Ultra Violet Black Light:  Pet Urine Detection.

We love our pets. They bring such pleasure to our lives.  But with that pleasure can come the mess and work of detecting and removing pet urine and the subsequent odors.

Many pets shed a great deal leading to frequent vacuuming of our homes and grooming of our animals. Some pets also leave more than unwanted hair in our homes. Some, whether due to old age, potty training, or dogs and cats who simply want to mark their territory, leave unpleasant urine odors and stains behind them, so we need a strategy for pet urine detection and removal.  

Pet urine detection and removal can be a difficult problem to deal with. Our noses detect a foul smell but often have trouble finding the source to clean and remove the smell from our carpets, furniture, flooring and fabrics.  

Both dogs and cats can be guilty of leaving urine stains in your home. Sometimes, we will notice a smell but are not able to track it visually.  This is where the use of a UV black light flash-lamp can be invaluable. It is an essential tool in the battle for pet odor detection and removal, but you need to chose the right tool for the job.

Illuminate pet urine undetectable to the human eye with our UV Black Light

     – Detects pet urine on carpeting
     – Detects pet urine on wood floors
     – Works on concrete and tile
     – Locates pet urine on upholstery, and many other surfaces

UV Light For Detecting Urine Residue – Locate Pet Urine Residue with Our UV Light – The image above features an actual lice on a strand of hair being made fluorescent by our UV Black light Flashlight.

How to find cat and/or dog urine with a UV Black light – Black light is also commonly known as ultraviolet, or UV, light, but how can light help us detect cat and dog urine?

As with the simple colored prism effect, water crystals break visible light into a layered light spectrum where red has a lower visible frequency than violet. A light frequency below red on the spectrum is termed infrared, whereas a frequency higher than violet is termed ultraviolet or UV.
Common uses which you may be familiar with outside of the typical home environment are crime scenes, where black light is used to detect blood stains. And in the sense of pet urine detection, the two are very similar as pet urine glows in a similar frequency range to blood when exposed to the Ultra Violet light.

Of course it’s not uncommon for stains to have been around for a while before they finally become unbearable and force you to act. So it’s important to have a tool powerful enough to spotlight older, dried urine stains, so nothing goes undetected.
So a black light flash lamp is useful because when it is used in a dark room it will illuminate any residue contained on or in a fiber or on a solid material that is difficult to see by the human eye. It will immediately pinpoint areas that require cleaning. Chemical waste and other materials such as hair, lint, or fluids from foods will glow either white, yellow, or green when assessed under UV black light.  

As we have covered in our previous discussions on detecting per urine here, before beginning to attempt to detect pet pee using a black light, it is important that the room you are working in be as dark as possible.  If you are unable to sufficiently block light by drawing blinds, closing doors, and turning out all lights in a room, it might be best to begin your efforts at night when it is already dark.  Many stains will simply not glow sufficiently for you to recognize them in a room that contains too much light hence you may miss some stains that need to be removed in order for the odor to be completely eliminated.

How to clean up pet urine and odors safely

Many pet health professionals recommend using a cleanser purposely formulated for cleaning cat and dog urine. Generally if your choice of cleanser is suitable for cat urine it will work fine with dogs too, as cat urine odors are stronger due to the natural pungency of the fluids secreted from cats.  

Naturally one of the considerations of cleaning up after our pets is to use odor elimination products which are safe. After cleanup your pet will usually want to inspect the new smell which has suddenly appeared on the scene, so it’s important that they’re not exposed to harmful chemicals. This is why we recommend URI-CIDE as the perfect companion to our UV Black Light – a complete package for pet urine detection and odor / stain removal.

Visit our odor elimination products page to learn more about URI-CIDE