. Then again it's not like actual stock markets, and the better part of the world's economy, isn't depending on the same theory.
They are creating scarcity and therefore value by reducing the number of healthy eyeballs
They've created business opportunities for eye doctors!
People who overpaid for a link to poorly rendered artwork can’t see it anymore, so now they will have to put their money in a blind trust.
Bad eyesight increases demand for NFT’s
They'll need audio and braille NFTs now.
I lol-ed
I've stopped two artists from using UVC lighting in their installations and after they watched your previous video they changed all their equipment and were very grateful for this advice.
They need to put better labels on the boxes they sell these in, and perhaps some warning on the cap of the tube. Maybe a compulsory verbal and written warning to anyone hoping to purchase them.
DING DING DING DING DING - We have a winner! *Thank you* for noticing, stepping up and speaking out to protect the public.
@@greenaum1 word.
"China"
@@MadScientist267 Well.... yeah.
Yeah I know completely what you mean in 1 word, and the different aspects of what it means in this case.
But besides the corruption, and the scamming, which we might sum up with "sewer oil", there's the incompetence and lack of regulation, or selective enforcement of it.
But in this case I think "Aliexpress" or "Shenzhen" might also be good words. You can buy everything and anything, from the vendor-tinkerers in the markets, when they're not digging through the reject bins round the back of the factories. Might be somebody got a good price buying almost-direct, and the stuff didn't come with any sort of information or proper packaging cos it wasn't intended to be sold to end-users.
Not that it would matter, probably if it was, but we can at least hope that a proper lighting supplier would know not to sell germicidal UV-C lamps to someone holding a concert. Ordering over the web would be another missing link in the chain, as far as proper information getting passed down.
So yeah, "China" covers a multitude of fuckups, even ones that aren't scams.
- people flee just because of mention of radiation
- also people: use dangerous ionization radiation emitting UV-C tubes for fun....
When I was about 16 years old I was given an old military UV light. I played around with it for about 30 minutes. I was fascinated because it would make regular window glass glow green and other interesting phenomena. The next morning, my eyes felt a bit irritated, and then I went to go outside and instantly I have severe pain in my eyes. My friend convinced me not to go to the hospital. It took about two weeks to go out in daylight and six months to stay in daylight. It took about 20 years for my eyes to fully heal.
Unreal, someone convincing someone else in pain not to see someone about it.
I can attest it bloody hurts. I once was an absolute idiot and by reflex looked into a UV lamp to check if it was on as it wasnt illuminating things....... thankfully I only felt like my eyeballs were on fire for about a week and it was a very short exposure but honestly I wish it was better labelled, It looked quite a bit like a normal light and I was not paying attention.
Holy shit., that is no good. There needs to be more education on the dangers of UV lights.
@AIuzky You literally rape dogs.
@AIuzkythe funny thing about ethics and morality education is that people will still intentionally do what they know is unethical and immoral if they personally feel it's justified. you can teach a student math for 13 years but you can't make them like it
If, in fact, it is found that unfiltered UV lighting was used at this event, the producers need to be held to account for exposing people to potentially harmful UV radiation with no warning.
Good work Clive!
Irresponsible laser display operators are giving people permanent retina damage and nobody is doing a thing about it, so I wouldn't hold your breath.
If this was in the US lawyers would have felt a disturbance in the force and been all over it.
They're all broke anyway, that's why they are trying to pump and dump their ponzi scheme.
Crypto and accountability are like sodium and water, so it'll be entertaining to watch.
The reckless use of lasers is increasing. Some of the stuff being sold online, and used by DJs with utter disregard for safety is already causing permanent eye damage..
I got a heavy dose of arc flash decades ago in my welding apprenticeship. My instructor simply smiled and oddly enough told me to go home and rent a bunch of videos. Why? Because for the first 24hrs it hurts more to close your eyes than to leave them open and the only thing to do was stay up until the eyeball sunburn started to heal. Never made that mistake again. Thanks for bringing up a painful memory Clive! 😂Cheers.
Yep it's said you never get it twice....
1:06 I appreciate that you explained very non-judgmentally to those who might not have understood that their phone screen can’t reproduce the damaging light. It seems obvious to some but those who don’t spend much time thinking about or understanding tech might not know.
Your videos are so approachable even when you speak to technical aspects. It’s a rare gift to understand how to explain things to laypersons in a way that can help them potentially not be laypersons in the future.
I liked that, as I have seen that confusion before. Especially on laser videos.
You actually did that disaster (well, event) teardown!
I _had_ been wondering about the bored ape debacle.
I would reckon that these tubes were _cranked_ out because of Covid-19, then became surplus to requirements, and got sold and resold through some dodgy channels, winding up in a party/event organizer's stock.
excellent point!
a case of mass hysteria it seems, no one needs those lamps
Poetic justice then?
@@monad_tcp boo and hiss
That is a good point
I'd imagine the manufacturing of UVC tubes spiked because of the pandemic. As you say, I'd imagine companies had a lot of surplus and so sold them on marketplaces such as Alibaba (so not necessarily dodgy). The lurid blue glow and the effect it has on UV-reactive surfaces, plus the fact that they were probably fairly cheap, likely swayed people into buying them who had no real idea about the dangers of these lamps. Also, those fluorescent fixings were likely already installed so they probably just took the original tubes out and replaced them with the UVC ones.
I'm still suffering from the effects of an accidental arc flash over 17 years later. To me, when a flare up occurs, it's not just like somoene has thrown sand in your eyes but it is like someone has taken that sand and jammed it up under the eyelids so that every time I blink it's like I'm sanding my eyeballs with 60 grit sandpaper. There is a reason I generally walk around outdoors, even on cloudy days, with a really dark pair of wraparound sunglasses, rated at UV400, on. Very highly sensitive to the UV wavelengths.
That's odd. I wonder if you're being exposed to another source of UVC on a regular basis.
You sure you aren't suffering recurring corneal abrasion from dry-eye?
I get that, and it feels like you describe.
@@incandescentwithragenone of the optometrists/opthalmologists over the years have mentioned that. And while I do get dry eye from time to time, particularly after a long time looking at a screen, it's not a recurrent thing.
Have you mentioned the flare ups to your optometrist? They might be able to help identify any possible triggers and/or prescribe eyedrops that will help pain relief
@@zorbl8463 yep. Many times.
