Jiaming Zhang

AP Chemistry

Dr. Hartman

29 May 2020

UV Lights and Radiations in Real Life

UV Lights are present everywhere: in hospitals, labs, evil movie scenes… etc.

Sometimes we heard it to be damaging and dangerous, yet sometimes we see people using it

to kill bacterias and viruses in a pandemic like now. So how does it work? What’s it’s source?

What other uses does it have? And what about all the fears regarding radiation? Let’s find

out!

So what is UV light

anyways? UV light is a range of

waves with frequencies greater

than visible lights yet lesser than

X rays and Gamma Rays on the electromagnetic spectrum. Since the frequency and

wavelength of waves are inversely proportional to each other, it has a wavelength lesser than

visible lights yet greater than X rays and Gamma Rays, with wavelengths from 10 nm to 400

nm. It has the name of “Ultraviolet” since the violet light is the visible light with the highest

frequency and the lowest wavelength, with a frequency higher than violet light, UV light gets

its name. UV light is not visible because most human eyes can’t detect waves shorter than

400 nm of wavelength, however, we could sometimes see them in a color close to

whitish-purple since some of the “inefficient” UV light emitted by the bulb is close to the

frequency of violet visible lights.

lights is the sun, which generate all sorts of waves: Infrared waves to heat up our planet,

visible lights to brighten our planet and UV lights, which can cause effects on our body. The

sun has a lot of excess energies that it emit to the universe, some of it will travel to Earth in

forms of all sorts of these waves. In addition to the natural UV lights by the sun, they are also

seen emitted by bulbs and LED tubes artificially. These have examples like tanning booths,

black lights, and germicidal lamps, some of them are hospital or lab used and some are family

or even personal used. Energy is released from these sources by transferring electrical or

chemical energies to waves, which are mostly invisible UV lights. These are thus the ways

you can get UV rays: sun or artificial lights, interesting, right?

What are the uses of UV lights?

Well, why do so many of us enjoy sun

baths? Because the UV lights with a

relative high frequency could cause, or

stimulate, the production of Vitamin D

in the body. UV lights of the type of UVB will radiate 7-Dehydrocholesterol from the lanolin

grease and produce vitamin D, which is important in maintaining calcium level and thus

ensuring healthy bones in the body. Another more

“aggressive” usage of UV lights is to apply them

from a bulb in order to kill microorganisms like

bacterias or viruses. You can see in some labs or

hospitals medical supplies are exposed under UV

light after used in order to terminate the harmful

microorganisms attached to it, such as the CoVID-19 virus. This is done because the UV light
has the energy to break the molecular bonds in their DNAs and thus terminate these

microorganisms. Such change in genetic could be used in broader terms: some are even using

UV lights to kill cancer cells in the human body by the same method of breaking their DNAs.

However, the opposite is true since UV light is what causes most skin cancers at the first

place using the same trick, this time the DNA of a normal cell is mutated by the energies of

the UV light.

This is why do so many of our parents want us to wear long sleeves or sunscreen in

summer: we need a barrier layer that could stop or absorb the UV lights from the sun.

Otherwise, you will got tanned, this is because UV lights accelerates the production of a skin

pigment called melanin, which regulates skin color, too much melanin will cause darker

skins. Melanin also absorbs UV lights so the

darkening of your skin could protect you from

sunburns. If you don’t have enough melanins because

your genetic background is set in a place with lesser

sunlight, mostly meaning you are from Northern

Europe, your skin cells will take more damage from

the UV radiation from the sun. These radiations will

“burn” the skin cells because of the same reason they did on the harmful microorganisms: the

rays will damage the structure of the cells, sometimes reaching the DNA to mutate it and

causing skin cancer. This is the reason for the sun “burns”, not the heat of the sun which is

caused by infrared rays but the invisible UV rays, and that is why we see sunburns in areas

with cold climate, like the peak of Mt. Everest, because it is the exposure of the sun that

cause the “burn”, not the heat. Sunscreens containing chemicals like Zinc Oxide or Titanium

Dioxide could block the UV rays, especially the longest wavelength UVA rays, which
 penetrate the atmosphere the

most due to its longer

wavelength that is less likely to

be contacted and absorbed by

Ozones in the atmosphere.

There are also examples of

physically blocking UV rays:

such as using an umbrella or

wearing long-sleeve shirts.

Waves can always be blocked

by obstacles on its way to some

extent, so stay in shades or

cover up is always good to

prevent sunburns. However, it is worth noting that UV lights have higher frequencies than

visible light, so it has more energy comparing to it, just like shorter wavelength X-Rays can

penetrate your body, UV lights can penetrate a little more than visible lights. So you are not

100% safe under a shade, and if you can see visible light penetrating a fabric, UV rays can

get through too. That's why sun-protective shirts and sunscreens have their UV protector

factor (UPF) listed to let you know how protective they are against UV rays. After learning

that much about the harms of these rays, next time when your parent ask you to put

sunscreens, don’t complain, do it!

In conclusion, UV lights are a very useful chemical product in our daily life if used

correctly. But we also have to be cautious on its harmful effects and protect ourselves from it.
Hopefully you learned something that matters in your daily life regarding chemistry in this

article.

Citations:

All images come from internet, verbal informations come from these following sources:

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