The dangers of LED lights

Fascinating.

I've never heard of most of the biology discussed here.

Good thing my home and workspace are entirely lit by incandescent bulbs.
 
HorseFilms said:
I wouldn't be too worried about it. That guy seems like a hack.
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I dunno.... about 1/4 of what he said I already know is true from working with the sleep specialists at Mayo Clinic Hospital in Arizona.
So if only half of the rest of it is solid - that's still a lot to be concerned with.
 
Michael Thames said:
Just came across this video. Bummer cause I light my workspace studio with LEDS's

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mOQ2S...RG53obfhbDKFCHdvy5Pdq8Wn19Xw112f4P-MAYr-yFM3A
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Another issue with LED's is light pollution-

http://darksky.org/light-pollution/

I find that the LED lights on police cars can be so bright as to be blinding and themselves a road hazard when they are intending to be just the opposite. I am not alone in that-

http://www.poconorecord.com/article/20131231/news/312310319

I kinda hate LED's. They tend to be used in manners that are harsh and garish. A convenience store near where I live installed strips of blue and red LED's on the exterior of the building. The color is so punchy and saturated that it almost hurts to look at the building at night. LED billboards can be blindingly bright at night. So much so that it actually hurts my retinas to look at the billboards. I still have old school bulbs in all my home lights. I don't even like fluorescent lights. I'm a continuous spectrum man.

There is something to be said for the organic. More and more we, the human race, are moving away from that which is organic. Was there really anything wrong with film to cause it to be abandoned? Convenience shouldn't rule everything else. I don't know why we're all in such a damn hurry all the time. :smile:
 
Driving on I-70 over the bridge into Saint Charles... at night you can see the next hill lit up as if you're about to see a fireworks display in progress, then once you crest the hill you see the whole area is being lit up by an LED billboard. The funniest thing about it... is there are a lot of houses off the highway. Those people have to pull their blinds every night thinking, "WTF?!"
 
From a news article - "The evidence is apparently strong enough to prompt the American Medical Association to issue a warning in June that LED street lights can impair and even damage nighttime vision, reports Tech Times."
 
I am not a biologist, but the content and presentation remind me a lot of 9/11 trutherism and anti-GMO fanatics. I listened to him until he said "my body produces 85 kg of ATP in 24 hours."

Now again I'm no expert, but doesn't 187 lbs of adenosine triphosphate seem like an awful lot for one little turtlenecked German to make and carry around each day?

Like you guys, I mostly favor daylight and incandescents for my home life. And I love CFLs and LEDs for this vocation/avocation of ours.
There is something to be said for the organic. More and more we, the human race, are moving away from that which is organic. Was there really anything wrong with film to cause it to be abandoned?
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Haha, by all means keep shooting on film if you prefer it. See also "naturalistic fallacy."
 
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charliemcdanger said:
I am not a biologist, but the content and presentation remind me a lot of 9/11 trutherism and anti-GMO fanatics. I listened to him until he said "my body produces 85 kg of ATP in 24 hours."Now again I'm no expert, but doesn't 187 lbs of adenosine triphosphate seems like an awful lot for one little turtlenecked German to make and carry around each day?
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This information is correct. everyday the human body consume and regenerate the equivalent of its own weight in atp, but at every second it contain only around 250g of atp.would be great if led manufacturers had to publish a graph of the light spectrum for every type of led they produce.
 
It's not just LEDs. Any discharge lamp has the same issues. The carbon arcs used in early cinema lighting did a fair amount of damage, from lots of sunburns to vision problems. A long day "under the lights" could leave an actor pretty much blind.

Fluorescents have a UV spike in addition to the green spike. As long as this stays mostly in the tube to excite the phosphors, it's pretty much OK. As we've seen from decades of use without health problems (except for those exposes to the mercury, which is a different issue).

LEDs work the same way, except their spikes are in the higher energy parts of the spectrums. It's still early days for LEDs. But at least one manufacturer, Cree, is taking these reports seriously. Cree's newest line does quite the good job of presenting close to either incandescent spectrum (2700), or actual outdoors sunlight (5000 K). CRI is still in the mid 80s IIRC, but they look darned good. Color looks fine -- there's no big blue spike here, or UV.

With the 5000 K lamp, Cree explicitly says they are working to try to replicate sunlight. To my eyes, they get closer every new generation of lamp. They are good enough now that even I, a well known LED skeptic (to my neighbors and friends anyway) have bought some.

But the technology developed for practicals isn't the same thing as what's used in LED streetlights and for cop cars and regular cars. There, efficiency trumps light quality. At least for now.

That said, I've also got the new very white LED street lamps on my street now. To me at least these are a huge improvement over the old sodium lights. They make things easier to see rather than more difficult, because you can actually see the colors. And none of it looks blue, it just looks white. It would be interesting to drag one into the lab and do some color analysis though. But from a vision on the street at night perspective, these things are just excellent. And none of the neighbors I've asked report any sleep changes at all. Just sayin'.
 
inefab said:
This information is correct. everyday the human body consume and regenerate the equivalent of its own weight in atp, but at every second it contain only around 250g of atp.would be great if led manufacturers had to publish a graph of the light spectrum for every type of led they produce.
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Alright, I'll grant that the Germans are an industrious people and produce their own weight in ATP each day (whose side are you on, monsieur!?). But this is sort of like pointing out that our bodies contain more foreign microbial cells than native body cells (true) and without them we would die (true)...therefore soap is bad.
 
I am agnostic on the health dangers of LED lights, and personally I do prefer incandescent at home (either I'm more used to them, or they're easier on my eyes), but if the concern is legit, it's too bad that the presentation is introduced by a known quack, Dr. Mercola. I'd much rather read/watch something from a better source than this. YMMV.
 
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