In my youth I had a factory job where I was assembling some parts while standing in front of a sheet of unfinished gray steel. Behind me another worker spent the day welding bits of steel tube together. I never looked at the arc of his welding. The next morning I was frightened to discover bloodshot eyes. It seems that that flavor of sheet metal was reflective in the UV, but not in the visible spectrum.
@8:46 - I have told this before, but I had occasion to observe a welder doing some hard facing of a crusher rotor as I was going to do a second shift welding the same. During my lessons, I ended up holding a rectangle welding helmet glass in front of my eyes as there was not an extra welding helmet. The next day, I came in with a slightly askew white rectangle over my eyes in the middle of a face that was very red and sun burnt. The welding lens had protected a perfect rectangle size section of skin around my eyes. The fellas in the shop sure got a kick out of that. I learned a valuable and quite painful lesson.
😂
I once spent a shift doing tack welds in my booth. Stick the plate in position, turn head to the right, close eyes, squeeze trigger, repeat ad nauseam for about 10 hours. I woke up the next day with the worst sunburn I've ever seen a human being have in real life across the entire left side of my face, and closing my eyes be damned, I still got flash burn in that eye.
It's been 13 years and vision is still noticeably degraded and on particularly sunny days my left eye will involuntarily keep itself closed and full of tears.
It's pretty scary to think something like this can just happen at an event you're attending. My mother as a child growing up in Bangladesh gave herself permanent eye damage staring at welders doing their thing outside of her family's home; in 1960s-1970s Bangladesh I can't imagine knowledge and safety precautions about such things were that widely known or practiced. Great video as ever; super insightful. Let's hope event organisers finally learn from these serious cases of negligence.
what do you mean, learn? they know the lights are harmful, they don't give a fuck.
I remember as a 6 or 7 year old, walking with my father down by the local port. There were some guys doing some welding on one of the structures, and all of a sudden, my dad started screaming and yelling at me not to look. He went absolutely apeshit, telling me I would go blind. Ever since, I have never looked at anyone welding.
@@mrosskne I'd like to hope that even from a business standpoint they'd see the error of their ways here but, that is wishful thinking sadly so, good point. In that case, I hope other measures are taken to stop this from happening again.
It shouldn't and the folks harmed by this likely have a winning lawsuit on their hands.
It's hilarious to think the socially needy individuals are getting injured by their inability to exist without being surrounded by a crowd
i didn’t expect you to make a whole second video about this! both events were hosted by Hypebeast (it was a BAYC x Hypebeast crossover event), and it’s frightening that they did it again in only 5 years. my dad has UV-B tubes in a lamp for medical treatments for a skin condition, and as a kid (since he’s had the lamp my whole life), i was warned to never play with it and never enter the room when dad was doing “[his] light.” for the majority of the life of the bulbs, he can only expose the front and back of his body for 30 seconds each side, and those are only UV-B!
the cyan glow - even just in the video - is beautiful, but i would just use RGB LEDs to get close enough
UVB is interesting; it doesn't burn you like UVC does, and it can be used for treating skin conditions, but because it penetrates deeper than UVC, it's very good at giving you skin cancer with overexposure.
I looked up "Hypebeast."
*It all makes sense now.*
I converted an old UV + IR sunlamp for PCB exposure (and EPROM erase). But when I used it, I set a timer and left the room as there was a strong smell of ozone. I can not imagine how sombody could have used this to voluntarily irradiate his skin with this lamp, eye protection given or taken.
@@goamartyif you're getting ozone you're probably in uv-c range UVB is normally enough to erase eeproms AFAIK I think even UVA will do the job.
This guy's dad most likely had something that was basically a tanning bulb not a uv-c bulb. Again most likely, though the 30 seconds is a bit odd. The only thing I could think of that'd use uv-c would be some sort of treatment resistant microorganism but I've never heard of that. UV for vitamin d and a bunch of other stuff sure
@@zyeborm The lamp was intended as a tanning lamp and for Vitamin D production). It was really old (from the 1970ies). It had a high pressure quartz mercury arc lamp. The IR radiator was used as resistive ballast for the tube. I replaed it with two parallel chokes from old fluorescent tubes.
Originally you could position two glass cylinders, probably soda lime for UVC-block, in front of the tube. There was a scale on this control, which suggested to keep 75 cm distance to the tube WITHOUT the glass cylinders and 50cm, if you close them in front of the tube.
I know, the EPROM erasers used clear mercury vapor tubes and the dose for erasing them was specified at 254nm (so UVC). For PCB exposure UVA would have been sufficient. But this lamp was available and not used any more for it's intended purpose.
Props to Clive's printer for putting in the work and looking great doing it. His enlarged photographs are a major learning assist in all of his videos.
I got eye damage just from looking at the printouts! 😂
A colleague of mine ordered replacement lamps for the insectocutors in the kitchen at work. He fitted the lamps but was not impressed by the colour and asked my opinion, when I compared the lamps I noticed the warning makings on it and your first video came to mind. When I informed the big name brand British wholesalers, they were completely oblivious to the near miss situation. All the best Clive.
If you find yourself going to an event that looks anything like this... You have bigger problems than eye damage.
Brain damage, Herr Einstein?
At least you'll be ready clean!😊
The problem is that nobody would be able to tell the difference even if they were brain damaged...@@A_Simple_Neurose
@@A_Simple_Neurose Also, shitty finances.
Weren't they also possibly a bunch of closet racists? and nazis or some shit?
I worked in a science research lab and we had a entire cell culture room that ran through a sterilization cycle with INTENSE UVC after about 10PM at night. We had huge signs posted warning no entry but staying late one night I saw the janitors calmly working in the light.
That's alarming that they worked in the light.
Screen those suspicious janitors! They could be from rival companies sabotaging your work like the bio solar incident
they can't see their nfts losing value daily so overall it's a positive experience for them!
Well this has won the internet today for me.
I'm not an NFT guy but FYI the low for BAYC was in Early September and they're up over 50% since then. If I didn't think Ethereum was fucking stupid I'd probably have bought an ape on this news lol
After falling 1000% the months prior, I'm sure.
LMFAO
Reminds me of this freakish room in our uni's botany department where they measured UV shock response of algae, plants and trees. The place was a polished stainless-steel box filled with UVC tubes and the door looked like an airlock into a space station. There were so many bright yellow UV radiation warning stickers it made quite the cool wallpaper.
There was a spooky dark section lit only with UV lights in a huge indoor play area I went to as a kid… twenty years later I’m extremely hypersensitive to sunlight, and I can’t help but wonder now if those pretty lights were why.
