UVR measurement of a UV germicidal lamp

Ultraviolet radiation (UVR) exposure is known to cause serious effects such as conjunctivitis and keratitis in eyes and erythema in skin. The exposure assessment of UVR has not been well established and developed in workplaces due to the lack of suitable UV detecting instruments. Therefore, UV monitoring and measuring procedures were investigated and developed with commercial spectroradiometry devices described in this paper. The UVR irradiance integrated with a biological effective parameter (S lambda) represents the impacts on human skin and eyes as UV effective irradiance. The spectral weighting function derived from the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists was applied and evaluated to indicate the degree of harmfulness of UVR as a function of wavelength. A portable UV germicidal lamp with short and long wavelengths (254 nm and 365 nm) served as the UVR emission source. The UVR photon count similar to the perceived brightness of a source, irradiance, and effective irradiance (E eff) of the germicidal lamp were measured and analyzed, then the permissible exposure times (T max) were derived for UVR exposure assessment. This monitoring provided a comprehensive approach to detecting UVR magnitude, evaluated the performance of the approach, and quantified the effective exposure based on measured data. From this study, the methodology of UV measurement was established and could be applied to further UVR exposure assessment in the workplace.