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Bright white LED streetlights may pose health risk

Started by index, May 25, 2018, 07:11:53 PM

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index

https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/21/health/led-streetlights-ama/index.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38526254


After looking up whether amber LEDs were a thing, I came across quite a few sources stating the potential dangers of LEDs. The whiter the light, the more blue wavelengths it has, which can mess with your sleep, which in turn can cause poor health quality. They also make light pollution a lot worse. They might even be bad for visibility.


So, not only do regular LEDs look horrible, (admit it, the LED cobra heads look awful  :pan:  and so does the white light at night, the amber glow is a lot more pleasant (this was intended to be more lighthearted)) but they're also bad for your health and bad for light pollution, which can affect wildlife and your sleep.


To solve this issue, some cities have been switching to amber LEDs, like the ones pictured below:





It's a nice compromise between the energy benefits of LEDs and the lighting benefits of high pressure sodium. The visibility benefits, however, of pure white light are lost. One city in Arizona (Flagstaff? It was in another article that I can't remember) has solved this partially by planning to put brighter, more intense color temperature LEDs on major roads, and lower color temperature LEDs on minor and residential roads.


Taking another image from Google, I don't know about you, but this just looks plain unpleasant.

I love my 2010 Ford Explorer.



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Brian556

I really prefer amber. It does not interfere with your ability to go to sleep one bit, and its easier on the eyes

Brandon

I'll politely disagree.  I strongly prefer the white light over the amber.
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jeffandnicole

So it's not really the LEDs that are a health risk, it's the inability to fall asleep while laying on a road underneath a white LED.

Oh, wait, it *can* cause you to lose sleep.  Everything in the world is a health risk if it can cause something.

Wake me up when there's better evidence of such. 


wxfree

There's evidence that the blue part of the light may lead to increased risk of cancer.  Blue light decreases melatonin, which may disrupt the synchronization of the clocks in cells.  This, even without observable affects on sleep, may increase cancer risk.  Melatonin itself also acts as an anti-oxidant and may suppress some cancers (including types that blue light seems to increase the risk of).

Quote
"In this study, we focused on the satellite images, because other satellites cannot see the colors," but astronauts aboard the space station can, he added. "And so this is the first study to put an experimental value on the correlation between blue light in the general population with the risk of breast cancer and prostate cancer."

But exposure to other kinds of outdoor artificial light -- such as those that are high in the red and green portions of the visible spectrum -- was not positively associated with the development of either type of cancer, the study states.

"That finding was unexpected but suggests that it is really the blue light that is important for cancer rather than just general brightness of light," said Kristen Knutson, associate professor of neurology at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, who was not involved in the new study.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/27/health/artificial-blue-light-prostate-breast-cancer-study/index.html
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kalvado

Quote from: jeffandnicole on May 26, 2018, 10:23:51 AM
So it's not really the LEDs that are a health risk, it's the inability to fall asleep while laying on a road underneath a white LED.

Oh, wait, it *can* cause you to lose sleep.  Everything in the world is a health risk if it can cause something.

Wake me up when there's better evidence of such.
I would assume this affects residents who sleep in the rooms facing those illuminated streets.
Not commenting about health risks of LEDs specifically, but headlights and engine noise from passing cars (and god forbids there is a fire station down the street!) can easily be part of sleep problem. Solid curtains can make a big difference, though.

US 81

I wonder if bluer lights help drivers stay more alert as compared to amber, leading to less falling asleep while driving.

OTOH, the bluer the light, the slower one's eyes are to dilate back open when entering a darker area.  (You young people with young eyes might respond quickly, but some of us old farts struggle to recover from being blinded by those really blue LED headlights.)  Maybe not as relevant in city driving with light everywhere, but I prefer the amber lights on the suburban and rural segments of the interstates so that I transition easily to dark rural driving.

jjakucyk

Seriously?  There's a whole spectrum (literally) between the bluish 4000K+ color temperature of high-output LEDs and the piss orange 2200K of high pressure sodium.  Why replicate something that looks like crap instead of going for a happy medium of 2700K (incandescent) or 3000K (halogen) that people are most likely to have in their homes?  That doesn't mean you have to swing the pendulum so far the other way.  I do agree that the new LEDs are too blue, because while 4000K is actually much less blue than typical daylight (more like 5000 to 6500K), our eyes are more sensitive to blue light when it's darker, so "daylight" color temperature looks much bluer to us if it's not super bright. 

