My wife helps run a scientific institute. A research worker (feminine) complained that the flourescent lighting in her laboratory gave her migraine.
The institute installed "daylight" flourescent lights, which apparently improved things.
Is there any scientfic basis for (a) the claim that flourescent lights can cause migraine, (b) the belief that daylight bulbs cause less problems?
By "daylight" flourescent, do you mean high-frequency ballasted?
If yes, the reduced flicker (particularly if they work with VDU's) may well make a difference.
No no no, it must be the flour affecting her. If only they had installed fluorescent lights instead
AWEM
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Andrew Mawson" saying something like:
Perhaps the daylight ones are self-raising?
No, 'daylight' colour temperature.
However, they may have installed new fittings that are now high frequency and there has been a reduction in flicker.
Or it could be a placebo effect.
Or the flour.
Yes.
No.
Fluorescent tubes which are near the end of their life can generate 50Hz flicker, and this can give rise to effects such as headache. Tubes don't normally continue to work for long when they reach this state (normally only a day or so), but it can also happen in the case of tubes with a manufacturing fault, or some types of control gear which can keep a dead tube running past the point where it should have been swapped out.
Chances are that swapping out the tubes for new ones is what fixed the problem. The colour is completely immaterial.
Use of daylight tubes is usually a mistake. There are some rare applications where their use is desired, but for most purposes where they turn up, this isn't the case and they are the wrong choice on several counts.
One of the many triggers for migraine is the flickering especially from the ends of tubes of fluorescent lights which just have a simple choke as opposed to a high frequency ballast.
I suffer from migraines periodically and this can be one of the triggers although usually combined with other factors such as overdoing it or certain food types.
In general I am not at all comfortable with low frequency fluorescent lighting, especially if faulty or if the tube has a low persistence phosphor and greater tendency to flicker. This is especially noticable if the tube is off to the side in peripheral vision.
CRT monitors are another one - anything less than 75Hz is uncomfortable.
As regards the lighting colour I am less sure, although for a living space, I do not like the unnatural light that comes from fluorescent lamps. For a workshop, the situation is different.
For your wife's colleague's case, I think it may be more likely that the daylight tube fittings have high frequency ballasts which remove flicker. It appears to be that flicker is the more common trigger. However, migraine is highly individual, so almost anything is possible.
I remember a guy at work saying he had an infection of his inner ear ..cant remember the name but he said flourescent lights gave a him a weird feeling in his head ......I went in to a new Tesco Express near me recently and I experienced a funny feeeling in my head when I was in there .They had rows and rows of very bright flourescent lights so maybe they affected me as well..
Stuart
The problem with a lot of fluorescent lighjting installations is the sheer quantity of light. I dont know why but people tend to go nutty with huge tubes all over the shop and expect it to be comfortable. A single 4w fluorescent light for the whole room is a great way to handle migraine, with the fitting concealed so theres no direct view of the tube. The light just washes over the ceiling.
I dont think its fluorescent lights per se, but rather the usually bad installation of them.
Andy mentioned tube end flicker. When fls are installed in trough or shelf style, the tube isnt visible at all, and even with old ballasts the level of flicker is a tiny percentage of the total light output, and the 50Hz flicker at each end is mixed to give 100Hz like the rest of the tube. With directy visible tubes the whole situation is worse, as you're seeing not only high intensity light but also 50Hz flickering high intensity light at the tube ends, which can be not a good thing for migraine.
NT
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