Increase in LED lighting ‘risks harming human and animal health’

[AE-NMidlands]

Transition to blue light radiation across Europe increases suppression of sleep hormone melatonin, say scientists https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... mal-health
Interesting bit at the very end

Some councils in England are already trying to reduce the impact of LED lighting, which Evans says are “encouraging signs” that action is being taken. He points out that some authorities are dimming the lights during night hours, and are changing the bandwidths of their LED bulbs to produce less harmful blue light, as seen on the Isle of Wight, which uses warmer bulbs that emit less blue light.

I guess that, having fitted LED streetlights it will be decades before councils change them again as the lights are so reliable!

[Oldgreybeard]

This is interesting because all the lights in our house are LEDs, have been since I built it some years ago. I did have to change a lot of them, though, precisely because we found the light a bit uncomfortable in some rooms. Most of the lights are now "warm white", a colour that closely mimics the light from incandescent lamps. Since doing that a couple of years ago we've found the lighting to be a lot more comfortable. The previous LEDs had a colour spectrum that seemed to be closer to the rather harsh light from some older types of fluorescent tubes. Certainly very bright, but also with a fairly high blue light content.

[Countrypaul]

When we renovated about 5 years ago the wife opted to have all the LEDs at a colour temperature of 2700K Most of the fittings we used actually had a switch to set the colour temperature 2700/3000/4000 iirc. She used to work in a colour matching lab and is very aware of the effects that different light has on our perception of colour, and also the effect it has on the body.

[Mr Gus]

Maybe clean the lens cover (isoprop as a fast acting degreasant) & stick a filter on the inside to reduce any perceived problems.

Problem was in the early days, that the loss in lumens was atrocious when opting for warm white, it's not so bad now but back then you were dropping a lot of light output opting for warm light,

There was a lot of progress in lumens per watt for some time via the main manufacturers, nowadays it feels like they have sat on their laurels & simply raked in the cash, (Philips) then when a slightly tweaked output range comes out it can be £30 for a bulb.

What the hell?

Incidentally, my cheapo aluminium cast 10 watt output mini floodlight has been in nigh on daily use since around 2009 (longer than we can remember basically)

[richbee]

I've got quite a few of the philips hue colour change bulbs, which have a scale of light temperatures - so you can have them come on with blue light to wake you up in the morning or help you concentrate, and then change to warmer light in the evening to help you go to sleep - it does make a big visual difference to how the lights feel - not sure I can say scientifically that is has helped our sleep tho

[Mr Gus]

Yeah the rgb is nice but way overpriced for a low watts output bulb that peaked in efficiency 6+ years ago.
My I have purchased plenty of Philips bulbs over the years, led / non per energy savers, the warranty service was the best thing about them which helped enhance the reputation & float the price upward, but the maniacy for rgb costing for some bulbs / accessories upward of £100 to the in with a not great hue hub / app without has been an obscenity.

The leds are now rated at F efficiency under newer e.g. governance, so where are the "A" ratings? ..still to see any myself, let alone a direct, contextual comparison, because sure as hell there is not much difference to justify changing an already fed didn't bulb that cost you £30+ several years ago to another that is a close shave micro-improvement on the old.

How does the energy savings set up justify the whole production process & reclassification of product, to myself they merely serve to show themselves up as horses @rses.

We all know that savings are finite in components, which you can end up screwing the potential lifespan with if you try to ratchet it down too much.
Our landing light led (100 watt equivalent) lasted 5 years but each bulb worked out at £4 each, ..The Philips come nowhere near that output unless you pay stupid money ...for one, not 5 bulbs.

I'm happy to place a film over the glass lense, if there was one that didn't simply turn it into a warm old colour (which we hate) ...& The insects were still drawn to those old halogen units I might add.

[Oldgreybeard]

The energy rating reset is a PITA thing that is guaranteed to cause confusion. We have a fridge freezer that is rated as being A++, and now this is somewhere down around F, I believe. Best bet would have been to change to using numbers, that might have avoided the confusion.

The topic of the power drawn by lighting is an interesting one. This house was built (in 2014) with two lighting circuits, one upstairs, one downstairs, as that seemed to be the standard. Each had a 6A RCBO protecting it. When I had the wiring re-jigged to add a second consumer unit, just for maintained circuits from the battery inverter emergency power system, I measured the load on the lighting circuits with every light in the house turned on. Interestingly the total current with every light on was well under 1A. Both lighting circuits are now on a single 6A RCBO in the maintained supply consumer unit, and even that is a massive overkill.

Shows how things have changed. We used to install two 6A lighting circuits as standard in houses, with the assumption that the load might be too great for just a single circuit. Now lighting efficiency has improved so much that it draws massively less power than it used to.

[Mr Gus]

+1 OGB.

[John_S]

The energy rating reset is a PITA thing that is guaranteed to cause confusion. We have a fridge freezer that is rated as being A++, and now this is somewhere down around F, I believe. Best bet would have been to change to using numbers, that might have avoided the confusion.

The topic of the power drawn by lighting is an interesting one. This house was built (in 2014) with two lighting circuits, one upstairs, one downstairs, as that seemed to be the standard. Each had a 6A RCBO protecting it. When I had the wiring re-jigged to add a second consumer unit, just for maintained circuits from the battery inverter emergency power system, I measured the load on the lighting circuits with every light in the house turned on. Interestingly the total current with every light on was well under 1A. Both lighting circuits are now on a single 6A RCBO in the maintained supply consumer unit, and even that is a massive overkill.

Shows how things have changed. We used to install two 6A lighting circuits as standard in houses, with the assumption that the load might be too great for just a single circuit. Now lighting efficiency has improved so much that it draws massively less power than it used to.

There is a strong argument for having two circuits in case one trips the circuit breaker. If that happens, there will still be some light in the house.

My new consumer unit has twin RCBs with a mixture of power and lighting circuits on each.

[Oldgreybeard]

There is a strong argument for having two circuits in case one trips the circuit breaker. If that happens, there will still be some light in the house.

My new consumer unit has twin RCBs with a mixture of power and lighting circuits on each.

Good point, but we have a fair few occasional lights that are plugged in to the rings, mostly with remote control adapters (we're getting lazy). I'd say that most of the time we use lights that are plugged in to sockets, the exception being the kitchen, hall and bathroom lights. We have RCBOs rather than RCDs, so every circuit has its own RCD, in effect. That does make it far less likely that we could lose the fixed lighting and the incidental lighting at the same time, I think.

Also we're pretty much always both upstairs, or both downstairs, at any one time, so there probably isn't any real advantage in having the lighting separated out. Years ago many houses were wired without a dedicated lighting circuit fuse. I remember working on lots of houses in the early 1970s that just had FCUs in each room to feed power to the lights from the ring. There's a big housing estate outside Helston where all the houses were wired like this, with just two fuses in the consumer unit, one for the cooker the other for power. Nightmare to work on, as the builder had played fast and loose with the lighting wiring, so it was pretty common for the FCU on the wall in one room to be feeding power to the lights in a different room. IIRC the houses were all built by Barratt's and the wiring was a typical cost-cutting move by them.