Lighting has multiple goals (wayfinding, crime prevention, road safety, aesthetics, comfort, accentuation, etc.), and if you only focus on one then you get very compromised results like these.  That top photo makes the neighborhood look absolutely vile, like some sort of dystopian video game simulation.  I find it repulsive, and I bet any two people looking at each other in that light or seeing it streaming through their windows would agree.  The second image may be a bit bright (easy to fix, though that could just be a factor of camera exposure), but it's a street I wouldn't mind walking down or living on by comparison. 

hotdogPi

Quote from: jjakucyk on May 26, 2018, 04:12:45 PM
Seriously?  There's a whole spectrum (literally) between the bluish 4000K+ color temperature of high-output LEDs and the piss orange 2200K of high pressure sodium.  Why replicate something that looks like crap instead of going for a happy medium of 2700K (incandescent) or 3000K (halogen) that people are most likely to have in their homes?  That doesn't mean you have to swing the pendulum so far the other way.  I do agree that the new LEDs are too blue, because while 4000K is actually much less blue than typical daylight (more like 5000 to 6500K), our eyes are more sensitive to blue light when it's darker, so "daylight" color temperature looks much bluer to us if it's not super bright. 

Lighting has multiple goals (wayfinding, crime prevention, road safety, aesthetics, comfort, accentuation, etc.), and if you only focus on one then you get very compromised results like these.  That top photo makes the neighborhood look absolutely vile, like some sort of dystopian video game simulation.  I find it repulsive, and I bet any two people looking at each other in that light or seeing it streaming through their windows would agree.  The second image may be a bit bright (easy to fix, though that could just be a factor of camera exposure), but it's a street I wouldn't mind walking down or living on by comparison.

Nobody should be installing new incandescent lights anymore; they're too inefficient.
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jjakucyk

Quote from: 1 on May 26, 2018, 04:25:51 PM
Quote from: jjakucyk on May 26, 2018, 04:12:45 PM
Seriously?  There's a whole spectrum (literally) between the bluish 4000K+ color temperature of high-output LEDs and the piss orange 2200K of high pressure sodium.  Why replicate something that looks like crap instead of going for a happy medium of 2700K (incandescent) or 3000K (halogen) that people are most likely to have in their homes?  That doesn't mean you have to swing the pendulum so far the other way.  I do agree that the new LEDs are too blue, because while 4000K is actually much less blue than typical daylight (more like 5000 to 6500K), our eyes are more sensitive to blue light when it's darker, so "daylight" color temperature looks much bluer to us if it's not super bright. 

Lighting has multiple goals (wayfinding, crime prevention, road safety, aesthetics, comfort, accentuation, etc.), and if you only focus on one then you get very compromised results like these.  That top photo makes the neighborhood look absolutely vile, like some sort of dystopian video game simulation.  I find it repulsive, and I bet any two people looking at each other in that light or seeing it streaming through their windows would agree.  The second image may be a bit bright (easy to fix, though that could just be a factor of camera exposure), but it's a street I wouldn't mind walking down or living on by comparison.

Nobody should be installing new incandescent lights anymore; they're too inefficient.

That's not what I was saying at all.  Use LEDs at 2700-3000K instead of 2200K.

jjakucyk


Mdcastle

"Bright White" typically means 3500K, aka "Neutral White". The most common LED streetlights are "Cool White" 4000K or "Daylight White" 5000K.

Besides greater efficiency, it would seem to be not being able to go to sleep on the street is a feature rather than a bug and the cool white / daylight white causes red taillights and traffic signals to stand out more. 

Notable that Soraa makes a household LED bulb that emits absolutely zero blue light, the "Healthy". They suggest it's use in bedrooms. Related is their "Radiant" which has extremely high CRI. These both use violet rather than blue emitters, and have red, green, (and for the "radiant, blue) phosphors instead of the typical blue emitters with yellow phosphors.


kalvado

Quote from: Mdcastle on May 26, 2018, 06:12:15 PM\
Notable that Soraa makes a household LED bulb that emits absolutely zero blue light, the "Healthy". They suggest it's use in bedrooms. Related is their "Radiant" which has extremely high CRI. These both use violet rather than blue emitters, and have red, green, (and for the "radiant, blue) phosphors instead of the typical blue emitters with yellow phosphors.
The way that "healthy"  spectrum looks, seems like they use 405 nm LED, and I would think twice about touching that with a 10 foot pole for hours a day exposure.
Also, I thought blue and yellow is a thing of a distant past..

MCRoads

Quote from: wxfree on May 26, 2018, 10:50:27 AM
There's evidence that the blue part of the light may lead to increased risk of cancer.  Blue light [...]

