Typical Woods Lamp
One of the unique things about Vitiligo is that the areas where the pigment has been lost because of Vitiligo glow or fluoresce under a Woods Lamp sometimes called Black Light. A typical Wood’s Lamp generates UV light at 365 nm (nano-meters) and can be used for many applications. When you’re watching those police shows on TV where forensic teams look for blood and other body fluids such as sperm, you are actually seeing the use of a Woods Light.
Professor Robert Wood
A little back ground. The Wood’s Light is named for Robert Wood. Professor Robert W. Wood is is undoubtedly the “Father of Ultraviolet Photography”. His work in the early 1900′s led to the use of UV light for forensic and medical skin and eye detection.
He was the first to record the ultraviolet fluorescence phenomenon which led to the common usage of UV light today for skin and forensic inspection. You can read a little more about Professor Wood at my www.woodslight.com website.
The Wood’s Lamp is used to detect many things today such as:
- Ringworm
- Fungus/fungal infections
- Corneal Scratches.
- Foreign bodies in the eye.
- Vitiligo.
- Blocked tear ducts.
- Acne.
- Erythasma
- Tinea versicolor
- Microsporum Canis
- Criminology (for emergency rooms)
- Scabies.
- Alopecia
- Porphyria
- Bacterial Infections.
- Many other skin conditions.
Note the bluish glow of the area with Vitiligo that is barely visible under normal light. Image borrowed from Vitiligo Zone
The user should take several precautions such as advising you not to look directly in the ultraviolet light or providing you protective goggles when examining the face. The Woods Lamp examination holds no risk and you won’t feel anything during the procedure.
Your doctor or healthcare provider will ask you to thoroughly wash or clean the area to be examined. Many creams, ointments and soaps contain materials that may fluoresce under black light so they must be eliminated. The inspection must be done in a darkened room. The skin with Vitiligo will glow whereas your regular or normal skin will not react or glow.
Fluorescence is not simply reflected light. Certain materials react to UV (Black Light) and create light when they react or “fluoresce”. Believe it or not, some folks in places like Arizona and the Southwest use black lights to search for scorpions. Yes! Scorpions glow or fluoresce under black light. Here’s a video you can watch of someone hunting scorpions with a black light. <Click Here>. Many minerals fluoresce under black light and many rock hunters will use black light to search for certain materials or minerals.
The company that my wife and I own for many years only sold UVA, UVB and UVB Narrow Band Systems at our www.HomePhotoTherapy.com website and as time went by we got more and more calls on wood’s lights and UVA Black Lights and we decided to create the www.WoodsLight.com website and begin selling woods lights and black lights for a wide range of applications. This has been one of our more successful spin-off websites.
We now carry
- Hand Held Woods Lights
- Small Battery Powered unit
- Woods Lamps for use in Hospitals
- Export models for use outside the USA in 220V Countries
Our web store for woods lights can be found at:
http://www.amjoshop.com/category-s/41.htm
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