What was that smell in the air from my sunlamp?
May 19, 2021 12:14 PM   Subscribe

When I was a teenager back in the 70s I was almost albino white. So I'd try to self-tan with my dad's old sunlamp. Oy.

I'd wear goggles and sit in front of the thing for about ten minutes. And then go to school looking pinkish and strange.

But I'm wondering about what the sunlamp was doing to the air in the room? I remember this distinct smell –– like maybe the air was being oxidized or altered in some way from the light?

Anyone recall this or know what that would have been?
posted by zenpop to Science & Nature (7 answers total)
 
I don’t know if this works scientifically, but my first guess is you were smelling ozone. Laser printers sometimes smell like this, too.
posted by Ryon at 12:18 PM on May 19, 2021 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: Thanks, Ryon

What was going on alchemically or whatever that would ozone the air like that I wonder?

And do sunlamps nowadays generate that same odor?
posted by zenpop at 12:27 PM on May 19, 2021


Ozone is a somewhat sharp metallic smell--sometimes you get a whiff of it after pulling two staticky items apart, too.
Some wavelengths of UV light break apart oxygen gas into individual oxygen atoms, who happily glom onto un-broken oxygen gas to form ozone (O3). It's not stable and doesn't last for long, so if the smell went away very shortly after you turned off the lamp, it was probably that.

It could also have been some component getting hot and burning off any dust/bugs that had stuck onto it since last time, especially if it was a halogen lamp. Sometimes you'll experience that kind of smell when turning on a heating element for the first time in a few months. That smell will sit around for a bit longer after the lamp turns off; it's not as unstable as ozone.
posted by tchemgrrl at 12:35 PM on May 19, 2021 [3 favorites]


Sunlamps get really hot, you were just smelling dust that had landed on the bulb being baked off. And/or outgassing from the furniture/floor/etc. that was getting closed car on a hot summer day hot.
posted by zengargoyle at 12:37 PM on May 19, 2021 [5 favorites]


Assuming it was the kind of "sun lamp" that just has a large incandescent bulb (typically 200-300W), I agree with zengargoyle that the most likely culprit is just burning dust. You typically don't get ozone production from sealed incandescent bulbs.

There was another type of "sun lamp" that I have only seen in museums, which involved two consumable carbon rods with an electric arc struck between them. These probably would have made a pretty strong ozone odor (as well as, if I were to guess, a lot of other smells and smoke from the burning carbon rods). I think they were mostly only made in the pre-WWII period and you would have known you were using one, because the rods required adjustment to keep them nearly-touching.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:48 PM on May 19, 2021


Response by poster: This is AH-MAY-ZING. Thank you all.

I'm writing an essay on the 50th anniversary of Carole King's Tapestry, an album I played continually through the spring and summer of 71 -- which meant it was always on while baking my face. (Strange the things we associate with other things in life).

And no, Kadin29048, the lamp wasn't that ancient.
posted by zenpop at 1:28 PM on May 19, 2021 [3 favorites]


If it was effective at tanning (or at sunburning) then it was emitting UV. But it takes the high-energy UVC band to generate ozone, and UVC is dangerous, even for the Lawn Darts era. It's also filtered by glass, so if these were glass bulbs looking like linear fluorescents, UVC doesn't come out. To generate ozone you use a smaller quartz bulb run at higher pressure.
posted by away for regrooving at 7:59 PM on May 19, 2021 [1 favorite]


« Older Help me not miss another morning meeting!   |   Dehumidifier versus standalone air conditioner? Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.