LEDs cause health risk

[FenderBender]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/08/08/158426970/energy-efficient-lightbulbs-have-a-dark-side-when-it-comes-to-health?live=1%3Futm_source%3Dfp&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20120808

What to make of this..."article"...

[tom66]

It doesn't seem to mention anything about LEDs being a hazard, other than blue light - but that phenomenon is already understood.

[codeboy2k]

Did you even read the article yourself?

The title of the article doesn't even mention LEDS, and yet you do.  The article is actually mostly about Compact Flourescent Lighting, and how damage in the phospor coating of CFLs bulbs occurs they are twisted during manufacturing, subsequently causing cracks in the phospors and which can allow dangerous UV light to leak, the UV source being the mercury vapor in CFLs, and there's the health risk.

Furthermore, it responsibly concludes that LED lighting has phosphors too, but that's the only similarity to CFL's ... the LED phosphors are energized by visible blue light, so any damage to the phospors only emits safe blue light.

It's completely factual. 

What's your agenda here?

[itdontgo]

The people of earth have bigger problems than cracked CFLs

[free_electron]

Only certain white emitters from Nichia are actually a UV emitter (in reality a NUV near-Uv... it is not high enough to be UV ) with a white phosphor on top of it.
Other types do not emit UV. They are blue emitters with a different phosphor. The only thing that leaks there is blue light. not UV.
Or you have true triplet based leds (RGB )

the only truth in all this drizzle is that the production + disposal of CCFL produces more hazardous waste , and consumes more energy (production energy as well as consumption energy and energy used during recycling) than a filament based lightbulb does by simply being switched on for 15 years ...

you save 10$ in consumption energy but burn 50 in recycling ... and we're not even dealing with what to do with leftover mercury in those things..
the biggest scam ever...

[SeanB]

Seeing as the glass they are made of is actually the cheap soda glass, which is really good at absorbing UV light even in the thin walls used on these lamps I would say this is a load of bovine process terminal product.

They even say the phosphor is applied before the glass is turned into a spiral. You really have to look how they are made to see the glass is transparent when it is bent, the coating being applied in a slurry pumped through and then allowed to drain leaving the thin coat. Trying to bend the coat will just result in it burning off the glass, it cannot survive to the glass softening temperature.

[codeboy2k]

I found this... it's pretty cool.  Yep, as Sean said, they are twisted THEN coated.

[FenderBender]

I didn't mean LEDs only. Sorry for the title...

But, yeah I always cringe when I see tech/electronics articles on non-tech sites...

[NiHaoMike]

I remember reading that some UV exposure (15-20 minutes of sunlight every day) is actually good, and the lack of it leads to vitamin D deficiency.

[AntiProtonBoy]

The UV exposure potential from leaky CFL is a piss in the ocean compared to the dose you get from the sun. You should be more concerned about those sunny afternoon BBQ sessions, or passing out drunk on the beach. From memory, the Sun's power density on the earth surface at 320 nm UV is something like ~400 mW / m^2 / nm, and rapidly drops off at shorter wavelengths. Now, I seriously doubt that a tiny phosphor coating defect on a CFL will incur a power density anywhere near the aforementioned figures. Not to mention the glass envelope will absorb a substantial amount of UV, including the lamp covers for some installations (which could be glass, paper, plastic, containing dyes that have excitation wavelengths also in the UV).

[FenderBender]

I found this... it's pretty cool.  Yep, as Sean said, they are twisted THEN coated.

Very cool.

[Psi]

I remember reading that some UV exposure (15-20 minutes of sunlight every day) is actually good, and the lack of it leads to vitamin D deficiency.

Yes, there is growing evidence that most of the modern world needs far more vitamin D than we get, due to an indoor life.

The difference in vitamin D level in say a lifeguard vs someone who works in an office is huge.

There were a few recent studies i remember where they gave vitamin D to everyone on only one floor of a hospital and the results in recovery rates were quite significant compared to the other floors.

One issue with vitamin D is that it's not patentable, so it's impossible to make the buckets of money that pharmaceutical companies want. This is why there is little research in the area.