Quote: "we also made a shocking discovery: the so called "safelights" used in the dark room effect photopaper quite badly. after about half an hour near the light source a piece of photopaper was completly over exposed. we were very surprised."
Half an hour!
Black-and-white enlarging paper usually starts fogging within a few minutes even under dim, indirect safelighting (which is what you try to achieve in a well-designed darkroom). If the paper's been exposed in a camera or under an enlarger (and thus carrying a latent image before processing) it's even more sensitive to these mis-named 'safelights' as the initial 'inertia' of the paper's response has been overcome. Also, there can be a mis-match between the type of paper and the type of safelight. Modern multigrade paper needs an orangey colour (e.g. S902 for Ilford Multigrade) rather than the traditional yellow 'OB'.
Red light affects b/w photo paper the least (given that the paper is primarily blue-sensitive), but you still can't exposethe paper to direct light for half an hour and expect it to survive!
Keep up the good work!