Hi Kira

Nice article by Terry T. Schaeffer for The Getty Conservation Institute that I think should answer your question very well (admittedly it is 212 pages long!)
I've uploaded it to dropbox here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rwph47g6lccawmg/effectsoflightonmaterialsincollections.pdf?dl=0

Whenever I'm describing flash I normally say that my camera is set to f7.1 at 100th of a second and the flash power is set to match that, which means the light from the flashes is about as bright as a pretty sunny summer day, but it's effectively like you're only exposing your object to that sunny summer light for a fraction of a second. Obviously this is a simplification, but I think it can help when explaining to non-photographers. Xenon flashtubes produce a pretty lovely smooth spectral output so are often less damaging than exposing an object to a poorer quality light source that might have a pretty spikey spectral output.

Hope that helps

Best
Andrew