I really admire that you treated this teardown completely seriously, given the circumstances! It would have been so easy to dunk on the NFT bros for doing something irresponsible, but you’re right, it most likely happened due to lack of awareness of the danger of these bulbs. I respect your ability to hold any judgement and focus on the important parts.
There was a news report from someone who had been burnt by the UVC and they recalled the UV lights in the toilets. So your detective work seems to be on the money.
IIRC you often see UV lights in nightclub bathrooms because it makes it harder for people doing coke to see what they're doing. Maybe that's what they were going for.
@@superscatboyyou mean blue lights for making it harder to find veins and inject drugs?
@@superscatboyor,maybe the uvc is for the germs? Because bathroom has a bunch of airborne germs.... I highly doubt it was specifically to make coke less visible...
I thought it was blue and to make it harder to see veins @@superscatboy
@@superscatboy Many places, not just nightclubs, use blue light in the bathroom to prevent people from _injecting_ drugs.
If that WAS actually a bathroom (modified for the event, though), is there any chance that those lights were already there FOR DISINFECTING, like they were designed for, but usually only run when the venue was closed? And maybe a staffer came in, saw that there were already "Blacklights" installed, and flipped the disinfecting light switch without confirming with anyone?
I think that if they were for disinfecting, they would have been mounted in a location which needed disinfecting - i.e. near the floor, rather than around the perimeter of the roof!
I doubt, generally disinfecting lamps have the cover so that only top n bottom exposed.
But who knows.
There's a lot of paint splashed about, I'm guessing that was fluorescent paint which would glow under UV(A)
i got a very mild case of snow blindness once (from the actual snow, not from an NFT rave) and it sucked pretty bad. it made me take the whole thing a lot more serious and wear UV eye protection if i was going to be out on bright days with fresh snow. where i live, just regular sunglasses with UV protection is enough and its fairly rare to get a bright enough day for snow blindness, but it will sneak up on you. if i went any further north though, it would become a necessity to wear eye protection. we even learn how to make DIY eye protection for wilderness survival (you just cut some slits in something and stick it your face so you are looking through the slits).
A good few years ago we were on a tourist boat on Lake Titicaca in Peru on a bright sunny day. The UV reflection off the water at that high altitude caused a lot of burns under white European chins/eyebrows that day! 😱
I got sunburned from the bounced light off the snow where I had’t applied sun block. Chin , under nose, ear lobes, inside top of ear. I had 50 spf sun block marks that where white , and then it looked like I had red spray paint sprayed from below everywhere that would have been in shadow. 😳
I wanted to buy sunglasses once and no employee in the store could tell me what UV protection the sunglasses had or if they even had any to begin with.
Needless to say, I did not buy anything from that store.
Had a mild case back in the 90's due to wearing glasses rather than goggles and they were just tinted with no UV blocking
oh wow, I didn't even know this was possible but I'm fairly certain I've experienced this too. I don't like to wear goggles when I'm skiing the park because it makes the small contours of the snow more difficult to see (important if you don't want to eat snow). But I bet they probably make goggles that aren't so dark, right? Or maybe just some glasses with UV protection might work even better 🤷♂
I worked somewhere where we were making a medical device which was loaded with these tubes internally to self-disinfect its interior. Someone decided to swap a couple tubes for white light to temporarily make it easier to see inside. Likely 2 out of 8 tubes. The remaining 6 UVC tubes still in place. Every engineer came back the next day complaining of sunburns and sandy eyes.
I found myself quite shocked that nobody on the team (including a MSEE) had a clue there were 3 defined levels of UV and the dangers of UVC...
It's also called snow blindness. I got it once as a kid watching arc welders at work. This being the 1950s, they took little precautions to protect the public.
ah done that one once well you only really do it once dont you :) painful experience and no 90's was just being stupid the good old fuck around and find out scale we all visit it sometimes
My grandpa had a friend who never seemed to look at you directly. Always ever so slightly to one side. Turned out he watched the welding of streetcar tracks for days as a kid and got a permanent blind spot in the center of his vision. At least that was what he said. I guess in the 1930s nobody cared.
When I was 17, me and my classmates at school were intruduced to arc welding. One girl in my class was a bit careless with the use of the welders mask.
After this she didn't come to school for a few days, and for a week after that, her eyes looked like she had gone a number of rounds in the ring with Tyson.
Wasn't pretty...
Hence the name, this also happens if you’re not careful in the mountains. Especially at high altitude. This happened to my wife when we went to Colorado this summer and stayed up around 10,000 feet. Crazy!
@@Willam_Jyour skin is hella fragile .
Normally you need to work quite some time with a welder to get any sun burn or tan
This reminds me of another interesting fact that carbon arc lights emit significant UV radiation. A science group was attempting to create one in the lab and was satisfied with the super bright arc it produced, only to experience sore eyes and extreme skin rash indicating UV burn damage in the following days.🤕
I think properly designed mercury vapor bulbs are actually designed to burn themselves out if the UV glass breaks, because they are basically a type of arc lamp but have glass that blocks UV around the actual bulb making the light.
@@filanfyretracker Another one I have read about was Mercury Arc Rectifiers which were commonly used before high power semiconductors became available. On those the light is an unwanted by-product and they should be used in a lightproof cabinet.
@@MrDunclMercury arc rectifiers are made of ordinary glass that blocks UVC though.
Looking at one shouldn't cause arc flash or sunburn as only UVA can make it through the gass, still it can cause eyestrain and contribute to cataracts and macular degeneration later on, therefore it's still better to not intentionally look at a mercury arc valve for extended amounts of time and this also applies to blacklights by the way.
As a welder I have had arc eye so many times. It's not much fun and I used used cold tea bags on my eyes to help.
My dad used to get it all the time in the power stations in Britain welding in cramped conditions they couldn't use the masks. Back in the 70's they were very bulky.
I now live in Bulgaria and the trick they use here is to pee in a cup and wash their eyes out in urine. And bizarrely it seems to work
Fortunately, I haven’t been through that experience, but I’ve seen a few people who have been hired to do some home repairs in our neighbourhood who almost certainly have. It seems their approach to on-site safety is to just sort of shield their eyes with one hand while the other hand is welding.
Same here back in the 1970s. I tried the old spud trick and it seemed to work.
