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Medicine Science

LED Light Can Damage Eyes, Health Authority Warns (yahoo.com) 174

The "blue light" in LED lighting can damage the eye's retina and disturb natural sleep rhythms, France's government-run health watchdog said this week. From a report: New findings confirm earlier concerns that "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," the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES) warned in a statement. The agency recommended in a 400-page report that the maximum limit for acute exposure be revised, even if such levels are rarely met in home or work environments.

The report distinguished between acute exposure of high-intensity LED light, and "chronic exposure" to lower intensity sources. While less dangerous, even chronic exposure can "accelerate the ageing of retinal tissue, contributing to a decline in visual acuity and certain degenerative diseases such as age-related macular degeneration," the agency concluded. Long-lasting, energy efficient and inexpensive, light-emitting diode (LED) technology has gobbled up half of the general lighting market in a decade, and will top 60 percent by the end of next year, according to industry projections.

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LED Light Can Damage Eyes, Health Authority Warns

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  • They are basically saying "shining high intensity lights into your eyes is bad". Well no shit.

    • Re:Is this news? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by skids ( 119237 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @04:27PM (#58598846) Homepage

      Add this to the "no shit, sherlock" pile:

      ANSES also said that manufacturers should "limit the luminous intensity of vehicle headlights," some of which are too bright.

      I drive a lot and at first I thought it was "just" my eyes going as I got older, but the friggin arms race is ridiculous "Oh I can't see the road because the oncoming lights are too bright... I know... I'll get brighter lights!" Sofa king wii todd ed.

      • The arms race eventually reaches its natural conclusion when everyone starts wearing sunglasses for night driving with their high beams on.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Janky automatic high beams are also to blame. Some newer cars have a system where the high beams can cut out automatically when there is another car nearby, but they don't work very well and often end up blinding the other driver.

        • They've fixed that in newer vehicles; they auto-dim perfectly fine. The problem I have is not that my auto-dimmers don't work (they are better than me, they never forget to dim in the face of oncoming traffic, or when I'm passed), but that the low beams are too bright. The low beams on both of my cars appear to be aimed properly, but the odd person still flashes their brights at me, indicating that my low beams are so bright that they think I have them on high.

  • I don't know what to think. Fluorescent lighting was deemed bad ( I worked in a building for years with them) CFL's are bad too. Both have mercury in them. I played with mercury when I was ten, coated coins with it. Now LED's are bad. I'm now wrapping a stick soaked in tallow to find my to the cooler to get a beer. Oh crap, FIRE BAD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
  • by Ironwolf ( 136393 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @04:09PM (#58598756)

    No, Blue Light From Your Smartphone is Not Blinding You:
    https://www.aao.org/eye-health... [aao.org]

    Should You Be Worried About Blue Light:
    https://www.aao.org/eye-health... [aao.org]

    • apples and tomatos (Score:5, Informative)

      by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @04:23PM (#58598832)

      That AOA referenced study was based on Toledo U affects of blue light on retinol, not live eyeballs, so that's why the AOA doctor could correclty say there was no reason based on study to say "phone was blinding you"

      This French study is saying a different thing, one thing it is stating is that high intensity sources such as LED lighting (not screens) did cause damage to living eyes.

      But it also said chronic exposure to low intensity sources like monitors and phones didn't cause damage but disturbed body rhythms, caused eyestrain, etc.

  • by e3m4n ( 947977 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @04:15PM (#58598788)

    Its the porn you’re watching on your led tablet screen that is causing you to go blind.

  • by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @04:18PM (#58598808) Homepage

    Would a laser or filtered incandescent or fluorescent source of the same wavelength not have the same effect?

    • Or.. the sun?

      Our ancestors were outdoors a LOT more. The ambient light and monitor intensity in your office are both far, far less intense than the sun. On the other hand, our monitors are emissive rather than reflective (like a printed page), so they have to be brighter than the ambient light. It occurs to me that you go from not looking at your screen to looking at it, thus getting extra light on your retinas until your pupils adjust, many more times than you go from inside your cave to outside in

      • Our ancestors were outdoors a LOT more.