Says that while using device of which around 1/3 of light emoted is blue....
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more room plz

UCFKnights

I always thought of the bright white color as being associated with nicer, richer areas.The standard streetlights in the poorer neighborhoods were the yellow sodium cobra heads, and as the communities got nicer, the fixtures got nicer, with nicer bulbs as well, such as mercury vapor or metal halide, and the reasoning was metal halide had a higher operational and maintenance cost then sodium vapor. If you wanted to be able to differentiate people though, you needed it. The goal on highways and other areas, though, was simply to let you know something was there, so sodium vapor was a cheaper way to do that.

LEDs are finally letting the poorer areas experience what the rich areas have for some time: the ability to actually make our an actual person at night, the ability to take clear pictures, etc. LEDs are also directional by their very nature, so if any effort is made at all, LEDs eliminate the light pollution that sodium vapor is so famous for, with the orange hazy skies.

Liking the yellow sodium vapor light is simply liking what you grew up with. You can't tell a single house color in your first pic, while the second one, you can see the house colors/materials, car color, etc.

DaBigE

Personally, I rather interrupt the sleep pattern of drivers, who knows, it may prevent people from falling asleep behind the wheel. As for light spillover into neighboring homes, someone didn't do their homework in the fixture placement, orientation, programming of the fixture, or some combination of those. If it's still spilling into residences and hotels, buy some fucking opaque curtains and be done with it. Just say 'no' to more yellow/peach/orange fixtures; they interrupt my healthy digestive cycle and cause food to come out the wrong end.
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adventurernumber1

#16
When they started phasing in bright white LED streetlights around my area, I really liked them, but I was not yet aware of the potential problems they could cause (until now).

Even if we can solve the problems of people falling asleep (such as with curtains), we still face the other problem that was mentioned in the OP - light pollution, so it may still be something to be wary about.

Here is a direct quote from this article: https://www.globeatnight.org/light-pollution.php

Quote

Effects of Light Pollution

In disrupting ecosystems, light pollution poses a serious threat in particular to nocturnal wildlife, having negative impacts on plant and animal physiology. It can confuse the migratory patterns of animals, alter competitive interactions of animals, change predator-prey relations, and cause physiological harm. The rhythm of life is orchestrated by the natural diurnal patterns of light and dark; so disruption to these patterns impacts the ecological dynamics.

With respect to adverse health effects, many species, especially humans, are dependent on natural body cycles called circadian rhythms and the production of melatonin, which are regulated by light and dark (e.g., day and night). If humans are exposed to light while sleeping, melatonin production can be suppressed. This can lead to sleep disorders and other health problems such as increased headaches, worker fatigue, medically defined stress, some forms of obesity due to lack of sleep and increased anxiety. And ties are being found to a couple of types of cancer. There are also effects of glare on aging eyes. (See text below.) Health effects are not only due to over-illumination or excessive exposure of light over time, but also improper spectral composition of light (e.g., certain colors of light).

So, to some extent, curtains or no curtains, according to everything I have now read and heard, it sounds like these new lights could potentially cause at least some kind of adverse effects to people (and wildlife), so perhaps it may be best to replace them with amber LED lights, which were mentioned in the OP. I did like the way the white LED lights looked, but I also like the way the amber LED lights look as well, and if the white LED lights have more potential to cause problems, then perhaps it is best in the end that we not use them.


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UCFKnights

Quote from: adventurernumber1 on May 27, 2018, 01:13:07 AM
When they started phasing in bright white LED streetlights around my area, I really liked them, but I was not yet aware of the potential problems they could cause (until now).

Even if we can solve the problems of people falling asleep (such as with curtains), we still face the other problem that was mentioned in the OP - light pollution, so it may still be something to be wary about.

Here is a direct quote from this article: https://www.globeatnight.org/light-pollution.php

Quote

Effects of Light Pollution

In disrupting ecosystems, light pollution poses a serious threat in particular to nocturnal wildlife, having negative impacts on plant and animal physiology. It can confuse the migratory patterns of animals, alter competitive interactions of animals, change predator-prey relations, and cause physiological harm. The rhythm of life is orchestrated by the natural diurnal patterns of light and dark; so disruption to these patterns impacts the ecological dynamics.

With respect to adverse health effects, many species, especially humans, are dependent on natural body cycles called circadian rhythms and the production of melatonin, which are regulated by light and dark (e.g., day and night). If humans are exposed to light while sleeping, melatonin production can be suppressed. This can lead to sleep disorders and other health problems such as increased headaches, worker fatigue, medically defined stress, some forms of obesity due to lack of sleep and increased anxiety. And ties are being found to a couple of types of cancer. There are also effects of glare on aging eyes. (See text below.) Health effects are not only due to over-illumination or excessive exposure of light over time, but also improper spectral composition of light (e.g., certain colors of light).

