LED lights are finally coming down in price, but before you rush out to buy some, here’s some information you may like to know.
They are widely thought of as being environmentally friendly but what many people do not know is that LEDs contain arsenic, lead, nickel and other toxins that have been linked to cancer, kidney disease, skin rashes and other health issues.
This has been known since 2010, when the findings of a study conducted at UC-Irvine were published in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology. The study included tests on a variety of LED lights including household bulbs, car headlights, car brake lights, and Christmas lights. Some were found to have eight times more lead content than permitted by Californian law. The report recommended that ‘when bulbs break at home, residents should sweep them up with a special broom while wearing gloves and a mask’. The broom should also be disposed of. That doesn’t sound environmentally friendly to me!
What’s more, because they are not officially classed as being toxic, broken LED bulbs (and accompanying brooms, presumably), all end up in landfill. Most people know these days that Compact Fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) need special handling if they break because they contain mercury, but as far as I know there are no regulations in any country about disposing of LEDs.
And that’s not all.
As many as 1 in 4,000 people are thought to be unable to tolerate the flicker of LED lights, which can aggravate conditions such as lupus, autism, chronic fatigue syndrome and epilepsy, and can cause symptoms such as nausea, headaches and sore eyes. Here in the UK some people are campaigning against the widespread use of LEDs because they say it will make it impossible for anyone suffering from these conditions to work or have access to any public buildings. It’s claimed that up to 2 million people could be affected in this country alone. No such side-effects were ever reported with incandescent bulbs.
And there’s more.
LEDs emit much more blue light than incandescents. A study reported in the Journal of Environmental Management in Oct 2011 (Volume 92, Issue 10) concluded that this suppresses the body’s production of melatonin five times more than the light from incandescent light bulbs, and there is growing evidence that this type of disruption is linked to the development of serious illnesses including cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
For all these reasons, I have never used LED lights in my own home or recommended them to clients.
Fortunately, I have what I hope is some good news to end this article. A US company called Advanced Lighting Technologies has created a new type of incandescent bulb called Vybrant 2X that uses nanotechnology and lasts twice as long as the old fashioned incandescents, uses 50% less power, and is 25% of the price of a Cree LED.
Of course nanotechnology is a whole new can of worms, and we have no way of knowing what the long-term effects of using this will be. So for now in my home I’m sticking with Philips EcoClassic light bulbs, which I find produce the best ambience and low electromagnetic fields. They are also inexpensive, warm white in colour, contain no mercury, and have a CRI (colour rendering index) of 100, which is the same as the old incandescent bulbs.
Copyright © Karen Kingston 2013
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