        True, but back then the life expectancy was not much above 30 years (33 years in the Paleolithic down to 26 in the Bronze and Iron ages [wikipedia.org]) so cumulative damage to eyesight from the sun was probably much less of an issue.

        That being said I personally no longer believe medical claims like this until I have seen the results repeated multiple, independent times. Medical researchers concentrate far too much on correlation with only lip service paid to causation. This frequently leads to claims which are later p

        • "Life expectancy" is generally the average life expectancy, not the maximum life expectancy.

          For example, right in your Wikipedia article, it says people in the Paleolithic era who lived to the age of 15 were expected to live an additional 39 years, for a total of 54 years. What skews the numbers down is that only 60% of people lived to be 15. So most adults lived to their 40's or 50's, not too far off from what we see today.

          Hell, the average lifespan of medieval Islamic scholars was 59-84 years!

          So in short,

          • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
            Life expectancy is the median, the age at which 50% of the population is dead. It's not the average.
            • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

              Life expectancy is almost always the mean, unless otherwise stated.

        • True, but back then the life expectancy was not much above 30 years
          That is the statistical life expectance as you had a high chance to die during childhood, e.g. due to measles.
          Ramses got 96, Ceasar was 45 when he was murdered ... If you survived the first 10 years, you basically lived as long as we do .... no difference, not for Bronze age, not for Stone age.

    • Of course. Have you ever stared into a laser beam?

  • Blue light? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @04:19PM (#58598812)

    Yet another article that makes the bold claim that the blue light in our modern LEDs is harmful, but then only cites studies that say something to the effect of:

    1) It's bad to stare at bright lights (of any color)
    2) It's bad to stare at lights (of any color) for too long
    3) Staring at lights (regardless of color) at bedtime can disrupt your circadian rhythm
    4) Children and adolescents are particularly susceptible to any of the above

    I have yet to see the study that will allow itself to be pinned down on the claim that blue light is empirically more harmful than any other hue of light. That said, I've seen plenty of references suggesting that blue light is getting a bad rap because it's associated with the electronics and other devices that are—through their misuse and overuse—causing the problems that people are talking about.

    As an aside, I wasn't paying much attention and agreed to a blue-blocking filter on my last set of prescription glasses. I ended up having to return them. Everything looked wrong: grass was yellower, skies were duskier, and whites were creamier. It made me think I needed to water the lawn more, that sunset was arriving sooner than I realized, and that my paper supply had discolored with age. I know some people love those filters, but I don't understand the appeal at all.

    • Humans see very little blue light in our vision system; we have to compensate but also there has to be more blue light for it to equal the other two colors as far as absolute intensity. It would seem to me that we'd need more blue light to balance out with the other colors despite a natural compensation that must exist given the huge ratio between blue and green/red detection.

      Really bright IR or UV will mess up your eyes quickly because you won't even know to look away until it starts to really hurt. Sunl

      • Humans detect blue for mood and circadian rhythm: Humans (and mammals) have a third photo-receptor system (retinal ganglion cells) that use a different opsin photopigment that has peak sensitivity in the blue (480nm). This third set of receptors primarily feeds it's signal to the circadian rhythm and mood centers, although (if I remember correctly) some of the signal is passed on to the visual processing areas.
    • by mark-t ( 151149 )
      I agree mostly with what you have said above, although I have heard numerous times that blue light will affect circadian rhythm more than other frequencies of light at the otherwise same intensity.
      • by epine ( 68316 )

        I have heard numerous times that blue light will affect circadian rhythm more than other frequencies of light at the otherwise same intensity.

        Well I have N24 sleep–wake disorder so let me Google that for you from my warm cache.

        Melanopsin is a type of photopigment belonging to a larger family of light-sensitive retinal proteins called opsins and encoded by the gene Opn4.

