Can UV Neon lights damage your eyes?

[DanDaMan315]

?

 

[dababus]

The UV light used for pc illumination are of higher wavelength, lower in energy, so they are not damaging.

 

[Kitrax]

dababus is correct. The UV light in cold catodes or LED lighting are similar to the UV of a "black light". Have you ever heard of someone going blind, or getting a UV burn from a black light?

The damaging UV rays come from specific UV bulbs that cost a lot more, and will have warings all over the box, they also come from from welding...which is why you have to wear a hood over your head. The UV light comming off from welding is so powerfull that I have a nice burn on my arm from where my gloves stopped, all the way up to my shirt in less than 5 minutes.

So you don't need to be worried that you'll kill your friends eyes when they look inside your case...as long as you have the standard UV cold catode or LED lighting.

 

[DanDaMan315]

Good to know, I just was wondering cause I know UV rays are damaging to the eyes. I figured the neon wasn't harmful or else they wouldn't be selling them. My eyes do feel weird after I look in my case too long though, I don't know if it's just the bright light or what.

 

[intogamer]

:thumbsup:

 

[onix]

What has been said is nonsense. First of all listen to your body. If it hurts then it's no good.

Secondly, UV is higher frequency (shorter wavelength) than visible light and hence each photon emitted is of higher energy than visible light. It is unclear to me whether the iris of your eye can detect UV and hence respond to its intensity (power/area). Thirdly. a higher energy photon hitting a molecule has the potential to cause more chemical changes than a lesser energy photon. An extreme example is x-ray and worse yet gamma radiation, both of which are orders of magnitude in frequency higher than UV.

 

[sharkeeper]

The wavelengths emitted by these lamps is commonly referred as blacklight blue. It looks purple and is relatively harmless.

An uncoated Hg distented vessel of quartz, when biased with EMF of sufficient pressure to ionise the Hg vapors, emits UV-C at 260 nM and is quite dangerous especially at higher current drive / internal pressures. Frequently, these emitters are used as germicidal cleaners, rapid UV cement curing devices, and for low level production of O3. This is commonly referred as shortwave UV. Your coated glass CCFL lamps produce longwave UV and are eye safe.