Although the discomfort doesn't last long, UV exposure will excelerate formation of cataracts which I now have.
how on earth do you get arc eye... as a welder 20 years and i never even saw anyone even close to getting it
@@86BEAMS Usually if you're welding in confined spaces, even if you have a mask on it can reflect off stainless steel vessel behind you and enter the mask. Or if there is a team of welders working you get it from their arc whilst your mask is up.
the moment I heard what had happened at that event, I immediately thought "oh, it was UVC tubes", immediately thinking of all the videos you've made over the last few years. I'm very glad you made one about this, and hopefully there's some accountability and prevention of further incidents in the future
Similar annoyance that many lower budget productions skimp on laser safety and don't take pains to position them correctly so they don't hit people in the eyes!
That's an increasing hazard.
@@bigclivedotcomThat I got unfortunate enough to experience when going to a party a couple days ago.
Should I try reporting the place to the authorities or not ?
Green laser, got me in the eyes quite a few times, I tried closing them when the beam was coming but still got a few exposures nonetheless.
Let's hope I'll not get permanent damage to my eyes.
Other people also got hit quite good as I could see but they didn't seem to care in the slightest.
I just want to mention that there are over the counter eyedrops (at least in the US) which probably do something quite similar to the potato trick only they're actually, you know, intended for eyes. The brand I get is TheraDrops but it's basically just water with an eye-safe starch in it which I assumes helps retain the moisture on the surface of the eye longer. I use them because I just have chronic dry eye, but my son accidentally got a bit of snow blindness skiing last winter and the drops really helped him too, they're very soothing. (He'd put the drops in and then put a cool damp compress over his eyes.)
Huh i would have never pegged starch as an extremely gentle moisturizer
What timing! Buddy of mine brought the story to my attention and I responded by showing him your video about UVC bulbs from about 5 years back. Then a brief bit later and Big Clive is Johnny on the spot!
Yep, there's multiple accounts saying that people who were "near the toilets" got sunburns. Couldn't have happened to nicer guys, but they'll live. Reddit and Slashdot I believe also both pointed back to your channel on the UV lights when this story popped.
Some friends of mine, over in Dubai ran a nightclub for the ex-pat community (the authorities turned a blind eye to alcohol made and drunk by foreigners provided they didn't sell it to the locals) and decided to buy some UV lamps for it. They ordered the wrong sort. They ordered the sort used in tanning salons. Quite a lot of people had sunburn in the morning.
There are also images showing that the vertical lighter coloured stripes along bottom of the stage (at 4:43) are also UV tubes, however they appear to be off in images in Clive’s video… The picture posted in The Verge clearly shows emitting what appears to be UV.
Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice. I guess the organizers should be subject to inspections on the matter now, as public safety is at risk.
bUt MuH dEcEnTrAlIzAtIoN
@@VeraTheTabbynx Actually, proper decentralization would solve this problem. That would require people (a separate party) to say, confirm safety regulations are being followed, and when confirmed they would receive a reward. If the host was found to be in a breach of the set safety regulations they would be fined. I know it can be hard to think rationally for some people, so I hope this explanation helps, and that you get some help :)
@@mrrooter601 Thank you but I don't need help. And you're correct! Proper decentralization would actually have a lot of oversight from multiple independent agencies, none of which are given veto power. Unfortunately the idea has been badly misconstrued as free of governing or regulatory bodies, as those are seen as centralized. Kinda funny a community like BAYC itself follows a central leadership.
This occurred in CHINA.
They care not one whit about "public safety".
One might have thought the world would have caught on by now....
@@VeraTheTabbynx ..it does seem like you need some kind of mental help
I read part of the Slashdot regurgitation article and thought: "man, this really sounds like that fashion event Clive talked about with the UVC lamps".
An old Ophthalmologist once told me the following, knowing that I fabricate stuff and was looking at him with red arc eyes (crack in the helmet glass):
Ultraviolet is highly irritating but non penetrating, but beware, Infra-Red is non irritating but highly penetrating. So don’t gas weld without eye protection too.
I think the issue is more that for IR, non-irritating intensities are not damaging, whereas damaging (burning) intensities are irritating. So there’s no overlap between damaging and non-irritating with IR, unlike with UV.
Plus just the brightness of the weld is damaging.
I don't think that's true information at all. IR has very low energy (lower than visible light) and can't cause ionization and molecular damage. The only thing IR can do is heat up your skin(and cause conventional burns in extreme cases). Now, there is still hidden danger in it - you can't see IR, so you can't tell how bright the IR source actually is. You might be staring at the equivalent of 200W IR flashlight not knowing that because you can't see IR. UVC, on the other hand, has much higher energy than visible light, let alone IR. UVC borders X-ray on the spectrum, and has a potential to cause ionization and molecular damage, and provoke skin cancer. Pretty much any dose of UVC is unhealthy, although it can't really avoided, because sun radiates it too. Also it is quite penetrative. Not as penetrative as X-rays or gamma radiation, but much more penetrative than visible light.
Normal open fire mostly produces IR, some visible light, but no UVC. It can be very hot near the campfire, but it's impossible to get a "sunburn" from it, no matter how long you've been near it. "Sunburns" are specifically UV damage.
Well, okay. I might need to correct myself. IR might be slightly more penetrative than UV due to wave effect... stuff. But the point stands - IR can't ionize, cause molecular damage and can't generally cause cancer. It's really near harmless. But UVC is not, it's very harmful.
Bug zapper tubes were also called "white black light" because it was all the UV of a blacklight, plus a wider spectrum. The queue for Space Mountain at Disneyland Anaheim was lit with them in the 80s. And I used them for deco at home with a 15" desk lamp. I also remember swapping them into a battery powered camping lantern that supported flo tubes.
Great investigation! I'm going to be on the lookout for clear UVC tubes from now on. Also I think its great that you've emphasised that the effects are not good but temporary, I can imagine a lot of people getting quite worried after leaving the event.
I appreciate the consideration that those who are underinformed might think that the harmful radiation is coming through their phone, and you aknowledged that without sounding condescending at all. Truly a gem of a channel 💙
Imagine going to a party for an organization that brought you financial ruin just to drink crappy well drinks and go blind.
i really like this channel quite a bit,
its kind of amusing to see you taking the time to explain that filming a UV light wont project UV through the phone / monitor.
This is beyond excellent Clive. Thanks very much for making and posting this. 👍
I used to work with lighting balloons, and they would usually have HMI lights in them to provide the cold white part of their spectrum. You never wanted to be able to see one while it was on, even for fairly brief testing, but all it took to filter out the high UV was a thin sheet of the airtight sailcloth we used as a diffusion and outer envelope.
Interesting story Clive, thanks.
I used a big UV tube to erase EPROMs for many years, but never got a burn as I kept them in a drawer, and was always careful not to look at them.