        In humans, melanopsin is found in intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs). It is also found in the iris of mice

    • Blue light is approaching the upper bounds of frequency that most people can observe. Higher frequency, higher energy. Energy related conditions would likely show up in blue light, versus red. Here's a separate paper that goes into more depth.

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
    • As an aside, I wasn't paying much attention and agreed to a blue-blocking filter on my last set of prescription glasses. I ended up having to return them. Everything looked wrong: grass was yellower, skies were duskier, and whites were creamier. It made me think I needed to water the lawn more, that sunset was arriving sooner than I realized, and that my paper supply had discolored with age. I know some people love those filters, but I don't understand the appeal at all.

      Human vision is very poor in blue [gamesx.com]. F

      • Human vision is very poor in blue.
        For fuck sake: No, No, No and again No!

        We are humans: we see red, green, blue and the other colours of the "spectrum".

        What the fuck is wrong with YOU and this thread in general? We don't see good beyond violet, especially when we start reaching ultra violet.

        We see blue just fine as we see red or green. The colour we actually see the worst is _red_ or why do you think submarines and other crafts use red light?

        From the visual spectrum blue is second best colour to see ... af

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      You were viewing the world through rose tinted glasses.

      If you wore them long enough, you'd stop noticing. The brain is very good at white balancing.

  • Who would have thought that... Thank you Captain Obvious for your blinding insight.

    How could we be so blind? High intensity light can harm your eyes? And you have been looking into the light box and using the laser pointer again so you'd know...

  • There are at least 2 major cities that are sharpening their axes to go after a certain Chinese company that sold them "long life" LED streetlights.

    And I know of at least 5 others that are going from LED traffic lights back to regular ones because the new ones were burning out in a handful of months.

    • I personally was living under the "don't buy cheap chinese crap" rainbow.
      Until now, it has worked out successfully.

      A cheap Chinese company that offers LED streetlights at a tiny fraction of the price that normal brands (who offer 10-years warranty) charge?
      What were you expecting ?!?
      It's a miracle that the same no-name company still exists to be sued in the first place.

  • Yes, the impact of blue light on sleep patterns is well researched and heavily publicized, but contrary to this article's hype, there is no actual indication that blue photons are generally more harmful to the retina than the same intensity of photons at any other visible frequency, to the extent that the eyes are naturally more sensitive to some frequencies of light than others in the first place.

    There may be some evidence that higher visible frequencies may affect lens development in children, as

  • by GodWasAnAlien ( 206300 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @04:49PM (#58598962)

    What about this computer monitor that I stare at all day long.

    I know it is LED backlit or something similar.

    But I should be fine, right?

    I turned off all blue in the color pallet just in case.

    Should I wear a welders helmet?

    • You could use a welders helmet, it is a lot cheaper than a space helmet with a gold filter.

      Or you could set your monitor to monochrome green. Probably easier.

    • I think I'm having trouble reading what you wrote...maybe it's my LED monitor!

  • LED light is so pervasive today that if there anything to this, we would all be feeling our way around everywhere by now. But I call merde des taureaux on this report, because no actual pattern of visual decay would escape the diamond eyes of our own FDA.

  • by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @04:56PM (#58599002)
    And they worked for so many decades to invent blue LEDs. Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura even won the 2014 Nobel prize in physics for it.
  • A lot of LED lighting hurts to look at. I think it's because some intense, narrow semiconductor emission lines make it through the phosphors.

    I bought several hundred incandescent bulbs for this reason and have a good energy-efficiency program: I turn off the lights when I leave the room.

    It's sad most people think LEDs are good enough and research to improve incandescent efficiency seems to have been abandoned.
    • It hurts to stare at because it's bright.

      As for your energy efficiency your single incandescent bulb consumes as much power as approx half my houses entire lighting system (based on a 60w bulb). In my office I have 3 x 6500k LED downlights and it feels like I'm sitting outside the colour and the brightness is that nice. The idea of going back to that horrible yellow colour gives me shudders.

    • It's sad most people think LEDs are good enough and research to improve incandescent efficiency seems to have been abandoned.

