layout room lighting


funny you should talk about UV rays . I drove a delivery truck for 17 years . whcih means I was partly in the suns rays while driving. My skin doctor burned four pre cancerous skin growths on the left side of my face and nose . But there was none on my right side. Just wondering what the diffrence was ? Guess I'll have to get to England to veven out the other side. Nothing to do about layout lighting of which I use fluorescent with natural light bulbs in on my layout .
 
Paul, I had 3 taken off Monday, but I used to think being tan was healthy. Some UV is good for you unless you damage your skin, then you're in trouble.
 
ok, i guess i never took into consideration that the layout lights may only be on a FEW hours a week (hopfully more, but there always bills to pay!) i guess i was thining about some of the computer we get for scrap that are all yellowed and such, but these mostly in offices with two or three shifts so the flourecent lights were never really ever off! so theres the difference i suppose!

I dont get to see the doc for the script for a few weeks yet (a non emergency appoint as they called it??)

thanks all for the input

RYAN
 
There's nothing in the article that isn't something that I haven't read before, as far as the dangers are concerned. I've heard that you shouldn't vacuum up the broken bulb, you should sweep them into something, you should open your windows for 10min or so to air out the room, etc., etc, etc. Those are the things that I'm going to do if I break a bulb in the open.

There's also been a lot written that the EPA cleanup costs and the associated hassles that one person went through was a totally over the top overreaction.

This is all pretty new to the masses. The Govt really needs to step up and provide guidance and the like. Heck, we can't even agree on a bottle deposit law in the country (or, a consistent recycling policy). So, I'm not overly optimistic they're going to come up with something that's convenient for us.

Kennedy
 
How come a topic about layout lighting ended up talking about UV?

Anyway.

If this concerns the paint degrading, I don't think that the artificial lighting will ever degrade or alter any painting, I mean the natural light has a UV much stronger then the artificial light ( if it has any ) and I don't think that anyone will be spending 12 to 14 hrs daily infront of the layout. So considering that the little ammount of time spent infront of a layout and the tiny ammount of UV emitted by any artificial light ( if any ), the degrading or decolouring process will take looooonnng compared to the real life. I wouldn't worry much about it :) and if you see some discolouring, then it will be time for a repaint :) maintenance spraying :p.
 
About a month ago I broke up about 30, old, 8 foot, fluorescent bulbs with a sledge and shoveled the glass and etc. in a box so the trash people would pick it up. That's how I do it.:eek:

Max: UV concern was part of the original post.
 
Rex,
Each of those lamps contained at least 12 mg of mercury and may have had up to 46 mg of mercury, depending on the age of the bulbs. That means you exposed yourself to somewhere between 360 to 1380 mg's of mercury. Inhalation exposure to mercury at levels of 5 mg per kilogram of body wieght have been associated with fatalities. At the low level of the scale, you are approaching a toxic dose with a body weight of about 160 pounds. If the exposure was at the high end of the scale, you'd be a dead man. I really suggest you find another way to dispose of fluorescent lights. We'd like to see you around here for a while yet. :)
 
That's interesting because when I see the janitors around here replacing the tubes, they're just jammed into a big rolling trash bin while they go from location to location. Nobody seems to be overly interested in the HAZMAT aspect of that guy's job.

Right above my desk, there are 3 double fixtures. I've watched the maintenance crews come through rewire the place last year, and they have spare tubes around just in case they broke one. Those guys didn't seem overly concerned about it either; I didn't see any HAZMAT guys hovering around just in case....

Kennedy
 
Ha, remember as a kid busting open a cheap thermometer for the mercury; playing with it by moving the glob around; coating silver money to look like new.

Not meaning to be sarcastic, but how do you inhale a heavy metal?
 
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Rex, yeah, I remember playing with mercury too when I was a kid. I liked to roll it around in little balls and then see if I could get it back together in one big ball again. Of course, I also rode in cars with no seatbelts and did a lot of other things I wouldn't do today. :) The mercury in a fluorescent light tube is already a vapor - it's a liquid metal that easily vaporizes, which is why it's in those tubes to begin with. Breaking one or two tubes is not a big deal but breaking 30 tubes and then sweeping up the remains maximizes your exposure to inhalation of mercury. The effects of mercury inhalation are generally long term and insidious.

This is now getting way off topic. There's more information on the effects of mercury at http://www.dhs.ca.gov/ohb/HESIS/merc.htm. Read it and make you own decisions about how to handle broken fluorescent tubes or CFL's.
 
Went to the link and understand now. I knew that mercury was vaporized by the electrostatic field in a fluorescent tube, but I didn't realize it vaporized so easily in ambient air. Made my day.;)

As you say, nuff of that!:)
 
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