I have managed to zap myself a few times with my welder though. Not fun at all.
I'm genuinely curious how can UV light wavelength can erase EEPROM memory. Maybe the radiation does? Was is to actually erease to then reprogram the chip or to destroy the chip?
@@samuhell14 It just has to change a single charge, yeah? I would imagine it's the same mechanic as solar panels
@@samuhell14 EPROM, not EEPROM. EEPROMs are the Electrically Erasable ones, those do not need UV light to be erased and in fact cannot be erased by UV light, because they don't have a window exposing the chip.
From the Wikipedia article about EPROMs:
EPROMs are easily recognizable by the transparent fused quartz (or on later models resin) window on the top of the package, through which the silicon chip is visible, and which permits exposure to ultraviolet light during erasing.
To erase the data stored in the array of transistors, ultraviolet light is directed onto the die. Photons of the UV light cause ionization within the silicon oxide, which allows the stored charge on the floating gate to dissipate. Since the whole memory array is exposed, all the memory is erased at the same time. The process takes several minutes for UV lamps of convenient sizes; sunlight would erase a chip in weeks, and indoor fluorescent lighting over several years.
@@samuhell14 not EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) but the predecessor EPROM (Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory). Here's the pertinent part from the wikipedia page on them:
"The programming process is not electrically reversible. To erase the data stored in the array of transistors, ultraviolet light is directed onto the die. Photons of the UV light cause ionization within the silicon oxide, which allows the stored charge on the floating gate to dissipate. Since the whole memory array is exposed, all the memory is erased at the same time. The process takes several minutes for UV lamps of convenient sizes; sunlight would erase a chip in weeks, and indoor fluorescent lighting over several years."
You can recognize an EPROM from an EEPROM in that the former has a transparent fused quartz or resin window on the top through which the silicon chip is visible and UV light can pass through.
@@samuhell14EPROMs not EEPROMs, EEPROMs are electronically erasable hence the extra E at the start.
"Looks cool but ultimately harms you" is an incredibly apt description for NFTs
Great investigation from the pictures, Clive! I think you're right on the money. I got welders flash when I was a young lass, my dad welded stuff and usually made me wear a mask but one day I looked without one and the sandy feeling later was not nice, thus learning why welding masks are used :D
As soon as I read the news about the concert I knew I'd seen something about these lights on Clive's channel before, good to see an update.
All the welders I know refer to it as “burning your eyes.” My grandfather was a welder, and my dad and uncle are welders. I was probably 13 years old when, while working one summer at my dad’s shop, my eyes were burned. It’s hard to avoid catching those arcs, especially when two or three welders are working simultaneously on different projects around one shop area. I got it bad! The pain didn’t set in until later that night, whilst I was at church. There is definitely a delayed reaction. For a 13 year-old boy, it was excruciating pain. It kept me up all night long in absolute misery. I’ve been ever so careful, ever since. It’s an experience you shall never forget!
Hey I mentioned this yesterday! Thanks for doing a video on it. I think you're on the money especially with being able to see the standing wave pattern in the bathroom photo. I see another comment mentioned it was the same promoter as last time that helped with this event too (Hypebeast). That's crazy they made the same mistake twice especially with the bad publicity they received the first time.
Or did the publicity turn out to be profitable?
I've had arc flash very badly when I was foreman of a 9 man + 1 woman crew working in tight quarters together. It was very painful. With strong sensitivity to light. To the point that I had to wear sunglasses at night because the brake lights from cars in front of me were too bright.
It did cause permanent damage in the form of cataracts. My eye doctor said that it bloomed my existing minor Cataracts. I had to undergo lens replacement surgery in both eyes at the age of 41.
Are you sure about a single exposure being enough to cause early cataracts ?
@@psirvent8 It was a repeated exposure. Many times over a couple of months. Some were worse than others.
@@funnlivinitYeah, makes more sense actually.
Thank you for the reply.
Great video! I loved your investigation! UA-camr Atozy did actually confirm that he was at the event and the event confirmed they were cleaning uvc lights, so your were correct. There's also been reports of people having much more severe problems while others, such as Atozy didn't have as big of a reaction, so if the lights were just in one area that would make a lot of sense.
i want to thank you for taking the time in this video to identify how germicidal lamps look to outsiders 🙏🏽🙏🏽 as soon as i saw the news and after doing further research into germicidal lamps and the other events involving them i was so scared of going to like a party and accidentally ending up even more disabled than i already am without ever being able to know 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽 so thanks for helping quell my anxieties
Man, I was really curious about that incident. You did such a great job explaining everything so simply. Such a great channel. I'm glad to be subscribed all these years. Happy holidays!
IMHO Someone needs to make fluorescent tubes that emit just those visible wavelengths as it is quite a cool colour and it seems a lot of set designers like to use it.
Philips first electronic compact fluorescent lamp (which was very complex) was promoted with a clear glass version in the electrical retailers. Because it was ordinary glass they were safe to view as they blocked the UVC.
@@bigclivedotcomthis reminds me of the tubes I've seen that were coated in fosfor on one side, and clear on the other. But I'm not sure if they were safe.
Well, time for them to produce a tube like that with a big "ICE LIGHT" stamp on it that signifies that it's safe to look at!
😐 ~ I also like that colour [pale sky blue] if the tube was just glass it would be safe.
There are LEDs in several wavelengths around 430nm, usually called ice blue, pale blue, etc.
Thanks for bringing the UV, welding and sun burn topic up. I have been practicing optometry for 43 years and can absolutely confirm that there is something magical about waking up at 2 o'clock in the morning from the pain. The concept of using potato or cucumber slices over the closed eyes or potato juice in the eye works because they are cooler than the eye, which helps bring down swelling, and they also help to draw out some of the extra fluid from the cornea, which is causing pain by compressing the nerves in the cornea. The best solution though is don't get the exposure. Wear appropriate protection.
Great detective work there Clive. Good work.
Good work, Sherlock, and as always a pleasure to watch.
Complete sidetrack here… your repeated assurances about my display being safe reminded me… I do have a display that probably _can_ reproduce this…
Some very early oscilloscopes came with a trace print option. The trace was replicated on a UV emitting tube, and the operator would place UV sensitive paper in front of it. Not photo print paper, as far as I recall there was no need for developing the prints, or keeping the paper in the dark. The paper came on a roll… it was all a bit haphazard :)
Anyway, I rescued that tube and always wanted to do something ‘cool’ with it but who am I kidding….
