How LED bulbs can harm your health
'11.10.2019'
ForumDaily Woman
Before the advent of electricity, all labor activity was associated exclusively with daylight hours. In modern civilization, there are several tonal variations of artificial lighting, but it turns out that not every light is safe for human eyes.
How incandescent lamps work
Mankind has been actively using conventional incandescent lamps since the beginning of the 20th century, says Clever. The tungsten spiral located inside the bulb, heats up under the influence of an electric current and produces a spectral composition of visible light, very similar to that coming from the surface of the solar photosphere in the earth's morning or evening hours. This yellowish, warm light is perfectly tolerated by the eyes of humans and animals, and for more than a century of operation of incandescent lamps, no action has ever been revealed that damages one's eyesight.
However, the energy required to heat a very fragile tungsten filament in such a lamp led engineers to think about creating a device with a lower coefficient of energy consumption and longer life. Along with these developments, new tonal options for artificial lighting began to appear.
What are LEDs?
LED lamps, LED panels, searchlights and other devices based on LEDs consume electricity very economically and last extremely long.
The principle of operation of such lamps is completely different and consists in the appearance of a light flux at the point of contact of two substances from dissimilar materials after an electric current is passed through them. The light emitted by the LED lies in a narrow range of the color spectrum, but by changing the chemical composition of the semiconductors used, the developers managed to reflect from them all the colors of the light spectrum.
The most important feature of the use of LED lamps is that this microscopic device illuminates the surrounding area much better than an incandescent, fluorescent or halogen lamp. The operation of LEDs is distinguished by high contrast of light and the absence of heating of structural elements, so such devices never burn out. But with regard to eye safety, which manufacturers and sellers declare, everything here is much more complicated and depends on the tone of the light.
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LED white light
LED lamps can emit daylight white light, as close as possible to midday sunlight on a cloudless summer day. And many sellers and buyers of LED lights are sure that this is the best light for the eyes. Only this is not the case. And first of all, the harm of white LED lighting was noticed by the users of such lamps themselves, stating that in the evenings the included light irritates the mucous membrane of the eyes to tears, causes fatigue and noticeable discomfort.
A study of the lighting parameters produced by the “white” LED devices showed that they have a pronounced emission band in the blue-blue range with a wavelength of about 450 nanometers. In the body of a person who is in the evening or early morning under the influence of this short-wave cold white light, the production of melatonin is sharply slowed down. Meanwhile, this pineal gland hormone affects many body functions, regulates biorhythms, slows down the aging process and supports the immune system. Moreover, studies have proved that the white LED light of the blue-blue range is very harmful to the eye retina and after a long work under such lighting, it begins to degrade. It turns out that the cold white lighting of LED devices used in the morning and in the evening is the most harmful to human health.
How to minimize the harm of LED light
For children's eyes, the short-wave cold white light projected by LED lamps is doubly dangerous. The lens of a child’s eye is twice as transparent as that of an adult. In this regard, it is in the blue-blue spectrum that there is a serious risk of photodamage to the retina, which leads to a sharp deterioration in vision. Moreover, the harmful effect of cold LED white light on children's eyes occurs both in the morning, in the evening, and in the afternoon, when the sun hardly breaks through the rain through the window.
Research in the field of the influence of artificial lighting on human vision is currently being conducted in many countries of the world, and some conclusions can already be drawn. To protect the human organs of vision, in rooms for adults should use LED lamps that project warm white light. In children's rooms, it is advisable to install LED-lamps that emit exceptionally warm yellowish light, the same as that given by traditional incandescent lamps, only in this case it is possible to maintain the full vision of the child.
