New LED streetlights may double cancer risk, new research warns

badbs101

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I don't like LEDs for general lighting because if they catch you directly in the eye, even the dimmest LEDs are painful. LED headlights on cars are a disaster. Far too harsh to oncoming traffic or in the rear view mirror. But we're heading in that direction because "they" think it's best for everyone. Further, I tend to prefer neutral or warm LEDs in my flashlights for the same reason, I find cool white to be a bit harsh. I am probably one of the last to retain incandescent bulbs in the home. My wife even scours garage and estate sales buying up the old bulbs as they are no longer available in the stores above 40 watts. The few LED bulbs we do have in the home are all warm not cool and none are in a spot where the direct beam can contact your line of sight. Mandating alternative (efficient) light bulbs in the home is kind of like the ethanol in gas thing, it sounds like a good idea but...
 
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aramid

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So, ultimately this is a possible link between blue light and dangerous hormone imbalances? This article is pretty useless without the actual study text, but it sounds like fearmongering about the latest tech. I mean, such a link could very well exist, but we're missing some important questions. Is the effect limited to cool white sources, or do warm white lights like household A-type LED bulbs also have a measurable impact? And what about fluorescent tubes, which can have just as much of a blue spike as LEDs? Does CRI change the effect?

If I had to take some wild, uninformed guesses, I'd say that the problem, if it exists, would be worst with low-CRI cool white lights of any technology. That's streetlights (which are more concerned about efficiency than color), computer screens (which only need to have three colors), and fluorescent tubes. And I'd further guess that the effect is worst when the lights are bright, or when you're exposed to them while you should be sleeping. I'm astonished they didn't make the writing exclusively about cell phones.

Badbs101: You can still buy full cases of 48 bulbs on Amazon; I keep some around for dimmable lights. It might be a bit more expensive than a garage sale, but they're new and it's a lot less fuss to place an online order than the "scour" anything.

By buying high-CRI warm-white bulbs and putting them in diffusing fixtures or lamps with shades, I've always felt very cozy and happy with LED lighting in my house. Apart from those couple dimmable fixtures, my house is all-LED and I haven't had any problems with glare or sleep disruption. Same goes for streetlights, honestly, since I have curtains on my windows.
 
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bykfixer

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So..... Britain rolls out LED street lights and suddenly cancer is showing up.... yet nobody bothered to ponder the fact that while a small amount of folks spend any appreciable amount of time being bombarded by these killer street lights....
Yet those same people along with the majority of people spend their day staring at LED phone screens, tv's and computers..... hmmmm.

A couple of years ago I had the priveledge of picking out a street light on a city streetscape project to light up a given area that would enhance the aesthetics after sunset. I picked out a 4700 kelvin light readily used in Miami Fla. It was a nice, floody light that was heralded by local community leaders. The rest of the streetscape was lit by low height halogens in lollipop looking housings. The locals hated those.
 

parametrek

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The old mercury vapor lights were even more extreme for blue light. Here is the original publication:

Garcia-Saenz A., Sánchez de Miguel A. et al. Evaluating the association between artificial light-at-night exposure and breast and prostate cancer risk in Spain (MCC-Spain study). April 2018. DOI:10.1289/EHP1837. Environmental Health Perspectives

https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/ehp1837/
 

badbs101

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You can still buy full cases of 48 bulbs on Amazon; I keep some around for dimmable lights. It might be a bit more expensive than a garage sale, but they're new and it's a lot less fuss to place an online order than the "scour" anything.

Nope. There are no standard 60 watt bulbs for sale there. They have 60 watt equivalent halogen bulbs (about 43 watts) which aren't the same thing despite looking and performing somewhat similarly. I'm particular about my lighting; Go figure I'm on a flashlight forum. :cool: Lucky for me my wife dislikes the LED home lights too. And if you knew Mrs BS, you'd know that scouring garage sales is not something she views as work.
 
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ssanasisredna

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To say this "study" is total crap is to make an unfair comparison to "total crap". This study is even worse than total crap.

Their "ALAN" model is based on sleep lighting models, and their outdoor ALAN is only from 2012-2013 even though the study was 2008-2013 and there were very few LED street lights in 2008-2010. It is a wonderful example of correlation does not equal causation.

https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/EHP1837.alt_.pdf

I would be embarrassed to publish it or quote it.
 

archimedes

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This thread is not about "LED Flashlights" .... Frankly, I'm not even sure it is really about Fixed Lighting.

I will plan to move it to The Cafe, unless OP strongly prefers otherwise
 

PhotonWrangler

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We know that blue light messes with sleep, but we should have seen a correlation with both mercury vapor streets and plain old fluorescent lights by now. Both types of lamps have a considerable amount of blue and NUV output, simply because of the nature of the mercury vapor arc inside. TV screens tend to skew towards the blue part of the spectrum, even the old CRT TVs. Drive past someone's house at night and the curtains in their living room are glowing with blue light from the TV.

There might be a nugget of scientific validity here, but I doubt that LEDs are the demon that the article makes them out to be.
 

StarHalo

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