LED light can damage eyes, French health authority warns

https://news.yahoo.com/led-light-damage-eyes-health-authority-warns-002221659.html

by Vaslo • 7 years ago

238 115 7 years ago

news.yahoo.com

Blue Spectrum light could be a big factor towards many health problems in the upper northern hemisphere (And probably lower southern), depression, macular retinopathy, migranes, tinnitus, affected autonomic function, CTE, post concussion syndrome - all affected by blue light, winter sun, white/blue LEDS, Car headlamps.

CuriousSkeptic2• 7 years ago

I would be interested to read more about this. Do you have some sources for those claims one could read?

rohan1024• 7 years ago

Why do you say that it will only affect particular regions? Do you mean people around equator are not that much affected by blue light?

maxnoe• 7 years ago

Not as much exposed due to more natural light

benbojangles2• 7 years ago

I'm referring to the higher levels of blue spectrum light in the outer hemisphere compared to more red spectrum nearer to equatorial

hollander• 7 years ago

I hate the bright white-blue headlights. They stand out so much, it's annoying to see them. Luckily I have a pair of Polaroid yellow night clipons. They do excellent work in the car in the evening, and many times during daytime as well.

fouronnes3• 7 years ago

maybe my esp8266 2500 lumens led strip alarm clock wasn't such a good idea :O

DoctorOW2• 7 years ago

The report distinguished between acute exposure of high-intensity LED light, and "chronic exposure" to lower intensity sources.

I can't say I'm convinced that LEDs are a hazard. This study doesn't really say anything new. Cooler/brighter lights are more similar to daylight. Staring into the sun is bad for you, emulating sunlight at night keeps you up.

ANSES recommended buying "warm white" LED lighting

This line shows LEDs aren't even really the hazard. It's akin to saying a substance was found that prevents cancer and the article saying that its sunscreen.

CuriousSkeptic2• 7 years ago

Warm white refers to some particular average. But how do you find led’s that don’t hide a spike of blue light in that average? Most places where I run into led-lights don’t advertise the spectral distribution.

hoytech• 7 years ago

This is a really fun and easy experiment you might like:

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~zhuxj/astro/html/spectrometer.html

peatmoss• 7 years ago

My understanding is that LEDs have a very specific, peaky distribution. Heating a wire results in a wide distribution of color temps, but solid state lighting is a really narrow band of color.

I have a photo panel that needs two separate color LEDs to produce a balanced feeling color temp.

_ph_8• 7 years ago

I really hope, someone makes a cheap spectrometer as a smartphone accessory. That would be the best way to quickly assess the properties of light sources. Beyond the health impact, one wants to know the light spectrum when e.g. selecting lamps for fish tanks or plant lighting.

As a very coarse but easily available poor-mans spectrometer, I have been taking pictures of a greycard with my camera in raw-mode. Looking at the histogram balanced for a fixed color temperature, e.g. sunlight, for the r,g,b-channels gives very different results depending on different light sources. While you don't see a true spectrum, just the strength of the blue vs. the green and red channel usually is very revealing.

scotty792• 7 years ago

See for yourself:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=Diffraction+&_from=R40...

oasisbob• 7 years ago

CRI is a common metric for LED lighting. I'm not intimately familiar with the standard, but would expect a large spectral aberration to negatively impact the CRI.

When I was building up some high-CRI architectural fixtures, finding fully characterized LEDs wasn't much of an issue. At the consumer level it can be tough to get good details beyond color temperature.

mindslight• 7 years ago

Just guessing from what I know about LEDs and efficiency, I suspect they all just hide a spike of the same blue light in that average.

Jolter• 7 years ago

This study doesn't really say anything new.

Nitpick: This is a report from a regulatory body. It is not a clinical study. Rather, I would expect that they have read a number of studies, and collated the results into this report.

Meaning, it is not meant to introduce new facts, it is meant to introduce a new recommendation and explain the basis for it.