I should find a UA-camr who will do something cool with it! ;)
Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it :(
In high school we used to kick basketballs up into the HID lights to purposefully pop the outer envelope, and most of the time, about half of the bulbs were missing their outer glass and the gym had that really cool blue hue to it. Never knew back then how dangerous it actually was to have them like that.
Population density self regulation sad but true
True on so many levels these days...
Those that dont clear their history are doomed to explain it
And those that did learn from history are doomed to watch the others repeat it
Wasn't there a moving-head light, I'm thinking 90s, major name brand of the day like Vari or Icon or something, which used a short-arc Xe source, and had no permanent UVC filter because it had a wood or dichro black light position on one wheel... but if you customized the wheels you could select an open slot in each wheel and have direct exposure to the source... or something like that.
I can't recall whether there was a whacking great lens on the front or not - that would help obv.
I have this vague memory of there being some "forbidden position combo" or "forbidden code" which the luminaire itself was supposed to prevent somehow... damn my memory but maybe this will trigger something in yours since you've worked with smart lights and I have not. :)
There have been lots of exotic light sources used that inevitably had issues. The other that comes to mind is the tic-tac microwave light sources.
My little condo here in Florida has 40-watt tubes in the kitchen and bathrooms, each in a single-tube fixture with a magnetic ballast. A couple of years ago I found LED replacements that work in the fixtures and replaced all the real tubes. Definitely have to have the proper side facing outwards.
Some of the ballasts aren’t working properly and trashed any actual fluorescent tube in a few months of use, but the LED fake-tubes don’t care and work okay in all the fixtures. Great for a lazy man like me.
I wanted to do the same in my garage but somehow the prior owners managed to fit two tubes of varying sizes & neither one has LED replacements available. I had to dismantle the entire affair & put up two new LED tube lights, discovering what they'd done to the wiring in the ceiling below my bedroom.. Kinda glad I didn't give up on that one.
I just checked a hanging fluorescent magnetic ballast fixture in my basement which dates from the late 1960s. It is designed for two 48 inch self start T12 tubes. I have two warm white T8 LED tubes installed. The power consumption is 70 VA or about 69.5 Watts. That gives a power factor around 0.98. It surprised me to see such a good power factor. It doesn’t matter so much in a home setting because billing is usually actual Watts and a default power factor correction is applied to the bill. A business with a lot of lights could really benefit from the drop-in LED tube replacement to improve power factor even though LEDs don’t reduce actual Watts consumed by much.
I also checked a hanging 5000 Lumen LED fixture which was LED from the outset. It is consuming 60 Watts and has a power factor of 0.89. You’re actually better off keeping your old fixtures with magnetic ballasts and swapping in LEDs as the fluorescent tubes burn out. That is something I did not expect to find.
Saw a bunch of reports of this online and immediately thought of you.
So happy you are aware and addressing it!
I got to experience the eye burn that comes from UVC exposure a few weeks ago!! Intense pain, tears and/or snot streaming down my face, girlfriend demanding I go to the ER at 2am, etc., etc., etc...
Good times, good times!!
Thank you for telling us things to look out for if we happen to be at events so we just leave. I don’t care how much I paid for a ticket my sight is priceless!
so cool to see an in-depth analysis if fluorescent lamps like that! sad that it took two incidents to get there
Standard safety glasses will block UV-B and UV-C, as well as most UV-A. They serve more purposes than just keeping flying bits out of your eyes, and are very helpful in a location where arc-flash/welding is possible.
Excellent bit of sleuthing BigClive! Must be 20 years since I've had arc eye but that was from a welder not a dodgy toilet.
I have to thank you for that first vudeo UVC a long time ago. Mainly because learnimg about the existence of UVC lights exist has been very helpful with my present projects and the video gave me the knowledge to handle them with care.
I'm wondering whether this would be worse or not as bad as getting sunburnt eyes? When my Dad was young, he experienced sunburnt eyes after a long day of sailing. He described it much like you did, woke up in the middle of the night feeling like he had sand in his eyes, but it lasted more than a day, and eventually the skin on his eyes actually peeled off like sunburnt skin.
The upshot was that my grandparents admonished my parents for not letting me wear sunglasses while we were out on sunny days, since they were worried my glasses would somehow focus the sunlight and give my eyes sunburn. Eventually my parents did buy me sunglasses, which as a very young kid I thought were much cooler than glasses.
It's the same process as that.
Actually glasses do worsen eye damage from sunlight, however slightly
@@skeetsmcgrew3282polycarbonate lenses block UV. I tested my glasses at the lab at work!
"have I gone too technical yet?" Immediately produces spectrograph.
Please don't change Clive, it's certainly what I'm here for.
As a blacklight artist I have had to educate people over the years about this topic.
Clive, I don't know if you know this or not. But they do make clear florescent tubes for decorative use. The only difference between the two is that the CFT is made using ordinary glass as appose to using quartz, Which allows the dangerous 254mn UVC wavelengths to pass though. I'm wondering if the supplier of those tubes is not checking the labels and thinks the two tubes are the same thing. You can't tell the difference between a CFT tube and a germicidal tube by just looking at it. They both look "exactly" the same. YOU MUST CHECK THE LABEL. It's the only way you can tell the two apart.
I've only come across the clear fluorescent tubes as a Philips promo thing when their first electronic CFL came out.
UV eyeball burn is no laughing matter. During one of my earlier forays into circuit board making, I was using a UV lamp to expose the emulsion on the copper clad boards. Spent ALL day struggling to get the exposure times right and attempting to develop them with potassium carbonate. I found out around 1am that I was in big, big trouble... It was excruciatingly painful, and quite terrifying. I actually thought it was a chemical burn from the developer for a long time until I learned about the dangers of that wicked UV lamp. It doesn't take long to get a burn from it either, but it takes a long time for the effects to manifest.
Be nice to your eyeballs. You will miss them when they are gone...
That should have been a UVA lamp?
Yeah! I learned that the hard way...
@@jonnyphenomenon If it was really UVA and not UVC you most likely didn't get sand in the eyes but more of an eyestrain like you can get from too much screen time but over only minutes instead of hours.
It also depends on how powerful ther UVA source is and how far you are from it.
@@bigclivedotcom Can still hurt the eyes if powerful enough/and or you are too close to the source.
You do not want to look at a 400W mercury vapor blacklight without protection at close range for example.
