I have installed a 20w SYLVANIA UVA fluorescent tube to light a shelf in my room. Though because I am not sure if this lamp emits more UVA in the point that it could lead to any health risk I decided to share my thought with you guys so you can share your thoughts .  Also If you have any unique UVA, UVB or UVC lamps don't mind sharing them!    

Sure it only emits UVA?
This looks like a face tanning lamp to be honest. Those need to be used with goggles to avoid eye damage.

Alternatively, get a sheet of glass and put UV blocking window film of it, and hang it in front of the lamp. Glue it to the diagonals of your shelf carrying things, for instance.

My eyes get vaguely irritated if i run unprotected HPMV lamps here. They don't emit much, if any UVB, but the irritation keeps popping up whenever i do it. No issue with SON, it's not just the brightness.

Well, UVA exposure (within a reason) is usually considered harmless. I believe that is because sunlight already contains a lot of UVA, much more intense that can be generated by this little poor tube, and living organisms on the surface of the Earth adapted over millions years of evolution, or were carefully created by God, whichever theory you subscribe to withstand that amount of UVA.

Some say though that UVA exposure is a cause of melanoma, though I doubt on the quality of this research, probably the talk is about much more intense sunlight, and the source is Wikipedia, and do you *always* trust Wikipedia really?

But why this unfiltered lamp? Filtered blacklight is classically much more fun to play as objects fluorescence is not blocked. From body art painted with fluorescent markers to finding athlete's foot infection (fluoresces purple) heh And filtered lamp is pretty much guaranteed not to emit anything harmful shortwave.

Tanks RRK! I also did some research and found that the 95% of the suns radiation is UVA, I also doubted that this little thing could produce any intensity close to the suns But generally most articles stated that UVA radiation is not harmful to any living organism that can be exposed to sunlight, so I guess we’re good to go

Sure it only emits UVA?
This looks like a face tanning lamp to be honest. Those need to be used with goggles to avoid eye damage.

Alternatively, get a sheet of glass and put UV blocking window film of it, and hang it in front of the lamp. Glue it to the diagonals of your shelf carrying things, for instance.

My eyes get vaguely irritated if i run unprotected HPMV lamps here. They don't emit much, if any UVB, but the irritation keeps popping up whenever i do it. No issue with SON, it's not just the brightness.

This lamp doesn’t state that it produces any radiation further than UVA  Though on the etch it says that it’s not 100% safe for long term exposure which I kind of doubt considering that most products nowadays warn you for every single thing even if that thing is impossible to happen :
For example most battery powered devices continuously warn people for the battery’s faults and you may even see some indication that says to not SWALLOW THE BATTERY!

When I point my 365nm UVA LED flashlight to my face, it immediately starts to heat up like it does with the sun. This is the reason why my 160W SBMV lamps causes me to sweat if I uses them during hot weather.

Any kind of uv light, including BL, BLB, germicidal and other special uv lamps, just irritates my eyes if on for long enough. Maybe one of the 'dark blue' fluorescents with a purple tint would work?

This lamp doesn’t state that it produces any radiation further than UVA  Though on the etch it says that it’s not 100% safe for long term exposure which I kind of doubt considering that most products nowadays warn you for every single thing even if that thing is impossible to happen :
For example most battery powered devices continuously warn people for the battery’s faults and you may even see some indication that says to not SWALLOW THE BATTERY!

Aaah, so the answer is incredibly simple: do not use this lamp as general lighting in a place where it shines into your eyes without UV protective film. With the film, it's all safe.

Be smart; those warnings would NOT have been put on that lamp, if the company didn't get sued for causing eye damage at some point in time, or if an engineer didn't ruin his eyes in testing lamps at some point. Warnings don't sell well, you don't put them onto products if you don't absolutely have to put them there.

Apparently there is something this lamp emits, that is not emitted by a blacklight tube, because blacklight tubes don't have these warnings.

Those battery warnings are there because many children have died from ingesting button cells. The warning is not for the children, but for the parents who simply never thought a child might think a little battery is a Skittle and swallow it. Or just put random things in their mouth, like kids do. Batteries are a more serious hazard than you might think. Button cells electrolyse the cells, causing perforations in the gut along the route the battery takes.
 

Here is an article about eye damage by UVA light: https://platform.almanhal.com/Files/Articles/49506
300kJ of UVA energy per square meter very roughly corresponds to a dual 36w fixture lighting up an area of 1m^2, which is quite a lot of energy - but the exposure time is much shorter because mice don't live as long as humans do. The nasty part is that it will take years for damage to accumulate and be noticeable. You don't notice it, until enough internal lesions have aggregated.

Here is an article specifically talking about the safety of 4 different types of lamp: https://laser-led-lamp-safety.seibersdorf-laboratories.at/fileadmin/uploads/intranet/2003%20cie%20hazard%20assessment%20of%20lamps_%20weber.pdf
This article concludes that a 160w HPMV (i assume) blacklight lamp is safe, it does not go over the thresholds.