So, to some extent, curtains or no curtains, according to everything I have now read and heard, it sounds like these new lights could potentially cause at least some kind of adverse effects to people (and wildlife), so perhaps it may be best to replace them with amber LED lights, which were mentioned in the OP. I did like the way the white LED lights looked, but I also like the way the amber LED lights look as well, and if the white LED lights have more potential to cause problems, then perhaps it is best in the end that we not use them.
LEDs reduce light pollution, they're directional by nature, and never shoot light straight up into the sky, sodium vapor lights generally shoot light everywhere, including upwards and cause real light pollution.

The amber LEDs cause everything to look monochrome, making them much less useful.

Rothman

Please note: All comments here represent my own personal opinion and do not reflect the official position(s) of NYSDOT.

PurdueBill

The "warmer" LEDs are a reasonable compromise to the harsh bluish color in areas where people have to see them a lot.  On an expressway it is one thing but on a residential street or even a street downtown with lots of pedestrian activity all night, it's another. 
It is worth noting that one downside of sodium lighting that has been noted is that "everybody looks orange" (Tribune article mentioning studies of this) so people couldn't give accurate descriptions of suspects, an odd backfiring of tons of lighting being a crime-fighting measure pushed by Mayor Daley when mercury went out and sodium came in.

Even in the house, different LEDs make sense for different places.  The bluish ones are OK in the kitchen, but not the living room somehow.  And definitely not the bedroom.  I've stayed in a couple hotels where they had all LED bulbs and use the bluish ones everywhere, even on the nightstand, and they are noticeably disagreeable.

jeffandnicole

Quote from: adventurernumber1 on May 27, 2018, 01:13:07 AM
When they started phasing in bright white LED streetlights around my area, I really liked them, but I was not yet aware of the potential problems they could cause (until now).

How remember similar comments about...cell phones?   And cell phone towers?

A common complaint in areas where people didn't want a cell phone tower was the unknown cancer-causing effects of such.  Even 20, 25 years later, people still tried using these complaints as reasons not to have towers, even though there was no concrete evidence of such.  Some studies said that the phone itself was where the cause for concern lies...although people suddenly didn't seem terribly concerned about that risk, even though it's literally touching the person's head.

So when we're talking about 'potential' problems of LEDs...they seem to fall more into the pattern of people just don't like it more so than there's actually an issue to worry about.

sparker

There are numerous vendors selling "warm white" LED's that mimic incandescent illumination; the problem is that the mcd (millicandle) ratings are about 30-35% lower than blue-based "flashlight" white bulbs, so substantially more would have to be grouped together to produce the same lumen output.  They also used to be considerably more expensive than blue/white, but there is little difference presently.  Diffused white, while still retaining a slightly bluish tint, only loses about 10% of its lumen value compared with clear/blue white; that particular variety is starting to show up as internal illumination in electronics (audio, test equipment, what's left of desktop computers) simply because it's a lot easier on the eyes than clear white while retaining most of the brightness levels.  Wouldn't be surprised to see the diffused-white variant showing up in streetlights in the not too distant future.

MikeTheActuary

In the past several months, our older incandecent anti-light pollution (we're close to an airport) street lights were replaced with bright white LEDs.

While I think they are better at directing light where it's needed than the prior fixtures (judging by what I see when landing at night), I have three objections with them:

First, in certain positions with respect to the fixture, the glare is much worse than the prior lights.

Second, when I need to walk down to the street at night (late night check of the mail, rolling trash barrels to/from the street), I can no longer make use of visual cues to tell when a car is about to crest a hill to my east, or come around a curve to my west -- the light color is no longer sufficiently different from headlights.

Third, they're too d-mn bright.  While that does help with visibility, you don't have to go too far to find unlit roadways, where having less-ruined night vision would be handy.

architect77

I think in the future we will see lighting implemented better, like glowing in the dark lane strips and more diffused lighting "from within" that may allow for health benefits of a dark sky....

that all of human history enjoyed for thousands of years until the electric light made its debut.

Truvelo

The lighting outside my house is low pressure sodium which is the really deep yellow/orange stuff. I know it's living on borrowed time and I know what its replacement will be. However most LED lighting here is slightly off white so isn't quite as cold in temperature as mercury vapour. It remains to be seen if LED will intrude into the house when it arrives.
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