Why halogens and incandescent lamps are not suitable for families with children?
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You can decide yourself if this information is enough for you to reject halogens in your home lighting. You can still use them in such places where you consider that they are not of any risk to the health of children or adults, or risk for fire accidents.
The consumer law says: ”Marketing, which does not contain all information for consumer's health and safety (see paragraphs 2, 3 and 4 below) and for economical safety (see paragraphs 1, and 5 below) is always inappropriate." When you have bought halogens or incandescent lamps, have you ever been warned about the risks?
AD-Lux always gives this warning to the person, who buys halogen or incandescent lamps from us:
Warning. The halogen lamp is very hot. It can be dangerous even if it has been installed according the safety instructions. It is very dazzling lamp. It can cause migraines to some persons. We do not recommend these lamps to the families with children. Read more from our web sites.
If some other product, e.g. food, an electric device or a toy had as big risk for fire accidents, health problems and even death as these lamp types, the product had been banned a long time ago.
How many deaths are needed until the authorities in different countries or EU react? It is a fact that these lamps had caused several deaths in many countries. In the USA the most dangerous lamps (uplight halogens, see here: http://www.msnbc.com/onair/nbc/dateline/halogen.asp?cp1=1 ) are already banned in some states.
Maybe there are “halogen deaths” also in Finland but if a person dies in a fire, the cause of death is documented to be the fire, not the hot lamp that caused the fire.
We should be able to prevent these dangerous accidents. According the law the shop owners are obliged to inform to the authorities if they find out that the product that they are selling causes danger. AD-Lux Oy has given a report of these lamps to the consumer agency and to the Safety Technology Authority in Finland because the halogens and incandescent lamps that
AD-Lux sells can cause danger. The authorities react positive to this but they tell that they can't do anything about it because Finland is in EU and this matter belongs to EU.
AD-Lux does not sell the most dangerous halogen lamps (for uplight fixtures). The most dangerous are the 230 V torchiere-style halogen lamps.
No company who sells these lamps has given this kind of danger reports so far, although the law is obliged to do so. One of the target of AD-Lux Oy is that people should realize that there is a huge danger with these lamps.
The law says that if the consumer does not get enough information to prevent accidents the product has a failure.
AD-Lux on has given a report of dangerous products to the consumer agency in Finland 2.5.2007. It consist of halogens and incandescent lamps. The target is that these lamps would be banned as soon as possible. Australia and Canada has already banned incandescent lamps and because halogens belong to the same lamp group that incandescent, these lamps may also be banned. Halogens consume as much energy as incandescent lamps. They have a bad effect to our climate. Halogens are more dangerous than incandescent lamps.
In these pictures there are examples of dangerous lamps.
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The reasons why these lamps should be banned
The most important points for the health and the economy risks are in the paragraphs 1-5.
1. Fire danger
If a child while playing throws a cloth or a toy over halogens in cable (6), or a swan neck halogen (14), or halogen lamp which has no protection in upper part, (13, 19) or incandescent lamp (7), it is impossible to the child to take the cloth down before the fire starts.
Halogen table fixtures are very hot. If they fall over or are in touch with fabric, they are dangerous.
Uplight-halogens (5) are very hot. Many Internet pages are warning about those.
The Safety Technology Authority in Finland (TUKES) agrees this and they are telling about similar problems in their article “The fixtures in children´s room can cause accidents”. Look the video. TUKES recommends not bigger than 20 W halogens, but because those give too little light many people will use more effective halogens.
2. Explosion danger
Recently TUKES has received many consumer complaints (maybe even 50 pieces) about the explosion of a halogen lamp. Glass and lamp pieces have been flown all over and because of that the eye injury risk has been very high.
According to the consumer magazine's study the incandescent candle lamp has the highest risk to explode. These lamps should be avoided and replaced with energy saving lamps.
3. Dazzling
When a baby is on his back on the table or floor, the eye is fixed on to the brightest lamp for many minutes. This is not a healthy situation (4, 8, 16, 20).
These halogens are dazzling children and short people. (3, 14)
These halogens above mirror (2, 9) are dazzling directly and through out the mirror.
It is not pleasant for anyone's eyes to see these bright glares on a ceramic stove. (11).
A floor lamp (10) that doesn't dazzle an adult can dazzle a child or a person in wheelchair, who sees the lamp from lower level.
Fixtures in stairs (12) that don't dazzle an adult can dazzle a child. A dazzling can cause a person fall down the stairs.
4. Headache and eye ache
 Flashing light caused by walking!
When people are walking under downlight lamps (4, 8, 15) with a normal speed of. 2 m/second, it can cause migraine to some people. It is because of the low frequency light. The effect is similar to flashing light. This is not natural situation. Similar effect is not found in the daylight outside.
5. Energy consumption
Halogen lamp consumes too much energy when you compare it to the amount of light that it gives. For example Uplight halogen (5) e.g. 300 W is very bad. If the light is on 8 hours a day, the energy costs over 100 euros per year. Read more.
6. Restless influence
Downlight halogens (4) and other halogens brings restless influence to your home.
The small bright lamps are moving continuously on the retina of the eye. This has no positive influence on children's eyes.
7. Bad colour rendering
Incandescent and halogen lamps have a bad colour rendering, because the colour temperature is 2700 - 3000 K. This means that e.g. blue colour seems violet and red colour seems orange.
A child needs correct colours on his surrounding as he grows up.
8. Hard to see accurately
In the light of halogen and incandescent lamp the human eye doesn't see as good as in full spectrum daylight (the light from outside or from full spectrum lamp). This may cause eye straining. When people get older they can't see in warm tone lighting as well as in daylight. The reading speed can be up to 20 % faster in full spectrum daylight. So it can also influence to the school success. The blue wavelengths are more important to the eye than the yellow ones.
So what to use instead of these lamps?
Today the fluorescent lamps and energy saving lamps are the best choice. Even better if flickering has been removed from the fixture (frequency raised up to 30 000 Hz) and if you choose full spectrum lamps.
LED will be great choice in the future but today their colour rendering index is only
70-80 %, when it should be near 100 %. Maybe after 5 years or so we can recommend LED. Today it is suitable only for decorating purpose, not for lighting. But for bright light therapy LED is very suitable and even more effective than normal light boxes.
In addition:
Satu Hassi [satu.hassi@europarl.europa.eu], the Finnish represent in EU parliament told to me that EU Commission plans to make suggestions to improve energy efficiency of lamps. This may cause banning of incandescent lamps and maybe halogens too. In the beginning of June 2007 the lamp manufacturing industry in Europe told that they are suggesting to ban incandescent lamps from the year 2015 on. They feel this plan is realistic but when they suggest the year 2015, we suggest the year 2010. Under these 5 years there will so many fires and other harms caused by these lamps that the sooner this ban starts the better. There is also a law initiative in the Finnish parliament to ban incandescent lamps from the year 2011.
Ilkka Pekanheimo
Daylight Lighting designer
Master of Public Health
AD-Lux Oy
Brahenkatu12
20100 TURKU
FINLAND
+358 400 221 421
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