DoctorOW2• 7 years ago

My critique was of the article itself. The article seems likely to mislead people into thinking new findings show LEDs are inherently harmful to eyesight, when the study seems to actually communicate the importance of factoring brightness and color temperature into the decision. Sure, one can get the right idea from reading the article thoroughly and critically but if you read the comments on the article it's clear the target audience is being misled.

Florin_Andrei• 7 years ago

Staring into the sun is bad for you

Due to intensity, not due to spectrum.

m463• 7 years ago

What's interesting is that a Phd biology researcher I know had been researching LED lighting and wound healing.

Things like children with severe burns exposed to certain wavelengths of light - control would be one limb vs another limb, exposed one showed improved healing.

I believe the wavelength was I believe 660nm or 670nm.

gppk• 7 years ago

Little unsure how this is new findings:

"exposure to an intense and powerful [LED] light is 'photo-toxic' and can lead to irreversible loss of retinal cells and diminished sharpness of vision,"

This is the reason we have light and laser safety standards to ensure that people aren't being exposed to dangerous levels of light...

seanalltogether2• 7 years ago

The article specifically calls out LED filament bulbs, but those bulbs aren't designed to actually output blue light to the user, they output the light that the phosphor coating on top should output, which is usually yellowish at 2800K. Are they talking specifically about LED bulbs and displays that still use separate RGB LEDs?

ricardobeat2• 7 years ago

AFAIK that’s always the case - a “white” LED is simply a blue diode + phosphor. They can still output a lot more blue light than an incandescent lamp, even when the resulting color temperature appears to be the same.

Itsdijital2• 7 years ago

Warm white LEDs still have about 30% of the blue light emission that cool white LEDs have. I really think the article is talking about cool white primarily though.

6DM• 7 years ago

Does this mean we can finally outlaw blue headlights? (Note: I am joking, but I wish it were true.)

workingpatrick• 7 years ago

AFAIK, most of the actually 'blue' headlights are not street legal. A Product of cheap aftermarket "HID Kits" or cheap XENON bulbs. Also, at least in Texas, basically any modification to your OEM headlights is verboten.

hnick3• 7 years ago

Are they actually 'blue'? I ask because of your quotes.

I heard before that we perceive slightly yellow light as white (because of the sun) and these 'blue' lights are really pure white but our perception shifts it.

derefr• 7 years ago

How “intense and powerful” are we talking? Does this mean that 30mins daily exposure to an LED-based [10000lm] light-therapy lamp is a bad idea (compared to a non-LED-based light-therapy lamp)?

_ph_8• 7 years ago

Most (but not all) white LEDs have a specific property: the LED itself is creating pure blue light. To create the appeareance of white light, a part of the blue light is then converted to wavelengths in the green-red region via a phosphor coating. But, especially in cheaper configurations, it still leaves a pronounced blue emission line shaping the spectrum like this:

    0
    0    00000
    0 00000000000
   0000000000000000

With some coatings, the blue line completely vanishes, creating a light distribution close to an incandescent lamp, but others have a very pronounced line. In the light (sorry) of the report, it sounds reasonable to require a certain minimum "spectrum quality" for lightbulbs beyond a certain power output.

seanalltogether2• 7 years ago

Is there a way to know which bulbs have this. Can you use CRI rating or something as a clue?

_ph_8• 7 years ago

The CRI rating should be a good start. The lower the color temperature of the LED is, the less of a blue peak you should have. But the best would be to have a proper spectrum.

mopsi• 7 years ago

How does this look like to you?

https://i.imgur.com/rQaopcS.png

Taken from Philips A60 leaflet.

_ph_8• 7 years ago

This looks like a very good spectrum - pretty much like the best "warm" LEDs you can get. The blue peak is almost gone - or you can discuss whether it has a peak or a small weakness in the green-blue area.

mrmondo2• 7 years ago

LED lighting panels in our office is so bad it looks as if there is a constant haze or fog in the office.

