Is White Light Good For You?

White light isn't the best for our biological clock, and studies have linked bright white light with increased health risk when using at night. Apparently the least invasive light for night vision is red light. Why use white light? Well, it's a trade off of safety for humans and the negative effects on the environment.

For example, if you are working in a factory with a lot of machinery using red light or warm colours would increase the risk of injury and death to workers, clearly white light is better for the visual working environment in these cases. When you have dangerous machines driven on the road by humans that can cause serious injury and death adequate light is needed to reduce risk, especially in high traffic areas or dangerous intersections.

 However in areas where there are less traffic, cities often use warm colours to reduce glare and this is especially the case in residential areas as this is where night light can have the most negative effect on human health, reports and complaints are coming in from members of the public around the world complaining about the bright white light and glare from LED street lights, there are a number of campaigns from residents to get the cities councils to replace with warm colours or going back to the old HPS street lights. 

ANSES, the French Agency For Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety, published a report entitled Lighting Systems Using Light -emitting diodes: health issues to be considered, which focuses squarely on potential problems caused by LED lighting.

In summary, the report says they have identified health concerns for the general population and professional's with certain LED lamps. The Agency was most concern with the eye due to the toxic effect of blue light and the risk of glare, adding that the blue light necessary to obtain white LEDs causes toxic stress to the retina.?

Blue light causes a photochemical risk to the eye, says the report, the level of which depends on the accumulated dose of blue light to which the person has been exposed... Blue light is recognised as being harmful and dangerous for the retina, as a result of cellular oxidative stress, says the report, adding that 3 groups are particular at risk; children, a population which is already light-sensitive, and workers likely to be exposed to high-intensity lighting.

?The other main risk is from glare. Because the emission surfaces of LEDs are highly concentrated point sources, the luminance of each source can be 1000 times higher than the discomfort level. The level of the direct radiation from this type of source can therefore easily exceed the level of visual discomfort. Other risks related to the use of LED lighting systems have also been raised, but further study is required.?

Induction lighting is an excellent solution and out of all lighting used it is the least invasive light, With a very low glare at the point sources removes the problems with high glare point source lighting, Check the link to see how much flicker and glare induction bulb has. 

Because of the unique way induction light works it produce a soft white light with lower Bluewave frequency, but the amazing thing about induction is that it works better with the way our eyes see than any other artificial light, increasing visual acuity because it has a higher scotopic and photopic light frequency ratio, 

this makes induction light ideal for the working environment especially where precision work is required and at the same time reduces the stain on human eyes. Also for street lighting it reduce glare, high blue wave light frequency that causes so much problem's and provides best visuals for drivers and pedestrians as well as the least negative effects on the environment out of all artificial light. Induction light has high colour rendering (85%CRI) from warm to natural light spectrum so cities can use in residential and city areas where they need warm colour and in high traffic area where they need white high visual light to alert drivers. 

From an energy point, induction produces about half the energy needed than current HPS or HID lamps but has been field tested to last up to 100,000-hours lowering maintenance by 80% 

If  problem's do develop it's easy to replace the bulbs and ballast whereas with LED fittings either you have to replace the entire fitting or if you replace the led panels or driver's, you still may not have solved the problem of why the light failed as there are a number of other components in the fixture to reduce heat for the LEDs, if any of these have failed it will result in failure of the new LED panel. Sometimes the best answer to a problem is  a simple solution. Induction is that simple solution and yet people continue to spend lots of money on difficult and problematic products and ignore a proven field tested and safe solutions.

So if you have to use white light then Induction lighting is proven to be the safest and least invasive white light for both human and animal life-limiting negative impact on the environment. But if you can avoid white light and place good quality warm induction lighting this will provide good visual light and reduce high glare for residents and lower city light pollution.

For more information on the history of Induction lighting read about Nikola Tesla Incredible Inventions And Induction Lighting Post,