I thought that only in Israel, cancer from light is mentioned everywhere: http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/blue-light-has-a-dark-side

It is again the same topic: Awakening blue-rich light.
Yes, the cold light awakens people and when this happens when you are trying to sleep, the sleep isn't that good and that result in higher chances of problems.
But that means all blue rich light, so includes most of the discharges used already 70 years or so, so it is nothing new at all.

Yes, the knowledge of the exact mechanism is indeed a new thing, but the effects are here for nearly three generations, most of the time with rough knowledge of the results.

And yes, the discovery is in my eyes rather important, but the reason is, it will allow to counteract the effect for people, who can not, due to some reason, eliminate the blue lights from their resting sites. So allow e.g. better alternatives (more targeted to the real cause, so with less side effects) to the generic sleeping pills.

But this panic spreading in the articles is indeed completely wrong...

The blue light we have been exposed to "for three generations" consists of few spectral lines. For a Triphosphor fluorescent (so pretty much any CFL) the lines are positioned at :

410nm (low peak from Hg) - at the very end of the sensitivity range of any cone cell
440nm (high peak from Hg) - at the peak of the sensitivity of the shortwave cone cell
490nm (band, looks to me like from phosphor) - at near equal sensitivity of all 3 cone cells - shortwave, medium and long as well

LED have a single blue output band at around 450nm - Which only the S cell is sensitive to

So for the same coverage of blue side of the spectrum, it looks to me like the LED have more blue in the area which is recepted only by the S cell, possibly some effect comes from here

I cannot measure the spectrum or point the exact effect involved, but i can confirm that under LED light (of various brightness levels) i feel higher strain than under triphosphor CFL light of the same (looks to me) or higher (by rating) K temperature (LED 5000K vs CFL 6500K)

The blue light we have been exposed to "for three generations" consists of few spectral lines. For a Triphosphor fluorescent (so pretty much any CFL) the lines are positioned at :

410nm (low peak from Hg) - at the very end of the sensitivity range of any cone cell
440nm (high peak from Hg) - at the peak of the sensitivity of the shortwave cone cell
490nm (band, looks to me like from phosphor) - at near equal sensitivity of all 3 cone cells - shortwave, medium and long as well

LED have a single blue output band at around 450nm - Which only the S cell is sensitive to

So for the same coverage of blue side of the spectrum, it looks to me like the LED have more blue in the area which is recepted only by the S cell, possibly some effect comes from here

I cannot measure the spectrum or point the exact effect involved, but i can confirm that under LED light (of various brightness levels) i feel higher strain than under triphosphor CFL light of the same (looks to me) or higher (by rating) K temperature (LED 5000K vs CFL 6500K)

The day-night cycle is actually not (at least not mainly) controlled by the conventional cone cells. There is a third, little known photoreceptor cell type in the eyes, ganglion cells, whose purpose is not vision, but to syncronize with the day-night cycle. Their absobtion peak is supposedly around 480 nm. Wikipedia.

There is more than one potential problem related to the blue light :

One (on which articles focus) is the melatonin / day and night switching issue



The other - with which i am concerned more now. is the loading of blue cone cells by disproportional amount of blue light

The cells are loaded, but the amount of light in general may be not sufficient to contract the iris to the correct size, so too little of the light is blocked to get the cells out of the overloaded state

Over time of exposure to such excessive monochromatic blue (which is not present in nature, and to much lower extent with Fluorescent or HID), i see there potential for damage. I assume that our body does alert us to whats wrong before damage happens, as much as it can. If i get more strain, i assume this is such a warning feeling