A number of people in the office were complaining of visual fatigue and a hazing effecting especially after working 3+ hours, additionally multiple people had noted that colours seemed diluted or ‘dulled’.

The light spectrum seems to be missing parts of the visible light spectrum, to test this I acquired and installed high CRI lights and the area in inch I installed them lead to people satin to that they felt less sleep, more alert and more comfortable - of course these are all subjective results.

Subjective TLDR; LED lighting isn’t inherently bad IMO, but bad LED lighting is bad.

timcederman• 7 years ago

Some of the issues (including the visual hazing) could be exacerbated by poor indoor air quality.

clarry• 7 years ago

Glad to know it can be solved by installing a light.

TazeTSchnitzel• 7 years ago

It sounds like your LED lighting might have a poor colour rendering index? It's a measure of how accurately colours can be perceived under particular light. The best — well, the reference — light source is the sun.

(I only know about this concept from Technology Connections's videos on high-pressure sodium lights.)

mrmondo2• 7 years ago

Yes it does, I ordered 4x high CRI LED bulbs from https://www.yujiintl.com/high-cri-led-lighting.html, I placed them around my teams working pod in cheap $10 desk lamps and they work a treat, very noticeable difference in our pod / cubical to the rest of the office.

Causality1• 7 years ago

A lot of their claims are unscientific.

Teenagers' lenses aren't fully crystallized so blue light is more prone to disrupt their sleep patterns

samsolomon• 7 years ago

Interesting that the color of the light appears to be the issue here. When researching LED bulbs I read a ton of complaints about the flickering causing people headaches. It's hasn't caused me any issues though.

If you're curious about the flicker, it's visible by filming an LED bulb at 1/8 speed. I posted some videos here a while back.

https://productdork.com/t/led-lightbulb-recommendations/272/...

Tempest19813• 7 years ago

Certain cars have taillights that flicker like crazy. What percentage of people are sensitive to this? The car makers don't seem to care.

davidy123• 7 years ago

Regardless of the ultimate veracity of this (health guidance is …), there's still a benefit. So many shops have switched to selling "LED lighting," without distinguishing the quality. So there is a lot of harsh lighting being sold, that lasts a long time, which is a shame because colour temperature really does have a big effect. I was subjected to this in a lighting shop, where I was requesting fixtures that took a standard bulb, so I could plug in my own LED bulbs with controllable colour temperature, but the salesperson just couldn't see how that was better than their integrated LED systems.

UI_at_80x242• 7 years ago

AC driven vs DC driven.

The 'quality' of light that is supplied from a DC power source is superior to that from a rectified AC source.

Cheap rectifiers are the scourge and cancer of this lighting tech. While not discounting the affect of the blue light + phosphor even 'cheap' LED's provide a better light output when DC driven.

Note: I can see/sense LED flicker (florescent tubes [or ballasts] nearing their end-of-life, and CFL's too.) So I am very sensitive to it. I also LOVE super-bright high kelvin 'cool/cold' 6500K+ lights in my home. My wife complains that it's like being in an operating room.

I wonder how much of the blue-light dislike/distrust is based on a biological leaning towards a preference to carbon-rich fire/flame orange-hue's.

i.e. a campfire or candle vs incandescent light vs halogen vs florescent vs LEDs on a scale of like to hate.

kitsunesoba• 7 years ago

Blue/white fluorescent or LED lights drive me crazy in a home setting. If I could replace the one in my apartment’s kitchen I would. Their brightness is fine but their coldness keeps me on edge somehow.

UI_at_80x242• 7 years ago

It really is interesting how light affects us like that. I suffer from a congenital cornea disease and am slowly going blind until I get a transplant. I've often wondered if that's how/why I like the lights the way I do. They always feel "cheery" to me. It brightens my mood.

stordoff• 7 years ago

I also LOVE super-bright high kelvin 'cool/cold' 6500K+ lights in my home. My wife complains that it's like being in an operating room.

