Every now and again an email drops into the inbox that really cannot be ignored; not that I ignore emails dropping into my inbox – unless you’re trying to sell me something or telling me how you can improve my SEO ratings, whatever they are.
Today’s email that could not be ignored is important because its about an effect that we are all too well aware of but have very little advice to offer for those who are affected by it.
Let me introduce you to Andrew Tonkin of Tadcaster (with his permission).
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Mr Bullock, this is a somewhat out of the blue message posing a rather fuzzily defined topic, but I discovered your work as a commentator/reporter of lighting industry goings-on and I’m sorry to say I’m now seizing the opportunity to bounce something off you, if I may.
I am merely a member of the public, but one of many – albeit a minority who actually speak up – in the wider population who really suffers strange debilitating effects from exposure to certain LED lights.
On the one hand, I am keen to explore what, if anything, the industry is doing to accommodate or mitigate matters for people like me, while the other side of the same coin is to put my hand up and gently shout, “Hey! There’s a problem here …” in case it’s not already known. Or, if the issue is known – and its not hard, for instance, to find emerging research of retina damage from bluey-white LEDs, for example, and I guess that sort of thing and other issues must be registering in back offices of manufacturers – then can I help as but one foot soldier to put the brakes on the industry riding roughshod over sufferers.
As you may know, websites/groups such as https://lightaware.org/ in the UK (I believe), https://www.softlights.org/ in the US and, for vehicle lights principally in the UK http://www.lightmare.org/, try to prompt debate, or provide a home, for concerned folk affected by the drawbacks of certain forms and uses of, especially, LED lighting. But I am, as I say, complementing that with my own ad hoc emails.
I find general heightened irritation and acute discomfort around instances of either flicker, or the sheer harsh directional intensity, or a peculiar piercing bluey-whiteness to some lights that – in the case of vehicles, for example – dangerously obliterates or impede one’s sense of what is going on around or the source of the light or, fourthly, just gloomy poor colour rendering. I generally know about those instantly and tend to look away. But what really prompted me to contact you to help get my often seemingly solitary voice heard in the industry is a peculiar effect from 6,000K (and possibly other temperature) LED corn lamps, as used for ceiling or flood lights.
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Notwithstanding my usual issues with, for example, the absolutely horrendous vertical brilliant white and incredibly intense ‘naked’ LEDs down each interior side of Coco-Cola drinks cabinets in some supermarkets, cinema foyers etc., which are obviously in the “immediately look away category” (don’t Coca-Cola realise they’re losing sales, or causing people to bump into things whilst shielding their eyes??) so it is with these corn lamps. I strangely find minimal flicker, nor any problem if briefly staring at the things, though I am conscious of a general sad gloomy quality to the light. Yet after only a few minutes of exposure to them, and certainly after 10-30 minutes I come over with a very pronounced malaise, which might take the rest of the day or even a night’s sleep to recover from. I typically feel slightly queasy, dazed, mildly hot and sweaty, generally ‘just not with it’, loss of energy and a need to just ‘get outta there’. You might remember the Superman films where, on earth, he loses his strength if exposed to Kryptonite. Its like that, or may be worse, like some kind of slow death-ray!
Its not a case of having a pre-conceived notion of disliking LEDs, then walking into a sports hall or somewhere, and sub-consciously making myself feel ill. I first noticed the effect at Center Parc’s Sherwood Forest sports hall late last year, and also at the National Railway Museum in York earlier this year (where I’d only had localised issues with one particular display on a previous visit, but I suspect they’ve changed the high ceiling lamps sometime in the last 2-3 years in one or both of the main halls). It wasn’t until I’d gone outside for some fresh air feeling odd that I went back, wondering to look up more properly, and only then in both cases saw the form of lighting used. I have the same problem at a private members sports club’s indoor tennis courts and also with the façade floodlighting that in winter months I need pass in front of at my son’s school.
I liken the feeling as being some kind of sensory overload, causing my brain to feel likes its being pushed out through my eyeballs. Feeling rather pleased with the “sensory overload” phrase, I googled that and found it to be ‘a thing’, particularly amongst those with autism/aspergers. I’ve no reason to regard myself as falling in that camp, but it does rather further prove there’s an issue and, given these lamps are being so readily deployed, there’s an urgent need to be talking about them as a matter of good practice or even look at compliance with Disability Discrimination Act requirements.
.Hence my possibly unfairly latching on to you in your more journalistic role! I look forward to any thoughts … even if, “erm, yeah, thanks, noted!” … you may have in response,
Andrew Tonkin
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Having eschewed the opportunity to reply ‘erm, yeah, thanks, noted’ . . . I really must learn to read to the end of emails . . . I’ve been in touch with Andrew and I’m now asking you, my loyal readers, to come back to me with your views, opinions, advice on the way forward for those who find our brave new lighting world to be more trouble than enough.
For your information, I’ve also suggested to Andrew that he reads Anna Levin’s book ‘Incandescent’, her account of the descent into photo-sensitivity. Its an angry book but worth the read to gain an insight into this minority world.
I suggest you send an email, as trying to engage the ‘Contact Us’ button just leaves me clearing up after gaining the attention of random trolls, general super-arseholes and overall bad actors, as we now must learn to call these nutjobs. I promise not to ignore it.
What do you means, you don’t know my email? JUST SCROLL DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE!
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