LED lighting creating crisis for human mitochondria: Researchers..

 

https://www.newsnationnow.com/health/led-lighting-human-mitochondria-research/amp/

 

 

Quote

 

The analysis conducted by University College London (UCL) Dr. Glen Jeffery and Dr. Edward Barrett found that mitochondria are highly sensitive to the wavelength of light and could have massive public health consequences.  Previous studies on the issue have been performed on mice and other animals.

 

“This is an asbestos-level health crisis,” Jeffrey said.

 

“A solution may be found in creating lighting units with multiple longer wavelength LEDs to cover a wider span of the near infrared,” Jeffrey said.

 

 

So presumably warm white is better for you than cold whilte.

 

 

 

 

 

Interesting for windowless rooms and I suppose may warrant avoiding specialist solar films on windows? No data on working near a window but I'm guessing that provides way more exposure than a single lamp?

 

Warm leds sit in the same frequency range as cool just with a different distribution so I'd be surprised if that made any difference, but again no data.

Seems like the research was published in January but a load of AI regurgitation has sprung up about it in the last few days.

Original paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-35389-6

 

20 hours ago, Temp said:

So presumably warm white is better for you than cold whilte.

 

 

Not sure, the reference "problematic" LEDs in the study were 3000K so it's already comparing incandescent vs warm white LED. Skimming the article all LED lights roll off at about 670nm but you need about 1000nm+ for the IR spectral component they talk about

 

I've always felt the CTT [colour temperature tuning] is bit of a fad, especially in a domestic setting.  But I can see a variant having a large benefit of having WW / IR dual channel emitters, and dynamically increase the amount of IR emitted based on various factors. e.g., more IR in winter when the inhabitants will have exposed to less of it naturally, and also when the loss of lighting efficiency is not so problematic as the IR is at least contributing to useful space-heating.

 

Edited May 27May 27 by joth