Quote:
Originally Posted by Moontanman
A germicidal lamp can blind you fairly quickly, it can kill you, burn you severely, UV we get on the surface of the earth is not any were close to being as strongly germicidal.
|
Well, focusing sunlight through a 3 inch lens could blind you quicker than a UV lamp (or burn you quicker). But, I think you have a sound point. There's a big difference between the UV-A which reaches Earth's surface and the optimum (middle) 254 nm for killing little buggers. The other day when I was writing the post above I found a source saying about 5 µW/cm
2 of UV-B reachs the surface. I've lost the link now, but if true, that is not enough in-and-of-itself to do any real damage with a moderately-sized lens.
The real question then, is how well UV-A works as a germicide. I don't know. If it's even half as effective as the middle range of UV frequencies then I believe Turtle's idea could work
very well.
~modest