Hi Clive, I have had arc eye a few times, I noticed about 10 pm my eyes always feel a bit sore then as you said about 2am its like hell. its a sickly pain, I found paracetamol helped a lot but basically it does pass but takes a couple of hours. Back then I had not heard if the potato juice trick
Just noticed you’ve got a million subscribers well done you, it’s well deserved and congratulations 😊
Nice video too as always 👍
I've gotten Photokeratitis once... But for me it was from being exposed to reflected UV Laser radiation. 355nm is UV-A, but it still gave me the same symptoms, probably from the higher intensities.
I've been to restaurants where the passage way in and out of the kitchen has a small very purple light hanging up on the wall. It's small like this. Is that legal for them to have that up there? is that suppose to disinfect the staff as they pass back and forth? What's the purpose of something like that in a restaurant setting?
It will probably be a safe UVA fly catcher.
And here i thought a 1hr Big Clive video of a UV light could sterilize my room.
The really baffling thing is why a decorative toilet room is even a thing. Not sure how that even fits the ape theme. Maybe it fits the theme because NFT prices are in the toilet?
My father worked in a photolithography union back in the 90’s and used UV metal halide lamps for exposing large scale lithographic plates. Thousands of watts of these lights were used and the buildings interior was an intense violet purple color. I remember all the UV warnings posted everywhere around that place and the PPE my father had to wear
Did he get eye damage though ?
(If the PPE wasn't enough or something)
QUESTIONS!!
Does it matter how far away from the actual tubes you are? Also, here in the US a lot places that prepare food (grocery stores, delis, etc.) have germicidal fixtures on the walls in close proximity to the workers and customers.
Also, barbers will have UVC boxes where the combs and brushes and clippers get slid into. You can't see the bulbs directly but the reflection is quite obvious.
There is what I'm assuming is a UVC tube within the fixture. You can't see the tube directly but you can see its reflection. How dangerous are those??
The devices in the food areas are usually using safe UVA tubes to attract the flies to sticky mats or a zapping grid.
A diffused reflection is safer than direct viewing.
@@bigclivedotcom hey Clive, as an aside, I have a broken plug in 120 to 240V power adapter from China. I shake it and I hear a rattling and if I shake it enough it will sometimes work. I’d love to send it to you if you want to take it to bits. How can I get this to you if you’re interested?
Arc eye is no joke. I restored cars and motorcycles for most of my working life and the last time I had it I was welding the chassis on a prewar vauxhall.
I was using the works mask but unfortunately it was faulty so, as I was happily flashing away doing the 200 odd stitch welds to add strengthening plates to the chassis and new suspension hangers etc, the mask wasn't reacting in time, just by a fraction of a second.
Those fractions of a second added up over the day and I noticed the halo/corona effect around the headlights of oncoming cars on the drive home and then, late that night, the burning gravel started.
Worst case of arc eye I've ever copped. My eyes puffed up like I'd told Mike Tyson a bad joke about his mum. Took a good few days to get going again.
Don't mess with UV light/welding. Always wear a quality mask. I have a wide angle true colour mask of my own now.
Worked with UV lamps at three different jobs. First one was at a meat Packer where they had a special temperature & humidity controlled refrigerated room with UV lamps to age meat up to one year. Second time at a large candy plant where they had them in corn syrup storage tank room. In a huge 12 story ambutory care building they had them inside of air handlers. I noticed several not working and asked the building engineer when was the last time they replaced them in this 4 year old building. Said never. Told him we always replaced them once a year. They ordered replacements and first big wooden box of them cost over $5,000. We did have an e!ectrical burn his eyes some when he ignored warning label on lamp covers.
I used to work in a printing firm where we had purchased a flat bed printer. It used UVA and UVB to cure the inks. Wow were my eyes sore after the first day of use. We did have glasses to wear when observing the print head area where the light was located. We made sure to use the glasses from then on.
You got sore eyes with the glasses on ?
Or is it because you didn't wear them the first time ?
@@psirvent8 Sorry, that wasn't written well. Having to wear glasses for eye correction, I didn't use the protective glasses often enough due to having to swap over all the time. I did from the following day on though.
@@steveroberts1861Thank's for the reply.
Yeah, I see the issue, maybe the protective glasses didn't fit over your prescription glasses so you had to swap them.
But how did you manage to see when wearing the protective glasses ?
I also play with UV lamps at home and wear ski goggles to protect my eyes however I don't see really well since I have to first remove my glasses.
I'm currently looking to get a face shield that blocks all wavelengths of UV so I can keep my glasses on.
Yeah always swapping glasses. The reality was the UV was contained pretty well so we would only use the protective glasses when doing colour and detail tests where you were in close vicinity to the print head and lamps. As far as me being able to see, I am long sighted so I had to be quite close to the print I had just made. No real issue there.
@@steveroberts1861Ok I see.
Thank's.
The special difference is, uvc clear fluorescents are made from Quartz glass letting the uv(c) pass, (and probably sunbed lamps are too?), while all other fluorescents are not.
Regular glass filters out most of the UV.
That's also why clear blue tubes in neon signage are not harmful.
Also you will see that "safe" clear blue tubes don't activate those fluorescent "neon" paints, the safety features in bank notes etc.
From what I heard sunbed lamps are made from the same ordinary glass as other fluorescent tubes.
But unlike say for instance blacklights they also emit a bit of UVB, which is normally blocked by ordinary glass, so I'm not really sure.
Reptile bulbs might be made of quartz glass though, with special phosphors to get UVB and also block UVC.
UVA on the other hand isn't blocked by glass and is the reason why white plastics turn yellow after years of sunlight exposure behind windows as wallpapers and paintings fade over time for the same reason.
To put it in perspective, I use a UVC box to sterilise items.
Whenever I get a new bulb, I use the banana skin test I learned on this channel.
Well if a small UVC bulb can give a banana sunburn in 10-15 minutes, god help your retina after a few hours near a large bulb.
Clive, Thank you for Educating us. About the dangers of UV bulbs. Have you seen the utube commercial for the UV bed bug death light?
I've not seen that yet.
Great video BC. People need to know how bad UVC is so bad for the eyes.
As soon as I saw the headline last night I immediately thought of your earlier UV-C video about a similar club incident.
Wouldn't it theoretically be possible to produce a "decorative" variant of this, that uses UV-absorbing glass but no Phosphor to get the cyan glow without the harm?
(not that I think it would be a good idea, as people would mix them upo again for sure)
Possible I'd guess, but then you'd end up with two visually identical lamps, one which is safe, one which isn't, and given people are getting this wrong already (where the difference seems to be clear tube vs black), adding more things to get confused with probably isn't the best idea :)
In another comments replies, Big Clive mentioned that Phillips made a lamp fitting that exact description.