I love colour-changing bulbs for this. 5000K+ during the day, ~2800K at night.

korm• 7 years ago

From my research and experience the operating room effect is largely due to bad color rendering with most (cheap) LEDs.

Good artwork/video/photo lighting with LEDs is very expensive and bought from specialized shops or the manufacturer, but it's the closest I've found to true sunlight.

If you'd like recommendations I like the Yugi strips.

rconti2• 7 years ago

Unrelated, because IR is on the other side of the visible spectrum from blue light, but I'm convinced some day we'll find that IR is damaging to the eye. Every time I see those creepy glowing green eyes coming from the baby's room on friends' and relatives' baby monitors, I just shudder. I can't see blasting an infant with invisible light for no good reason.

anonuser123456• 7 years ago

The sun emits IR.

rconti2• 7 years ago

... and blue light?

lolc• 7 years ago

Does infrared photography[0] creep you out too?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_photography

ajuc• 7 years ago

I don't know about the damage to eyes, but I can confirm problem with not getting "sleepy feeling" while using a computer late at night.

And the solutions for me was a software that gradually changes the color scheme of the operating system to be more red and less blue.

I'm using it since almost a year and it significantly helped with going to sleep earlier. I simply get sleepy at 22-23, even when doing stuff on a computer. Before installing the software I could sit for hours and notice it's already 02:00 and I'm not sleepy, just tired.

tzs2• 7 years ago

One thing I never see mentioned when it comes to blue light and its effect on circadian rhythms is whether it is the absolute level of blue light that matters, or the relative amount compared to other concurrent light, or the relative amount compared to some earlier time such as the peak blue level over the last day.

It is relevant for figuring out strategies to avoid having blue light mess with your sleep. If it is an absolute level, then you either need to keep light sources low enough at night so that they can't have a blue component that is too high, or you need to find out the spectrum of the light and figure out the maximum level you can set the source to so that the blue won't be too high.

If it is just the relative amount compared to concurrent light, then as long as you use lights that have an acceptable spectrum you should be able set these as bright as you want without messing up your sleep.

If it is relative to something like the peak for the day, then there is a possibility that instead of turning down blue at night you could turn it up during the day to raise that peak to give you more blue leeway at night.

DtnB2• 7 years ago

I actually looked into this recently and found some articles(which I have since lost) that explained that it would appear that the delta between blue light in the morning and at night is the mechanism by which our circadian rhythm seems to work.

However, working with the idea that blue light is photo toxic, it is most likely better to reduce your blue light at night rather than increase it in the morning.

I wanted to do this experiment with dosing myself with blue light in the morning but I abandoned that after seeing research on photo toxicity

Perhaps establishing a morning habit of going and standing in front of an east facing window might be a worthy experiment?

sizzle• 7 years ago

Just looked up blue light photo toxicity, that is some scary stuff! So is staring at blue light computer monitors all day causing corneal cell death?

How much is this increasing the risk of macular degeneration?

jwr2• 7 years ago

I've been working on designing my lighting system for home. I find these reports annoying: without specifics, it's really just FUD. I am looking at datasheets for various LEDs, comparing CRIs and spectral distributions and I know already that my lights are going to be as "warm white" as possible (e.g. close to 2700K with a mix of higher-K added only during daytime) with the blue peak being as small as possible.

Incidentally, I actually DO want to add blue at times, because at my latitude days are short and dark during winter time and daylight temperature lighting seems to be beneficial during daytime hours.

How do I make use of "information" in this article? Do I reject LEDs altogether? Do I look to minimize certain frequencies? If so, which ones specifically? Do I avoid exceeding certain intensity? (then give me at threshold for Lux at eye position) Or do I avoid exceeding certain energy radiated within a specific band?

It's frustrating, because apart from the FUD, there is little to go on.

Itsdijital2• 7 years ago

Its the blue light, when I worked with "hard" blue LEDs (~460nm), I had to wear special glasses or I could literally feel my retinas melting.

