[Rockhounds] No Magic?!? Welder's eye

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

The stage beyond the sand in the eyes feeling is like a severe sunburn 
of your eyeballs and is very, very, painful. Your vision fogs up and 
you start worrying about permanent loss of sight. The reaction is 
delayed by a day, and takes a couple weeks to recover from.

UV effects are cumulative in the short run.

Please believe me, you don't want to go there. If you use UV you need 
to take precautions. I learned the lesson the hard way many years ago. 
I was fortunate and recovered. I would not wish the pain on anyone. I 
was lucky.

Please take UV precautions seriously.

Kreigh



On Sunday, Apr 12, 2009, at 11:23 America/Detroit, Axel Emmermann wrote:

>> Axel,
>
> [Axel] Awake and listening ;-)
>
>> I took a welding class once, I bet you've got UV lamp eye, not nearly 
>> as
> bad as from a real
>> arc! 
>
> [Axel] UV-eyes come from the 253.7  (UV-C) nm and 312 nm (UV-B) 
> radiation of
> mercury lamps. Welders eyes are caused by the strong iron-lines in the 
> 190
> nm region of the spectrum. That would make it what... UV-D?
>
> I was really careful about using the hood, and still got caught a 
> little
> once in a while.
>
> [Axel] Reflections from aside, no doubt. Some substances are excellent
> UV-reflectors: aluminium, dolomite (cement and concrete)... I use 
> aluminium
> reflectors when photographing fluorescent minerals. Sometimes I catch a
> reflection over my glasses when looking through the camera. Feels like 
> fine
> sand in you eyes...
>
>>
>> And even longer ago, I worked in a photo engraving shop, making line
> negatives and etching
>> zinc plates with nitric acid.  We used a photo-sensitive emulsion that
> worked to setup when
>> exposed to UV, and back in the day we used really really bright 
>> carbon arc
> lamps to expose
>> the plates.
>
> [Axel] That's enough ozone, acid fumes and dry heat to develop a cough 
> or
> two ;-)))
>
>> The photo engravings were usually of ladies at social events, but 
>> there
> was the occasional
>> train wreck too.  The news stories were cast in molten lead; there 
>> were a
> couple of dozen
>> pots full of liquid lead, one for each linotype.  Every once in a 
>> while I
> got a lapful of molten
>> lead, and spent the rest of the shift picking bits of lead foil off my
> pants!  Exciting but
>> mostly harmless, I think.  Ancient crafts and skills, casting 
>> letterpress
> newspapers for fun
>> and profit!
>
> [Axel] The dementing effects of lead can't be that bad since you 
> remember
> all this ;-)))
> Those crafts and skills sometimes make me a bit nostalgic. I the lab 
> where I
> work  you really need to look hard to find a piece of glass. That was 
> quite
> different 20 years ago...
>
>> What would OSHA think!
>
> [Axel] If they are anything like their Belgian counterpart, "thinking" 
> is
> the last thing  I would accuse them of (LOL)
>
>> Keep on fluorescing!
>
> [Axel] Ya bet!
> Axel
>
>
>
>
> -- 
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