But you have to know if your UVA lamp gets into the actinic UV region or not, because actinic light is dangerous much faster. Try and find the datasheet of the lamp, and see if there is anything in the spectrum above 365nm. Because if there is, there's a higher risk. And there probably is. Otherwise it wouldn't have the warning.

Either way, here's my HPW 125w lamp: https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=8269
Found it at work, not really using it because of the runup time and because it runs so much hotter than a CFL blacklight. Sooner or later i'm gonna buy another blacklight CFL and leave it at work, and take this one home because it's much more suitable as a collectable item, than as something to use for teaching.

https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=8355
And there's the Iwasaki H50 clear MV lamp, which also emits a bunch of UV light. Not UVC, but if it's not filtered by glass, it emits it. I use one of these in my room as lighting sometimes, but always with the UV protector.

I am quite skeptical about that Egyptian (?) article involving UVA and mice. First, authors did not mention UV source they used, nor its spectral power distribution, which is extremely lame for a scientific paper. Next, mice is not a good choice of organism for such research, because (obviously) mice prefer not to be in the open in daylight, and are most active at night, mostly spending sun hours in a burrow. Third, usual lab mice are evolved albino, almost completely devoid of usual protective melanin pigment, having white fur and (note!) red eyes. So they probably have much less UV tolerance at all, compared to humans.

Let's get some sane quantitative reference.

Egyptian authors quote 360KJ/m^2 energy/24h, translating to just 4.2W/m^2
This is very low, for comparison sunlight UVA content is quoted as about 50-85W/m^2 peak at noon, and some 500-2000KJ/m^2 average daily irradiance depending on the season for Cyprus, for example.  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337687295_Statistical_Analysis_and_InterComparison_of_Solar_UVA_and_Global_Radiation_for_Athalassa_and_Larnaca_Cyprus/link/640714d90d98a97717e77353/download

So many people spend hours outdoors in the southern sun at that 85W/m^2 peak UVA levels for all of their life, and are just fine, note projected life expectancy for that region!   

36W Philips blacklight tube generates 9.5W of UVA per datasheet, you shall expect about 1/2 of that for 20W tube.

Finally, ordinary glass sheet will not attenuate UVA significantly. You can verify easily by a piece of a fluorescent paper. Some good plastic lenses from reading glasses do, and I found a good use for them to cut UVA at the input of the spectrometer. That way you can easily distinguish for example if a peak in the IR is a real IR energy, or just a second order response from the grating.

There is a simpler answer. Every lamp and optical radiation source placed on the market in Europe and much of the rest of the world that follows the IEC standardisation system must be tested for compliance with IEC 62471 : Photobiological Safety of Light Sources, and for general lighting products to IEC TR 62788. 

It’s not only the spectrum of a lamp that can be dangerous - some pure UVC and UVB sources are perfectly safe to look at for considerable periods of time.  The quantity of radiation is far more important.  If you stare at an ordinary tungsten filament for long enough or from short enough range it can cause severe retinal burn hazard or infrared/UV skin damage.

Every light source is therefore evaluated at two criteria.  General lighting lamps and fixtures have their absolute spectral irradiance measured at a distance that corresponds to an illuminance of 500 lux, a typical high-end value in real applications.  They, as well as all other light sources are also evaluated at a distance of 200mm which is a typical short focal distance for the human eye and the closest a customer might reasonably be expected to look at an operating lamp.

The measurement is made both spectrally via a diffuser that simulates skin hazard, as well as via a small telescope whose optics simulate the human eye and project an image of the brightest part of the light surface into a monochromator.  For both conditions evaluation is made for infrared burn hazard, retinal thermal burn, blue light small source eye burn, blue light skin hazard, UVA eye hazard, actinic skin hazard, actinic eye hazard.  For each of those criteria the spectrum and source brightness is weighted according to standardised spectral hazard functions and classified into high risk, moderate risk, low risk or exempt.  Low risk and exempt lamps require no marking.  Moderate risk should bear a warning similar as you see here.  High risk products are banned in all general lighting applications and can only be placed on the market with suitable warnings on the product and packaging.  In such cases it is compulsory to state in the manufacturer’s literature the minimum distance for safe viewing.

Everything is of course time-based : prolonged exposure is more severe.  For the basic risk group assessment that is made on fixed considerations, but manufacturers also provide (usually only when requested) the MPET value : maximum permitted exposure time per 8-hour period.  That value is of course dependent on the distance and light distribution, it changes as a function of which reflectors / lenses / diffusers might be used.

Conclusion for almost all cases is that if there is no warning on the lamp / fixture it is entirely safe under reasonable use conditions considered by the 62471 and 62778.  If there is any kind of marking, take precautions and contact the manufacturer for specific details.