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I think we can do this with LED's to get the same effect, cataract and melanoma free!
They have to use a special expensive borosilicate or fused quartz glass to get the uv transmission in the first place, ordinary glass cuts most uv so yes they could.
It would be fairly easy to filter out the UVC with just some polycarbonate plastic, right? That way you can enjoy the light as much as you want.
There are also high intensity discharge lamps for street lighting, without phosphors, but with UV blocking glass. Get those if you want the bright blue-green light without that pesky ozone and painful eyes.
You could use a glass or plastic sleeve, but the plastic may degrade faster due to UVC breakdown and ozone if it is a 254nm and 184nm tube.
In the early days of cinema when arch lamps were used without filter, actors and actresses complained about severe eye sore because of the lights. I saw some actresses reporting on a documentary that they used Castor Oil in drops to alleviate the pain (this is also not a medical advise). This happened until an illuminator discovered that thick glass plaque absorbed most of the UV light. Once I worked and a office furniture factory (as a programmer) and a welder could not find his footwear protections (I don't know the name in English they are called here "polainas") and worked a day without them, they had to open a work injury incident because of the burning of his feet that got blisters all over it as tennis and even leather shoes that are not high enough and thick enough can't protect you against the UV ans surely your common clothes are transparent to shortwave UV.
What a tease! OK, thank you for all the important information for eye irritation and skin burn. I wanted you to shine a light behind the 400w bulb to show the inner quartz envelope, to change the tubes to show the illumination of the black UV and insect destroyer tube (never seen that before). How does that work?
How does what work? You could always look up a photo or video of a mercury-vapor lamp to see how the 400 watt one works; they were dead common for outdoor lighting until about a decade ago. They have uncoated and phosphor-coated varieties.
As for the other tubes, you could find photos of a blacklight tube and a bug zapper tube.
It takes infrared light to see the inside of the large lamp. The white insect tube is purely for attracting them to a sticky mat or an electrified grid.
@@bigclivedotcom OK. I remember seeing the inner tube in mine, I guess it was powered up. So did I see a tungsten filament that restricted current flow to the mercury vapour lamp? Was a few decades ago 🧓🏼
@@tommiller1315The filament is only present in self-ballasted lamps.
Can yours be plugged directly into mains or does it need a ballast ?
The 400W one shown in the video requires a ballast, I know for having the same one and there is no filament inside it.
Yes, filament and mercury vial. I have some 75W UV bulbs that only have a filament, they burn extremely hot. @@psirvent8
What if they didn't use UVC light, but so many people who bought ugly apes for like 300k$ already had severe eye damage to begin with and just want to recoup some losses?
im convinced its a cash kink.
First they buy nothing and brag, then they blind themselves and pay a huge medical bill (standby, waiting to see if they brag).
Im convinced this is just a money kink
@@Your-Least-Favorite-Strangerthey didn't buy nothing, they bought an invitation ticket to parties for people who bought invitation tickets
Mercury vapor? Yikes. How long before one of these gets broken at an event and causes heavy metal poisoning, too? -_-
It's only trace levels of mercury.
@caffiend81
If one of these lamps were to break during use the biggest danger wouldn't be the mercury but the UVC light coming from the arc tube and at 400W or power it would be much more of a hazard than the clear fluorescent tubes.
It would not only cause severe welder's eyes but also sunburns and even generate ozone as well.
I happen to have a 400W mercury vapor bulb that I intentionally broke to turn it into a powerful germicidal lamp/ozone generator and every time I power it up I double or even triple-check that everything from the ballast to the extension cord to the remote control box is unplugged, I also make sure that nothing is in my way for when I'll be exiting the room, then I press the OFF button before plugging everything in while being ready to unplug it at any time if the light were to unexpectedly come on for a reason or another and I also keep a close eye both on the indicator light of the control box and on the remote control itself to make sure the ON button doesn't accidentally get pressed somehow.
At this point the system is considered armed and therefore dangerous.
Then I take the remote control, exit the room and close the door, put a warning sign on it and next I even shout Clear Prop ! before finally switching the light on with the remote control.
Once I hear the ballast humming I move away from the door to not get UVC or ozone exposure from the gaps between the door and its frame or the floor.
When the disinfecting cycle is finished I turn off the light with the same remote control and only when the ballast stops humming do I consider the light to actually be off.
Before opening the door though I usually wait 1 or 2 minutes for the lamp to cool down, and when I enter the room I immediately unplug everything so it's safe again like before.
Next I open the window and immediately leave the room, closing the door behind me as well.
3 to 4 hours later if not more the room can finally be reintegrated without too much concerns about ozone poisoning.
Good to see someone doing a sensible appraisal of the incident
Thanks, hope this gets picked up by 'the algorithm' .. much good could be done.
Well done for a calm informed voice of reason.
Maybe (shudder) you could produce a 'short' in order to get it to the masses.
I've had my eyesight permanently damaged from calibrating indicia detectors that were installed in postal letter cancelling machines ( Automatic Facing and Cancelling System ). They were used to detect stamps on envelopes, postage stamps are tagged. They did not give us any warning about the devices nor did they give us any protective glasses to use. Be warned, these are not to be played with.
the thing I don't get is UVC doesn't make many materials fluoresce like UVA does. You'd think the people using those lamps by mistake would realise there was a problem and investigate and then there's the smell of ozone.... I do have some of those cheap paper indicators. My UVC lamps are the real deal. I do have glasses with plastic lenses so never suffered any arc flash like problems. I've found UVC reasonably useful for dealing with mold problems.
Maybe they just liked the cool blue/cyan colour rather than after a true blacklight/UV effect?
@@thebrowns5337 Maybe. On the stage with all the other light it'd be hard to see. decades ago I lit a whole dance floor with UVA and there was a forest of hanging glowing in UV boxes at eye level. Add some fog and it was very disorenting, a trip without the acid . We even had a UV strobe!
Many UVC lamps come with a filter for the lower wavelengths that cause ozone production, so there might have been no odor.
I think they might have been Ozone-free UVC bulbs, which has a coating on it to block the specific band of UVC that produces ozone. Still releases more than enough UVC to sterilize surfaces though, and burn people.
I don't know how someone can think such lights are safe to have out in public though. I bought a bunch of UVC tubes to sterilize rooms in my house and basement, and there were warning messages written all over them.