Just stick with warm white and you'll be good. Warm white still emits a fair amount of blue light, but its approximately around 1/3 that of cool or daylight white LEDs.

Remember that natural sunlight is many orders of magnitude stronger than any 5000K LED and unlike LEDs has tons of UV as well. You could likely offset any damage and then some just by wearing sunglasses anytime you are out in the sun.

hevi_jos• 7 years ago

Are you sure of that?

I believe humans have evolved to accept certain damage as natural and it just repairs itself.

When I expose myself to moderate amounts of light, my body reacts making my skin darker, which protects my skin against light.

Think for example gravity, that is exerting acceleration that damages our bodies, so our body has to react making bones and muscles. If we go to space and do not apply damage, the human becomes weaker, as it atrophies.

If we make a person to breathe in a total clean environment(filtered air), the immune system atrophies, then if you make the person breath normal air, you can kill her.

Of course we also know that too much is very bad, because it exceeds the limits of the human body to repair and something breaks down.

Common sense is key. If you go to the mountain or the sea in summer in Spain, Italy, Greece, Morroco, New Zealand... you should be extremely careful. This exposure in thousands of times more than indoors(or countries like UK) and UV light skyrockets.

9HZZRfNlpR• 7 years ago

Same here, I live in a dark country. I use cold white where I work and warm white where I sleep, eat, watch tv. Basically evening time.

AngryData• 7 years ago

After buying LEDs by diode type online, instead of just whatever generic shit they sell at the hardware store for light fixtures, it really became apparent how trash most hardware store lights were. Not to mention many of the replacement LED socket lights are flickering from the mains frequency. The efficiency in random socket versions are crap compared to the high efficiency diodes you can buy if you look in the right places, often the store versions are around 60-100 lumens per watt, when you can get closer to 180-200 lumens per watt.

ourlordcaffeine• 7 years ago

Can you give any pointers? I'm finding it quite hard to find datasheets and spectral measurements for bulbs sold online, they really don't give consumers much information.

butteroverflow• 7 years ago

I know of a very good resource [0], although it is in Russian. But I think you can still make use of the comparison table [1]. Here are the rough translations of the columns:

    * brand;
    * model;
    * description;
    * price (RUB, divide it by 65 to get USD);
    * power in watts;
    * luminous flux in lumen;
    * efficiency (lumen / watt);
    * power of an equivalent incandescent lamp;
    * color temperature, K;
    * CRI;
    * light cone angle in degrees;
    * flicker coefficient;
    * supports switches with indicator lights;
    * overall rating (from 1 through 5, with 1 being lowest);
    * warranty in months;
    * can you still find it for sale?

There are lots of information on each lamp if you click on the model name.

[0] http://lamptest.ru

[1] http://lamptest.ru/results/

blunte• 7 years ago

Anecdotal, but I love "daylight" white (which often looks quite blue to people at first). I spent a year of home office working with fantastic bright 6500K LED lighting, plus great big monitors calibrated.

At the end of a year of far too many hours worked (staring into screens), I was having strange vision problems and periods where my eyes actually felt pressurized and uncomfortable in their sockets.

When my insane project was over and I took some time off, my eye problems went away.

It's a shame if 6500K light is harmful, because I find it so energizing and refreshing compared to eye-burning yellow light.

This article said in passing that they cast doubts as to the efficacy of blue blocking glasses, but I don't see why proper filters on glasses wouldn't be effective.

herf• 7 years ago

f.lux author here. I'm pasting parts of the 458 page PDF into Google Translate.

The recommendations look very good, and don't particularly match the Yahoo article.

1. They recommend IEEE 1789 as a flicker standard for Europe, which is fantastic, as it covers lower levels of stroboscopic flicker that other standards have missed. (e.g., typical 120Hz flicker from direct-wire TLEDs)

2. They re-state the "acute" hazard from extremely bright LEDs, while urging some caution on "chronic exposure" to lower light levels. Suggest that some automotive lights could be a problem since they have high luminance. Urge more research on progression of macular degeneration and chronic exposure. The question about acute levels refers to a paper by Hunter [2012]. Nobody is saying that screens or residential lights pose a new problem.

