I’ve been reading so much info about UV lights that I ended even more confused by all the conflicting opinions that are out there.
I’ve been having problems with one of my kittens that has decided to spray some areas of the house. I discovered UV light is a good way to find out where stains are in order to clean them properly. I’ve been told UV lights around 365nm work better than the ones around 395nm to find urine. So I’ve looking for 365nm UV flashlights.
Before purchasing anything I wanted to make sure they were safe to use with pets around or without glasses and here is where my headache started. I have seen countless videos of people using flashlights carelessly and read articles about how 365nm are not enough to damage your eyes and saying that exposure to daily sunlight is way more harmful. But I also read many posts warning others about how just the reflection of the light can damage your eyes. Yet again some sites affirm you can use 365nm flashlights directly onto your pets in order to find skin diseases.
Can someone enlighten me? Please.
The pic is just some of the flashlights I was eyeing from Amazon.
by silencethishush
4 Comments
Don’t stare into it. Other than that, you and your pets will be fine.
There’s no risk to any part of you or your pet, other than the eyes. Don’t shine it in anyone’s eyes. If you wear glasses, almost any plastic lens pair of glasses blocks UV, so you should be safe. It’s easy to test if your glasses block UV; just shine it through your glasses onto a surface that fluoresces. If it doesn’t light up, your glasses blocks it.
I think it’s a stretch to worry about reflected UV (off walls, etc), even if you don’t wear glasses. Unless it’s a mirror, the reflection will be very diffuse. And some nightclubs have UV lights, and that doesn’t seem to be a safety hazard.
Make sure you get a zwb2 filter on the flashlight, which blocks all visible light from the emitter. That makes it much easier to see stuff that fluoresces in UV light.
*No
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8252557/
Not really unless you shine into eyes. Also, don’t buy Amazon lights, they (almost) all suck. Get either a Sofirn SF16, or some Convoy UV light (and make sure to tell Simon you want it with a ZWB2 filter installed). I personally have a UV Convoy S2+ and it’s a great small UV light – Convoy also has larger ones.