Interesting article

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It's taking about LEDs being tied to women with breast cancer

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Not sure if anyone else is experiencing this but the link takes too long to load and is loaded with ads.`.
 
They seem to have no shortage of 'links' to this terrible disease , along with no shortage of $$$ to do so.

But it's still around ......

~RJ~
 
The title of the article is this:

"LED Danger: Study Finds Link Between Lighting And Breast Cancer"

Which is a flat-out lie and clickbait of the worse kind. What it boiled down to was some people are bothered by the new LED streetlights' brightness, so they had to shut the curtains or hang black-out drapes. Hardly like getting insta-cancer. Awareness, not scareness.

Here is the Harvard "study" (more like a 5th grade editorial) they linked showing LED lights will give you cancer of the everything:

https://www.ama-assn.org/ama-adopts-guidance-reduce-harm-high-intensity-street-lights

Number of times cancer is mentioned in the study, even as a remote possibility: zero.

This is from the article too:

"Increasing the risk of diabetes, obesity, depression,” Stevens said.

And potential cancers.

A study from Harvard found a greater risk of breast cancer in women who live in neighborhoods that have higher levels of outdoor light during the night. The higher the light level, the higher the risk.

“There’s a lot of potential breast cancer,” Benal said."

Stevens is the doctor/expert they interview. Benal is the lady interviewed complaining the new LED streetlights are too bright. Stevens nor the Harvard study mentions cancer, it seems the author interjected that as supposition, and passed that scare onto Benal.

CBS New York should be patently ashamed for printing such misleading garbage.
 
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IMHO the article is full of intentional scare tactics and click bait, announcing in big bold letters a connection that is not really supported by the evidence.

With that said, I believe the following:

1) things like poor sleep can lead to reduced immune function, and it would not surprise me if poor sleep could be connected to cancer. The evidence is currently weak/non existent but my guess is that if we look we will find the connection

2) Blue light is known to be bad for 'sleep hygiene', and makes it harder to sleep

3) There are a tremendous number of poorly designed LED streetlights, or (worse IMHO) LED streetlights that are well designed to be sold cheaply at the cost of long term light quality.

Echoing some of the things that member electriclight says, LEDs used in street lighting are generally _fluorescent_ devices, using blue or soft UV LED elements combined with phosphors to produce whit(ish) light. Thus they are naturally sources of lots of blue light, and if the phosphor decays they can emit relatively more blue. Well guess what: if you use fewer emitters (less $$$) and push them harder, they run hot and their phosphor decays. Combine this with poor lens design and poor shielding, and you can get lots of light in places where it does more harm than good, eg. shining into bedroom windows or shining directly into driver's eyes.

In conclusion I disagree with the scare tactics used by the article in the OP, but there are real issues here to be looked at.

-Jon
 
I remember 35 years ago or so we were replacing the incandescent light fixtures with fluorescent through out women's college in the dormitories and there was a big todo about.
Example: posters and flyers about how the fluorescent light causes all kind of cancer some of the students were even hiding the lights that we would bring up to the floor in the afternoon that we were going to install the next day. install the next day.
I guess things haven't changed much.
 
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