As night darkness falls over Westmeath, I am out for my daily walk and I can’t help but notice a new, brighter and whiter light is shining. Light Emitting Diodes, or LED’s, are at the center of these new streetlights. They produce more light at approximately half the cost of those old, familiar high-pressure sodium lights which gave an amber to yellow hued light.
Municipalities are replacing existing streetlights with efficient and long-lasting LEDs to save money on energy and maintenance. Although the streetlights are delivering these benefits, there is a raging controversy about the design of this new technologies and the close connection between its light and human health.
Even though these LED’s are continuously being installed, there is plenty of people and communities who have judicious concerns about the new process. Facebook and You Tube are loaded with downright fears of the new lighting and have judgments for both safety hazards and serious health problems.
The new LED street lighting, according to the AMA causes discomfort and glare. The light is so concentrated and with its high blue content can mean problems seeing clearly for safe driving or walking at night.
In the case of white LED light is estimated to be five times more effective at suppressing melatonin at night than the high pressure sodium lamps which have been the mainstay of street lighting for decades. Melatonin suppression is a disruption, which includes disrupted sleep.
The AMA “encourages minimizing and controlling blue-rich environmental lighting by using the lowest emission of blue light possible to reduce glare.” Their official policy statement about street lighting: cool it and dim it.” They have issued guidelines on how communities can choose LED streetlights to “minimize potential harmful human health and environmental effects.”
Bright electric lighting can also adversely affect wildlife by, for example, disturbing migratory patterns of birds and some aquatic animals which nest on shore.
the AMA supports a “proper conversion to community-based LED lighting”, which reduces energy consumption and by using the lowest emission of blue light possible to reduce glare.
But as with every change and advancement there are two sides to the story. Practical studies were done on these LED installations, not to dispute the findings of AMA for instance but to consider just how safe or unsafe the installations really are.
Light can improve or disrupt your sleep, mood, and reaction time just to mention a few. Blue light is often a strong contributor to eye health problems like age-related macular degeneration, cataract, and retinal changes. . But it takes quite a lot of time and exposure of blue light for your health to be affected.
Without enough Melatonin in our bodies, a lot of things will start to go wrong. While LED’s causes exposure to blue light, you also get it from smartphones, laptops, TVs, tablets, or any other item that’s made using white LED light technology.
AS for LED streetlights leading to cancer, the blue light in current fixtures is far too low. In fact a big perk of these fixtures is that they don’t emit any form of radiation, infrared, or UV rays. As well, the flickering lights can only trigger seizures but do not cause a person to become epileptic with Photosensitive Epilepsy
In regard to fire hazards it’s much safer to use LED lights than to use incandescent and halogen bulbs. LED lights can operate for long periods without heating up without emitting any form of radiation.
It should also be considered that we are being exposed to blue light from other sources including sunlight, your smartphones/tablets, computers, TVs and so much more.
whenever a fixture – that heats up when in use – is placed in an enclosed container, heat accumulation is bound to occur, but when it comes to LED lights, the probability of that happening is minimal.
Of the total blue light exposure one gets in a day, the amount of exposure from LED’s is only a fraction of the total. However, just because it’s small exposure, it doesn’t mean that it won’t affect your health in a way or two. The only way to be completely safe is by spending a short time under LED lighting at night.
On a subsequent walk, I appreciated even more these new light fixtures with their subtle focus rather than a shotgun approach of lighting. This LED lighting is as safe for me as any could be.
