Health hazards in LED lighting?
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The spectrum of a full spectrum daylight led
Humans evolved to perceive and use full-spectrum light yet live our modern lives under a lesser light.
This lack of full-spectrum light linked to many modern health concerns.
New technology – LED lighting – contains fewer elements of the light spectrum than older technologies.
LED lighting lasts for many years – meaning many years of substandard lighting conditions.
The human eye has evolved over a period of four million years. Its evolution happened under sunlight – or full-spectrum light – which contains all the colours of our rainbow, in addition to hundreds of other wavelengths (such as infra-red and UV).
However since humans invented the electric light-bulb the majority of our days have been spent under light that is created with only a portion of available colours. Fluorescent lights are the worst offenders as typically they contain only three of the seven visible colours. Even the older incandescent bulbs while not containing a balanced spectrum were an improvement on the fluorescents.
We live in these conditions even when we are evolved to perceive and use a much greater amount of the light spectrum. There are many who now believe that is this situation that has led to many of the health problems now endemic to our industrialised societies.
Basel University researcher, Christian Cajochen, says that artificial light may have very negative effects on our health. He states that light should be viewed as the drug and as such it must be of the correct proportions, and it must be taken in the correct dosage.
So given this history, what does the most recent technological development – LED lighting – mean for human health. If 99% of their spectrum is worse than a bad fluorescent then the situation is dire indeed. Not only is the quality of light worse, it will be worse for many years. LEDs are created to last for many years – meaning many years of sub-standard light in our homes and workplaces.
If we were to compare our relative investments in lighting and bedding – we would see that many of us choose to invest in a quality bed. After-all we spend a third of our lives in it and we expect our bed to last for many years.
Given the assumption that many of us lead lives spent pre-dominently indoors – we spend two thirds of our lives under artificial lighting. If we follow our bedding example – then our lighting is also something we want to ensure is the best for our health.
The poverty of colour in our lives is an important topic to consider and one which we all need to pay more attention to. Designers and architects, in particular, need to pay attention to how much responsibility they have. Their choice of poor quality lighting can be contributing to many of our current health epidemics.
Light is not only a tool for seeing. It can also be a food, vitamin and medicine - or poison. We recommend all who are interested in their health to live the rest of their life under full spectrum of the light, either in a real daylight outside or, where that is unavailable, under full spectrum light bulbs, LED or fluorescent.
Our full-spectrum bulbs are provided by Viva-Lite - a company committed to the creation of better health through better light quality. Long at the forefront of developing full-spectrum incandescent and fluorescent bulbs – they now lead the world in the development of the worlds first full-spectrum LED bulb.
Further information: Ilkka Pekanheimo, lighting designer, DDS, AD-Lux Oy,
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