When I read about the toxic products and practices of the past, I can't help but wonder what the yet undetected ones are?
I've been trying to track sources of PFAS in my home and always end up discovering something unexpected that contains it. Those compounds are literally everywhere nowadays, this is scary.
Endocrine disruptors in plastics are a civilization sized problem.
Every year the plastic micro debris gets smaller and the problems grow larger.
Wealthy nations have a distorted view not because plastic is cheap (though it is), but because we're so rich that we no longer remember what it's like to be able to afford your first pair of shoes.
Plastic was a miracle material.
Room temperature plastics are bad enough...
I dunno sunscreen just seems a little too good to be true IMO.
Sunscreen has had environmental issues, contamination issues, and effectiveness issues (the whole UVA/UVB thing). None of those indicate a problem with the underlying product when used properly, and it is definitely better than nothing! I prefer to cover up with clothes and just avoid the noon-time sun, though.
https://time.com/6084625/sunscreen-safety-regulations/?amp=t...
They're cheap (at least, subsidized), they're long lasting (maybe), they're energy efficient (certainly), and they emit a huge amount of blue, squarely in the wavelengths that the human eye uses to determine if it's day or night. The practical effect is that if you're using LED lighting, it's quite hard to go to sleep at night - and we know that sleep deprivation is really bad for humans across pretty much any metric you might care to examine.
The way that white LEDs work is simple enough: They're a blue LED. Bright, efficient, and very much not anything "white." So, the package is coated with various sorts of phosphors that take some of the energy from the blue wavelengths, and move it down into the reds and yellows and greens. Presto, white light of your desired color temperature! Daylight, warm, it can be done.
Unfortunately, it's not the same spectrum as an incandescent emitter at the same color temperature - there's still a huge chunk of blue over at one end. Color temperature is just an average - you need to look at the CRI (color rendering index) to get a better feel for it, and most LEDs, while better than the utterly ugly light of compact florescent (seriously, yuck - and the spectrum shows why), still aren't great. They have a lot of blue. The cheaper ones, common in homes, have a lot of blue. Even the "red shift dimming" one still have a lot of blue when dimmed.
And this blue is right in the range that your body uses to inhibit melatonin production. There are separate receptors in the eye that pick up light in the ~440-480nm range, and go "Oh, hey, it's day - stay awake!" If you have LEDs, these are doing the same thing in the evening. And perhaps as you head to bed, if you've got LEDs.
We all broadly know that screens are bad for sleep because of the blue, but modern LED bulbs are exactly the same thing. Worse, actually, because they tend to be above us - in the "sky" field of view, which is what these detectors are optimized for.
If you have the resources to try it, try replacing some of your evening bulbs with incandescent bulbs on a dimmer, and dim them down pretty hard as you're starting to wind down and head to bed. Or use kerosene lanterns or something - you want an incandescent emitter, which, in the dimmer ranges, emits almost no blue at all. And then avoid screens entirely for a few hours before bed. See how you sleep. If it's not improved, bug me, I'll buy your bulbs from you.
Of course, cell phones and modern social media are the easy one that we're already seeing backlash to. But that's easy. LED bulbs are more subtle in their manner of being toxic to humans.
I have tried many different brands and quality and found the high CRI ones to be much more pleasant and with a nice looking and smooth light spectrum.
I have not checked with an actual spectrograph but where I live it is almost impossible to find incandescent or halogen bulbs anymore.
- "we have a civilization sized malady"
- "have you tried an extremely local remedy, which works at most in your own home?"
Meanwhile, dimmed incandescents are even better and cost radically less up front - yes, they use more power, and in the winter the heat emissions are welcome. And we use radically less light, because you don't need that much light at night. A kerosene lantern worth of light is more than enough to read by.
2. Good high-CRI, high-R9 bulbs cost over $25 per bulb.
3. That does nothing about the hideous lighting in my office, in hotels, or in anyone else’s home.
Yellow lighting was horrible in every possible way, I'm not going back to that world.
My main beef with LEDs is being in proximity of cheap LEDs with low refresh rates - there's a shop I've stopped visiting because I get a sore head within minutes of being in there, from seeing everything clumsily strobe. Ironically, they sell lighting. I've talked to the boss in there, but he just doesn't see it.
I do wonder whether younger kids sense visual refresh rates moreso than older people, and if so, what effect that might have on them. Certainly stresses my bonce.
You'll have to buy more expensive LEDs and drive them with well-designed electronics.
Yuji LEDs are some of the best.
It is certainly tricky to balance short-term potential benefits (such as a better chance of surviving a covid infection) against long-term potential (and possibly unknown) harms (such as a higher chance of developing a chronic autoimmune disease.)