LED bulbs damage the eyes?

I seem to remember reading this somewhere. Can anyone tell me if it's true or not?

Hugh

Reply to
Hugh Newbury
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If you stare at the actual bare illuminated LED die from point blank range it's visible output is about equivalent to the surface brightness of the sun. It doesn't have much thermal or UV component but it really isn't good to look at. Same issue with staring into a laser pointer.

If you are using bare LEDs they come with warnings not to look directly at them (which are largely unnecessary since it is painful to do it).

Once the light is diffused it is just light like any other although the colour rendering is a bit poor (though nowhere near as bad as CFLs).

Reply to
Martin Brown

And there are people who suffer the effects of any form of fluorescent lamp such as getting skin and eye problems. Those with macular degeneration are sometimes advised to wear yellow glasses outdoors to reduce the impact of blue light (and, I assume, any UV).

Maybe, for some, LEDs are better than fluorescents and even quartz lamps? (Or perhaps that should be "some LEDS"?)

Reply to
polygonum

Well, anything too bright or of a wavelength shorter than you can see can damage the eyes. I've never heard of anyone having an issue as after all one does not usually look at light sources directly normally. Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

Even with filters an LED light will be too bright. Is why we ended up not putting the in the bathroom, where you're gonna be lying down looking up at them, potentially.

Reply to
Tim Streater

You could, at least in theory, have fitted LED uplighters and completely avoided the possibility of seeing LEDs directly from your luxuriating, soaped position. The issue is surely at least close to as bad with quartz downlighters? It isn't the fundamental light source so much as the lack of diffusion/dispersion to ensure that there is no extremely bright spot that can be viewed directly.

Reply to
polygonum

Exactly why we ended up with one of these:

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Reply to
Tim Streater

Fluorescent lamps emit a fair amount of relatively short wave radiation even in the conventional glass envelope. They also give a greenish cast to photographs as the predominant mercury wavelength is in the green.

I understand that short wavelengths are not good for people with macular degeneration.

"White" LEDs are essentially a shortwave blue LED emitter coated with a yellow phosphor the exact composition of which determines the percieved colour temperature. The mixture of blue and yellow light is a pretty good approximation but its spectrum is different to natural sunlight.

This only really matters with a handful of materials that exhibit serious depending on the character of ambient light.

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Alexandrite is the canonical mineral and neodymium glass is the most commonly seen example of this phenomena.

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Reply to
Martin Brown

Once they are inside a diffuser they are no different to incandescents.

You have got used to the claimed wattage equivalents of poxy CFLs but the new generation of LED really are as bright as the incandescent that they claim to replace and light up instantly. I got caught out by a bathroom too - I got one for my parents because I worried about them stumbling around in the half darkness as the CFL took an age to warm up.

The first LED unit I chose a nominally 60W equivalent was too bright!

Reply to
Martin Brown

That entirely depends on the tubes. There is a big variety of colour temperature and spectrums available from specialists. 'Standard' tubes may be ok for lighting a corridor but can be greatly improved for domestic use. The tubes will cost more - but with electronic control will have a very long life.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

We haven't been caught out in the bathroom as what we put in is a fluorescent, not a CFL, and it has no discernible delay before coming on.

Reply to
Tim Streater

So not the link you put in your response to me which says, quite clearly, "CFL"?

Reply to
polygonum

How witty. Not that I care one way or the other - the line between a traditional fluorescent and what people think of when "CFL" is mentioned, depends who you ask. Both are fluorescent, but whatever Martin installed that apparently "caught him out" was evidently what most people think of as a CFL - something that you plug into a 60W lightbulb socket.

What I linked to, we already knew would work fine as we already had one installed elsewhere in the house. As I said, comes on straight away and pretty much at full brightness.

Reply to
Tim Streater

The study that was doing the rounds a while back was by Dr. Cecilia Sanchez Ramos, but there have been others.

ISTM to be at the stage where there might potentially be an issue that needs further investigation, at least with lights that emit excessive blue, but that vested interests think there isn't.

Reply to
Lee

This is a question which the EU is researching.

There is a health issue with exposure to intense blue light, which is well known to laser operators (BLB - blue light blindness). Cumulative exposure significantly increases chance of macular degeneration, but above a certain threshold, it causes pretty instant blindess, although there's a 24 hour delay following exposure before that happens and if you know you've been exposed, there is an antidote which can be used in that 24 hour window. (The exposure releases a chemical in the eye, which in turn causes blindness, but that chemical can be mopped up if caught in time.)

LEDs have a higher far blue component than filament lamps, and the danger of macular degeneration and BLB is being considered. At the moment, the EU believes it's not yet a problem for the public, but it is now something which people with a larger exposure should protect themselves against (such as someone regularly installing or relamping LED lamps).

Most white LEDs are actually blue LEDs with a phosphor to generate the longer wavelength colours. In some high power industrial LEDs, the phosphor is separated from the blue LED so that the LED chip does not also have to dissipate the heat given off by the phosphor (the Stokes Shift energy released when a high energy blue photon is changed into a lower energy photon such as red). If such a lamp breaks or is disassembled, then the high energy blue LED could be directly visible, and carries the risk of BLB when handled at arm's length.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

Err. No! You have precisely the wrong end of the stick.

It was a modern LED nominal 60W brightness device that was *VERY* much brighter than the crappy nominal 60W slow to light up CFL it replaced. CFL nominal 60W incandescent equivalent is more like 45W and I have yet to see a convincing 150W incandescent equivalent in either CFL or LED.

LED units come on immediately at full brightness. No ifs no buts.

The price is getting competitive now too for replacements.

Reply to
Martin Brown

Yes, and we have a bunch of GU10 versions in the kitchen. We thought also of using them in the bathroom (which was being renovated) but decided against because even with diffusers, they have enough point brightness to be irritating to older eyes. Hence why we installed the fluorescent jobbie that we did. It has a built-in electronic ballast which, AFAIK, is what is needed in such devices for immediate turnon.

In fact these "always-on" lights that cars seem to have now are going to be very irritating as they are seem very often to be a string of white LEDs and are very bright point sources.

Reply to
Tim Streater

I find the strobing of LED vehicle lights quite irritating. It seems that some people don't notice it.

Reply to
Graham.

There is a chain of shops around Manchester that do LED wide-beam 5W GU10s at £2.99. Choice of "cool" "daylight" or "warm". I thought the price was good, but I'd be interested in hearing of any better deals around.

Reply to
Graham.

+0.5 I can see it and it can be distracting (and I wonder if that might even be intentional, just as HID headlamps are diliberately a different colour so you can see the owner paid for a more expensive model).

Not sure it quite reaches the level of 'irritating' though.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

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