Illumination Caused Permanent Bodily Injury, Photons Not Taken Lightly

Abstract

Different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum can cause injury to exposed living tissue inside and outside of the body-sunburn is a common demonstration of this. In this case study, due to an apparent lack of education and training, hospital maintenance and/or cleaning staff erroneously removed the infrared and ultraviolet filters from a halogen bulb operatory luminaire which resulted in harmful radiation exposure to hospital staff and patients. It is estimated that more than 1000 individuals could have been exposed to the unfiltered light and several were diagnosed with severe tissue damage. At least one case was untreatable. This paper outlines the instrumentation and calculations performed to evaluate the severity of the exposure risk to unfiltered artificial light.