The ultraviolet-enhanced (UV-enhanced) contamination of optical components leads to an untimely aging of sealed laser systems, photolithography, and synchrotron installations. The laser-induced deposition of organic films on silica substrates and coatings significantly reduces their transmission and degrades their optical functions. In this paper, measurements of organic contaminant films growth under 213 nm laser irradiation performed on silica Corning 7980 grade ArF are reported. We present an in situ contaminant layer growth diagnostic based on silica photoluminescence measurements. The purpose was to determine the photodeposition kinetics as a function of controlled environmental conditions and fluence and to find out the experimental conditions in which the growth of contamination films was significantly reduced. We then demonstrated that with a low partial pressure of oxygen, the growth of carbonaceous films is drastically reduced during UV laser irradiation whereas with water and nitrogen it was not the case. We also proposed a physical modeling of the UV-enhanced silica contamination processes.