Live data from Hacker News

LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night

sevarg.net

131–140 of 316 posts

Re: LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night

#131

Are there any light fittings that contain a filter for blue light? Edit: or why don’t manufacturers put ‘blue light filters’ in to the plastic diffuser many LED bulbs have?

They sell 2700k warm bulbs instead. There’s also the Bedtime Bulb here that is even warmer and reduces flicker.

Re: LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night

#133
post #79

There is always a time lag between the introduction of a cool new technology, and the discovery of its negative effects on human health. DDT was invented in the 1940's, and it wasn't until twenty years later that people discovered its negative effects through bioaccumulation. Teflon was invented in the 1930's, and it again took decades to discover its negative effects on human health, apparently under high heat. Ciga…

I don’t think there’s such a lag to discover the negative effects. A couple of years perhaps, but not decades.

What you are pointing at is the time when these negative effects can’t be rejected by their respective industries. Teflon and cigarettes had the scientific experiments done pretty early, and from there it was the different companies fighting the results to affect public perception.

New products spreading successfully in our society always have a set of companies getting big and powerful, with a critical interest in killing any attempt to paint their products as nefarious or needing caution. Of course it will take decades to get them to acknowledge they’re screwing the whole population.

PS: of course any new technology is always a trade-off, and the risks can be worth the upsides. For Teflon, even knowing the issues, many people will still chose to use non-stick for sheer convenience. BTW it’s not just “high” temperatures (“high” meaning heating your pan too much for 2~5s from memory), you’ll get contamination on physical damage and wearing off of the coating as well.

Re: LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night

#134
Those “color vision correcting” glasses (e.g. EnChroma) use an optical technology called notch filtering:

“EnChroma glasses are spectral notch filters that remove light from two regions of the visible spectrum: from the region near 480 to 490 nm (in the blue–green part of the spectrum) and from the region near 580 to 590 nm (in the orange–yellow part of the spectrum).” https://www.practiceupdate.com/content/the-effects-of-enchro...

This article states the conclusion of the research is the problematic light has “a peak around 477nm, with the 50% sensitivity level from 438-493nm”, and from looking at the graph it seems 420-500nm covers it down to 20% sensitivity.

It seems like a set of glasses with a spectral notch filter blocking out that chunk of the wavelength spectrum could do an end-run around all these issues. Put them on when the sun goes down and it doesn’t matter if your LEDs are leaking blue light, your dimmers don’t go low enough, or you can’t stop yourself going on your phone in bed. From other comments here it seems “light from above” has a particular importance for physiological reasons, so the glasses should incorporate a shroud from the top of the frame to your eyebrows to block out all light from above as well.

I’m no expert on optics but it seems spectral filters aren’t hard to buy. Something with a center wavelength of 475nm and a full-width half-max between 60nm and 100nm should do the trick.

Re: LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night

#135

Regarding the quoted e-book study: > Third, in the present study, the LE-eBook was set to maximum brightness throughout the 4-h reading session, whereas, by comparison, the print-book condition consisted of reflected exposure to very dim light. Yeah, max brightness is probably going to make an impact. I bet if you were in a room with a bright light reading a book, with an equivalent amount of lumens going into your e…

Yes, thank you for being rational. "Yorg, turn down the campfire or we'll never get to sleep!"

Re: LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night

#136
post #119

What's the scientific opinion on blue blockers for prescription eyeglasses? There are some claims that suggest the health benefits are over stated. But my optometrist continues to recommend them given my profession and exposure to blue light. Anecdotally, it appears it has helped but not sure if it's related to other factors.

I think it's been debunked and they provide no benefit. Check out https://youtu.be/NkJY9bgLyBE. That includes interviews with and MD who's high up in the American Academy of Opthalmology. At one point it's pointed out that you get orders of magnitude more blue light from the sky than any screen and humans have been encountering the sky forever.

Re: LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night

#137
post #6
post #2

I have had led lights for over a decade. Come 10:30pm every night I'm falling asleep with no problem.

> Come 10:30pm every night I'm falling asleep with no problem. I'd have said N=1 vs the study out there, but I too work with screens & LED lighting all the time & the "light spectrum" that affects me is not exactly the indoor component. My personal theory is that the daytime to nightime being about the same lighting is what sucks. When the total range of lighting varies a lot, I don't feel as bad. A lot of my trouble…

I’ve spent protracted periods of time with pretty consistent lighting all day and never had trouble sleeping. LEDs seem to have no effect on me, and I’ve slept till noon outside with bright Caribbean sun shining on my face. I know a lot of people like that.

My theory is that being obsessed with sleeping makes it hard to come by. Good luck applying that though.

Re: LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night

#138
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Post author) The short answer is that I'm quite familiar with those, but I felt the post I'd made was getting alarmingly long already, and I did decide to try and reduce some of the "10k word epics" I'm prone to writing. This probably should have been split into multiple posts, but I struggled to find anything I found relevant to cut. And, yes, figuring out the structure of it was a challenge, because I know a lot o…

Hey, super great post. Light and health is the topic I care most about, so much so that I created the aforementioned Bedtime Bulb product to make it simpler for people to get the right light at night. I also put out a YouTube video series [0] covering the modern history of lighting, although I haven't finished it yet. We posted as many specs and graphics as we could for Bedtime Bulb on our tech specs page [1]. We're…

Neat, any chance of an E27 or bayonet for UK/NZ?

Re: LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night

#139

Are there any light fittings that contain a filter for blue light? Edit: or why don’t manufacturers put ‘blue light filters’ in to the plastic diffuser many LED bulbs have?

They sell 2700k warm bulbs instead. There’s also the Bedtime Bulb here that is even warmer and reduces flicker.

From the article, spectrum and colour temperature are related but not 1:1 matches to each other. A “2700K” light can apparently have quite a lot of blue in it still.

> If you go to a hardware store, you’ll almost certainly see a demo of light color temperatures in the bulb aisle (typically around 2700K for “warm” light, around 5000K for “cool” light). You can get to those average light warmths a wide range of ways, though, and so two different bulbs with the same color temperature may have very different spectrum plots to get to the same visible end result. Without running them through a spectrometer, you can’t tell the difference - our eyes simply don’t work like that.

Re: LED lighting badly suppresses human melatonin production at night

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sell 2700k warm bulbs instead. There’s also the Bedtime Bulb here that is even warmer and reduces flicker.

From the article, spectrum and colour temperature are related but not 1:1 matches to each other. A “2700K” light can apparently have quite a lot of blue in it still. > If you go to a hardware store, you’ll almost certainly see a demo of light color temperatures in the bulb aisle (typically around 2700K for “warm” light, around 5000K for “cool” light). You can get to those average light warmths a wide range of ways, t…

Then go with the Bedtime bulb, it is made specifically to reduce that. Creator is in the thread answering questions.
Post reply on HN