Just curious if flourescent lighting can be bad for paint, unpainted plastic or clear plastic etc particularly on PW locos/cars?
thx
That’s a good question. Fluorescent lamps are actually ultraviolet lamps with a phosphor coating to convert the ultraviolet to visible light; and they all leak ultraviolet to some extent. Here is a site that discusses this:
http://nemesis.lonestar.org/reference/electricity/fluorescent/safety.html
Ultraviolet photons are more energetic than visible photons and can cause chemical and biological changes. Tanning and skin cancer are examples of this. Plumbing codes require that exposed PVC be painted to prevent damage from ultraviolet sunlight. Whether the emissions from ordinary fluorescent lights are tiny enough not to cause damage is not clear. There does seem to be a consensus that they are not a health hazard.
If you place the trains in a display case with the flourescent lights only a few inches away you might be asking for trouble. If you are talking about ceiling lights the trains will be far enough away that the potential damage is low (unless you run the trains up near the ceiling). Quartz halogen lighting is more likely to cause problems. It’s rich in UV, rich in IR and just plain bright. I would be more concerned about use of these than ordinary flourescents.
Do the new screw-in flourescent lights, the low watt type, qualify as regular flourescent bulbs? I am using these in my train room. Also using black flourescent lights for night time lighting.
Lee F.
Flourescent is flourescent. The black light bulbs are long wave UV, less damaging than short wave (found in rock hunters UV lamps). They are releasing more UV than a standard flourescent bulb because there is no phosphor coating to absorb the UV and convert it to visible light. Unless you run the black light bulb 24/7 and only a few inches from the trains it shouldn’t be an issue.
The main issues is distance from the object of concern and amount of exposure (aka time). If place the item near the source of the radiation for a long period of time it will may suffer more damage than if it was exposed less or from a greater distance. The radiation falls off as the inverse sqaure of the distance. The exposure from the same light source held four feet away is 1/16 of what it would be if it was only one foot away.
There are coatings/paints/plastics that are UV resistant that are mainly aimed at garden railroad users.
I’ve never seen a museum use fluorescent lamps to illuminate their precious displays, and that may well suggest more than it would merely create false colors.
There is a large quantity of material about this on the internet. It is easier to look up if you spell it “fluorescent” although Google’s “fuzzy search” may find it anyway. Try:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescent_lamp#Ultraviolet_light
Chuck is correct in that it’s a question of the intensity of the light that matters, and this is difficult for the typical train collector to ascertain. There is no question that at some level fluorescent light will cause fading of paint and deterioration of plastic over time – as will sunlight.
The “black” light that Lee asked about is almost pure ultraviolet, and that’s not good in this context.
Compact fluorescent lamps are fluorescent lamps, as far as I know.
Some of the effects of fluorescents are deterioration of materials (paint and plastic); health (skin cancer and cataracts); strobe (your loco’s wheels may appear to go backwards, as with the spokes on wagons in western movies); poor color matches; radio frequency emissions (might affect modern electronics); disposal and breakage problems, to name just a few. The reference cited by lionelsoni (Bob Nelson) elaborates on these and other issues.
But what are you going to do? I have regular fluorescents in my train room and compact ones (CFL’s) throughout my house because I am trying to save energy (read “money”). Until the next generation of lighting (LED’s?) comes along, I have no clear alternative, and who knows what problems the LED’s will bring with them?
Note: one can buy “shields” or “sleeves” for fluorescent bulbs that claim to reduce the ultra-violet emis
Not wanting to take any chances, I installed UV shield sheets between the tubes and the diffusers of my recessed fluorescent ceiling fixtures. It might be that I wouldn’t have had a fading problem without them, but I definitely don’t have a fading problem with them.
As far as whether they work is concerned, I have no reason to believe they are snake oil. The brand I use is approved by the ANSI for protection of stored or displayed photographs. I can offer this empirical evidence: I had a problem on my prior layout with my ground foam scenery fading over time. I use the same scenery products on my current layout and I do not have a fading problem now.
In case you are interested in checking into this further, here is a link to the product I used:
http://www.gamonline.com/index.php
Click on the tab marked “FOR A LIST OF GAM PRODUCTS, CLICK HERE” and then click on the link marked UV Filter.
I bought the 24" x 16’6" junior roll because it was wide enough to cover my diffusers with one piece per lighting fixture. I figured that the $65 (current) cost was a small price to pay to prevent damage to my trains - not unlike buying an insurance policy that you hope you never have to cash in on. The film is also available in 20"x24" sheets for $7.25 each. I decided against the tube shields, which they also offer, because I read somewhere that shields can significantly reduce the lifespan of fluorescent tubes due to extra heat buildup. Also, in my application, the tube shields would have cost about double of what I paid for the roll.
The slight reduction in light output after I installed the film was noticeable only at first. By the next day my eyes had adjusted and I didn’t really notice a difference.
Hope this is helpful.
Joel
Strictly speaking, the light falls off as the inverse square of distance only for a point source. With a line source, like a 4-foot fluorescent lamp, it falls off more slowly, as the inverse of the distance, until you are at a distance comparable to the length of the source.