Doctors issue warning about LED streetlights

[glenc]

An interesting article.

"The American Medical Association (AMA) has just adopted an official policy statement (http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/news/news/2016/2016-06-14-community-guidance-street-lighting.page) about street lighting: cool it and dim it...
In previous articles for The Conversation, I have described how lighting affects our normal circadian physiology (https://theconversation.com/a-dark-night-is-good-for-your-health-39161), how this could lead to some serious health consequences (https://theconversation.com/the-mystery-of-breast-cancer-40036) and most recently how lighting the night affects sleep (https://theconversation.com/are-we-sleep-deprived-or-just-darkness-deprived-49412)...
A dark night is good for your health (https://theconversation.com/a-dark-night-is-good-for-your-health-39161)
Bright electric lighting can also adversely affect wildlife (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534715001603) by, for example, disturbing migratory patterns of birds and some aquatic animals which nest on shore."

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/21/health/led-streetlights-ama/index.html

[blindman]

In regards to " serious health consequences " you can find some BIG lies.

LED lighting will not enter my house, anyhow :-)

[janoskiss]

A bit sensationalist (as you'd expect from a major news outlet) but not entirely invalid. Blue light does mess with sleeping patterns. But we've had mercury gas discharge lamps for ever, and they emit mostly in the blue, green and violet. They are worse than cool white LEDs. Sodium lamps are nice, and perfect for night time (esp high pressure ones that effectively emit at a single wavelength of orange light).

But these light sources are very inefficient, so LEDs may be a better way to go. Dimming is a good idea (like drugs for illness: use the smallest effective dose). LEDs are also a big improvement over fluoros as far as both the quality of the light emitted and efficiency.

Relevant Sixty Symbols vid: https://youtu.be/O7mEBpJVJbA