UV Radiation Safety at Work: Why It Matters
Ultraviolet (UV) radiation is one of the most overlooked hazards in UK workplaces. Unlike noise, chemicals, or manual handling risks, UV exposure rarely causes an immediate, visible reaction. There’s no loud bang, no obvious spill, no instant injury to point to. That’s exactly what makes it dangerous – the damage accumulates quietly, often for years, before it shows up as a genuine health problem.
Whether it’s UV inspection, curing, disinfection, printing, welding, phototherapy, or any other process involving artificial UV sources, the risk is real – and it’s regulated. Yet awareness of both the health effects and the legal duties around them remains surprisingly low across many industries.
This article covers two things every employer using UV sources needs to understand: the health risks to workers, and the legal framework in the UK that requires you to manage them.
1. Protecting Workers: The Health Effects of UV Exposure
Short-term effects are the ones people notice, even if they don’t always connect them to UV exposure:
- Photokeratitis – a painful inflammation of the cornea, often described as feeling like sand in the eyes, typically appearing hours after exposure
- Erythema – skin reddening and burning, similar to sunburn, which can develop faster than many people expect from an artificial source
Long-term effects are the more serious concern, precisely because they don’t appear straight away:
- Cumulative eye damage, including cataracts and other degenerative conditions
- Skin cancers, including melanoma and non-melanoma types, linked to repeated or prolonged UV exposure over time
- Accelerated skin ageing
Because these effects are cumulative and delayed, workers (and sometimes employers) can go for years without realising exposure levels are a problem. A process might “feel” safe simply because nothing has gone wrong yet. That’s a false sense of security, not evidence of safety. Without proper measurement, documented risk assessment, and control measures in place, there’s no way to actually know whether exposure is within safe limits.
2. The Legal Requirements: CAOR 2010
In Great Britain, UV exposure at work is specifically regulated under the Control of Artificial Optical Radiation at Work Regulations 2010 (CAOR 2010), which came into force on 27 April 2010. These regulations implement EU Directive 2006/25/EC and sit alongside (and build on) the general duties in the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.
CAOR 2010 requires employers to:
- Assess the risk to employees’ eyes and skin from artificial optical radiation, including UV
- Determine workers’ personal exposure levels and compare them against the statutory Exposure Limit Values (ELVs), which are based on guidance from the International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection (ICNIRP)
- Implement technical and organisational controls where risks are identified – engineering controls, shielding, PPE, exposure duration limits, and so on
- Provide employees with information, instruction, and training on the risks and the controls in place
- Take immediate action if exposure exceeds the ELVs, and review risk assessments when circumstances change
The HSE is the enforcing authority, and it’s clear on this point: employers cannot simply assume a process is safe. You need a documented, evidence-based risk assessment – one that would stand up to scrutiny if the HSE came asking. “We’ve never had a problem” is not documentation, and it won’t satisfy an inspector.
What should be done
For organisations using UV sources – three things move you from assumption to genuine, demonstrable compliance:
1. Education and training for safety teams. Those responsible for health and safety need to understand what UV radiation is, where it appears in their processes, what the short and long-term risks look like, and what CAOR 2010 actually requires of them. This is the foundation everything else is built on.
2. Measurement and assessment of personal exposure, compared against the ELVs. This isn’t a simple tick-box exercise. Accurately measuring UV exposure and comparing it to the relevant limit values requires the right equipment and the technical knowledge to interpret the results correctly — different wavelengths and sources need different approaches. Getting this wrong (or skipping it) leaves you exposed, in both the safety and legal sense.
3. Hazard awareness training for the wider workforce. Beyond the safety team, the people working directly with or near UV sources need to understand the risks and the controls in place to protect them. Awareness at this level reduces the chance of controls being bypassed or overlooked in day-to-day operations.
The bottom line
UV exposure is a genuine occupational health hazard, and it’s a legal duty, not an optional consideration. The lack of immediate symptoms means it’s easy for it to go unmanaged – until years later, when the long-term effects surface. By that point, it’s too late to undo the exposure; the only question is whether your documentation shows you did everything reasonably practicable to prevent it.
If you use artificial UV sources in your workplace, it’s worth asking honestly: do we have a current, documented risk assessment? Have we actually measured exposure against the ELVs? And could we demonstrate that to the HSE tomorrow, if asked?
If the honest answer is “not really,” that’s a conversation worth having sooner rather than later.