3. Circadian recommendations are solid - more light during the day, and reduce light around 480nm at night. Pregnant women and children may have lower thresholds.

4. Say most ophthalmic lenses filtering blue light don't do very much, and specialized ones (you'd say very orange or red) are required for circadian effects.

thinkling• 7 years ago

"Nobody is saying that screens or residential lights pose a new problem."

This right here is the key for most people.

Thanks for f.lux, by the way, have been running it for years!

pcdoodle• 7 years ago

Respect. Love your software.

chrisfinne• 7 years ago

f.lux changed my life.

Always thought I was just a night person. After decades of late-night coding, f.lux educated me about blue light and allowed me to rejoin the living.

hnick3• 7 years ago

When I changed ISPs I also changed my modem, which is in the closet in our master bedroom. It's brighter than a disco so I bought some light dimmer stickers. It's still too bright so once I remember where I put them, I'm going to add another layer. It's ridiculous. The only upside is that they are green instead of blue, thankfully.

simcop2387• 7 years ago

Black car touch up paint is what I usually use. Either that or nail polish.

Nition• 7 years ago

The Asus RT-AC1900 router (and probably others) has a button on the back to turn all the LEDs on or off. Would be nice if everything had that. I'm sure it's caused some customer confusion at some point but it resets to the lights being on when it's rebooted.

knodi1232• 7 years ago

interestingly, the human eye is most sensitive to green light, in the sense of perceived-brightness-per-lumen.

eecsninja• 7 years ago

I had a travel plug adapter (for conversion between US/UK/EU-style) that had a bright blue LED on it to indicate power.

I don't know who thought the choice of blue was a good idea, because as a travel adapter, it would be plugged into the hotel room where the user would be sleeping. /facepalm

I ended up taping a piece of paper over the LED.

justasitsounds• 7 years ago

I came here to grumble about exactly this

(edit: 'I')

sarego• 7 years ago

I just installed f.lux. It is almost midnight here. As soon as it installed and my screen tuned almost yellow I can immediately feel the strain on my eyes disappear and replaced with a coolness. This is incredible software. I will probably use this the rest of my life.Thank you!

copperx2• 7 years ago

I hope f.lux becomes irrelevant once dark mode becomes the standard in all devices. If the web catches on and if our screens become OLED (or use any technology where dark pixels aren't illuminated), then "night mode" will be seen as a crazy hack.

blencdr• 7 years ago

Thank you ! f.lux is a blessing, i use it since a few years and if it happens to use a computer on the evening without it I feel assaulted with agressive blue light.

vbuwivbiu• 7 years ago

another thankyou for f.lux here!

sigi45• 7 years ago

Do you have by any chance a proper spectrometer? After all you developed f.lux?

Would you be able to share images on what the real difference is with and without f.lux? And also the ophthalmic lenses? I just got some so i'm quite curious :)

equalunique• 7 years ago

4. Say most ophthalmic lenses filtering blue light don't do very much, and specialized ones (you'd say very orange or red) are required for circadian effects.

I have had years of success averting personal blue-light issues using what probably falls into the "specialized" lenses category: Uvex S1933X glasses. They came in a 3-pack on Amazon for around $25. The pairs are next to my bed, on my desk, and in my backpack. Inexpensive enough to where I won't loose sleep over breaking a pair. Good not just for device screens, but also for the annoying bright blue power buttons/indicators on just about every other peripheral.

mleonhard• 7 years ago

I just wish the Uvex glasses were more comfortable.

homarp• 7 years ago

The report : https://www.anses.fr/fr/system/files/AP2014SA0253Ra.pdf

The Annexes: https://www.anses.fr/fr/system/files/AP2014SA0253Ra-Anx.pdf

LED light can damage eyes, French health authority warns

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