      LMFAO that's the funniest thing I read today.

      It is sorta true, even.

      But I don't think you're really going to have much luck improving the efficiency of radiant cooling. The laws of physics aren't really that easy to vary. You can certainly increase the lifespan of the filament through research. But the electrical efficiency is not going to improve. You're creating enough heat to dump out a certain number of photons. If you want more photons and less heat, you need a different type of technology.

      • If you place the filament inside a bulb that is coated to reflect infrared back towards the filament and transmit visible light, you could improve the efficiency quite a bit. But it's hard to make a coating that does that and survives high temperatures.

        If you coat the filament with an opaque material that is reflective for infrared and absoprtive for visible light, all thermal radiation would be visible. Again, hard to find such a material that works at high temperature. But this is how gas mantles work.

        No

      • by epine ( 68316 )

        The laws of physics aren't really that easy to vary. You can certainly increase the lifespan of the filament through research.

        This has little to do with the laws of physics as such and everything to do with the "laws" of atomic chemistry (more properly termed theoretical regularities). Considered in the right light, your second sentence almost directly contradicts your first sentence.

        If we could substantially increase the lifespan of the filament at a much higher temperature we could shift way more of the e

  • So why aren't we picking on the Sun? It's been aging our photo receptors since square one. We should either put blue light filter on the Sun or just ban it outright. It's far too bright and contains far too much blue for our frail photo receptors.
    • Don't look at the sun. Unless you look at it through a telescope, in which case, don't look at it with the remaining good eye.
    • So why aren't we picking on the Sun?

      "We" are. Thousands die every year from cancers induced by overexposure to the sun.

      It's been aging our photo receptors since square one. We should either put blue light filter on the Sun or just ban it outright. It's far too bright and contains far too much blue for our frail photo receptors.

      Most people know better than to look at the sun. Then again some need reminding. It's so dark outside during an eclipse how could that possibly be bad for you?

      We should either put blue light filter on the Sun or just ban it outright. It's far too bright and contains far too much blue for our frail photo receptors.

      The sun is a broadband emitter roughly from RF to X-ray. There are much more damaging higher frequencies (UV) in sunlight compared with blue visible light.

      Part of the problem with much of the commentary there exists no substantive linkage between harmful constituent

  • You'll notice the LED lights on cars, signs, traffic lights are not "on" all the time, but pulse. Wonder what's that is doing to the brain.
    • Most smartphones these days have a slow-motion camera setting -- try that on the most stable, flicker-free LED light you can find. It's disturbing.

  • Use RGB LEDs, turn down the blue. Problem solved. RGB LEDs are trivial to implement.

    • > Use RGB LEDs, turn down the blue. Problem solved. RGB LEDs are trivial to implement.

      OK, here's an exam question: your friend is wearing a yellow t-shirt and holding a photo of a yellow balloon, standing next to a yellow Lamborghini. All three are inside a large room with walls & ceiling that are painted white, and illuminated with a combination of monochromatic red, green, and blue light so that the walls appear to be a neutral, pure white.

      a) What color does your friend's T-shirt appear to be?

      b) Wh

      • Your brain will adjust to the color being off. You only even notice it consciously for a little while, then you get used to it. So who cares? Besides, the so-called "white" LEDs have emission spectrum peaks and valleys, so they already do that.

  • Given the numerous gadgets that ultimately need DC (not to mention potential sources of DC, like roof solar), would it be practical to have one well-made rectifier in a home, and then run a parallel DC loop in the house?

    That way, things like LEDs, and potentially computers and TVs could get the DC that they actually need..
  • Nearly a decade ago when I first started developing and selling LED growing lights, I put blue light warnings on all of my equipment. The fact that it HURTS your eyes the moment you turn it on is a clue that you shouldn't be exposing yourself to it in great quantities or for prolonged periods of time. We use blue light to kill Drosophila melanogaster in growing houses across the world. That should give you a clue how dangerous it truly is.

    Blue light will fuck you up in ways you cannot imagine.

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