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Unusual Fluorescent tube


paulears

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Grum and I today were doing a few 'housekeeping' jobs, and one was replacing a flu tube, under the fly floor, crossing the stage at the rear. It's left on all the time for the crossover. Grum took the old one down, and I wandered to the store to find a replacement. Ignoring the fact that I still can't tell a 6 foot from a 5 foot, we stuck it in. It seemed a bit dim, and an odd colour. Kind of bluey off white. The cardboard tube it was in looked normal - but may not have been the original. We thought maybe it was one of the anti-shoot up toilet ones, but as it was dimmer than the old one, we thought it actually better so left it. As we were leaving, we noticed that a scrap of paper on the floor, and some papers in Grum's pocket were glowing. Yep, the tube was making things glow! The tube is NOT, remotely like any UV tube we've ever seen - so where is the UV coming from, and what on earth is it designed for? Grum thinks it could be a sunbed UV tube - if so, we'll all have a suntan by the end of the summer by working indooors!

 

We don't think it's blue enough for a loo type tube, as we're both veiny enough to find lots!

 

Any ideas? There are no obvious labels or markings on it that suggest it is anything other than a normal tube.

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It could be a sunbed tube, or worst case it could be a germicidal tube (UV C), which are bloody dangerous as they emit very shortwave UV that causes cateracts! These are used in water treatment and the like.

 

These are normally clear (no phosphor) in my experience, but why chance it? Just swap it for a normal one.

 

Regards, Dan.

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Black Light tube, BL in the catalogue as opposed to Black Light Blue, BLB in the catalogue, BLB has the Woods glass coating to block out above 400nM visible. BL still has a phosphor ,used for things like fish tanks.
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