The first thing I want to say is that if you were affected by this incident then you are NOT going to suffer permanent eye damage. The significant wavelength here (254nm) only affects the very surface of your eyes and skin. It's an unpleasant experience - but literally a daily job hazard for welders, so you're going to be absolutely OK. Your favourite painkiller will help with the discomfort.

This is the second incident involving the use of exposed UVC germicidal tubes in a public area recently. The last one was the Hypebeast fashion label event which bizarrely was also in Hong Kong. I wonder if there's a connection between the two events.

From what I can see in the random pictures of the event I found online, the stage itself does not look a hazard. It seems to be using conventional LED based lighting fixtures that are either using deep violet LED washes or generic RGBW fixtures. These do not pose a safety issue.

The TOILETS however are a different story. It's a cool bit of theming, but the correct tubes to use for the effect they wanted are blacklight (actually a bright blue) or blacklight-blue (deep violet) tubes that convert the dangerous wavelengths to visible and near-visible light using phosphors and filters.
It looks like they've used UVC germicidal tubes, which means it was the most sterile toilets EVER but at the expense of "user comfort".
The people who spent a lot of time admiring the artwork or queuing in the affected areas are the most likely to have been affected.

Surely the people setting the event up must have experienced issues? Maybe they just didn't know what caused them. There was an interesting case where a maintenance operative replaced the UVA tubes of an insect zapper in a restaurant kitchen with UVC germicidal tubes and caused lots of skin and eye irritation for the staff for a long time until a savvy customer alerted them to the cause.

UVC tubes are an essential part of water purification, air purification, hospital sterilisation and food-factory machine self-sterilisation. But should never be exposed for direct viewing or skin exposure.

For reference, the Bored Ape Yacht Club is an NFT (Non Fungible Token) investment "thing" where there is an archive of 10,000 computer generated cartoon ape themed images based on a series of fixed combinations of colours and features. People buy the intellectual property rights to an image for a surprising price (peaking at over 3 million dollars for a single image so far) as a form of currency.

In 2022 The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission began an investigation into the Bored Ape "currency" because they forgot they only represent the American dollar, and that they have as much right to regulate crypto currencies as they have to regulate the Euro - and as such should keep their nose out of it.

Personally I think that all currencies in the world are completely fabricated and the only true currencies are trade-skills and knowledge. The tricky bit is getting the most skilled people to appreciate their own value.

So in summary. If you ever see a completely clear fluorescent tube or compact fluorescent lamp with a strangely alluring cyan/turquoise glow, then avoid looking at it. And if other people are exposed then it may be worth raising it as a safety issue.

This does NOT apply to neon signs that sometimes use the raw mercury vapour glow as a feature colour, but use tubes made of soda or lead based glass that inherently blocks the UVC wavelength. They are usually safe to view directly.


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