Nighttime blue-light LEDs cause health problems, AMA warns
A recently released report calls attention to the adverse environmental and human health impacts of blue-light LEDs, which are gaining popularity throughout the world for illuminating streets. The American Medical Association document recommends that engineers install LEDs that are dimmer or emit less blue light.
The AMA report details scientific evidence that nighttime exposure to blue-rich white light leads to increased risk for cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Blue-rich LED streetlights are five times as disruptive to the human sleep cycle as conventional lighting, according to two large surveys cited in the report. Recent surveys have also found that brighter residential nighttime lighting is associated with reduced sleep duration, impaired daytime functioning, and elevated rates of obesity, the report says. Some of the detrimental effects apply to other animal species as well.
Article:
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/news/10.1063/PT.5.1079
Reference:
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/6/e1600377.full
#research #healthyliving #bluelight #LEDs
Owen Iverson: In an ideal world, one primary advantage of LED streetlights is that you can shut them down to 5% illumination until someone walks through, and massively reduce light pollution. My company designs these. Unfortunately nobody wants to buy that functionality.
ReplyDelete(by the way, there's some evidence exposure to blue light from computer/phone screens screws with sleep patterns. The program/app f.lux dynamically changes screen color temp to minimize late-night blue exposure to try to counteract this. It seems to work pretty well for me, at least. https://justgetflux.com/ )
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting...thanks John.
ReplyDeleteOwen Iverson -- bluer lights have better efficiency, yeah. The LED's are UV, and phosphors are down-converting that into visible photons. The further down the spectrum they convert, the lower the luminous efficiency. (For two reasons: one, it's more wasted energy, and two, our eyes are significantly more sensitive to green than red, so a fixed number of green photons looks brighter than the same number of red photons.) It's also partially a cultural thing: those of us who grew up with incandescent lights prefer the warmth, but I'm guessing in 40 years people will prefer cool/cold lighting colors because that's what they're used to.
ReplyDeletePretty sure blue LED's are being or going to be used in some refrigerators to prolong the life of some foods placed there.
ReplyDelete