>find "r9"
>no results
>find "cri"
>no results in post
:/. This is definitely an important and I think unappreciated issue right now, and I'm normally all for long form investigations too. But I don't think this piece structured it very well. It started losing me right at the beginning with what felt like an outdated description of technology applied too broadly, and then not actually bothering to cover the very real improvements changing things until the very end, and even then putting off concrete coverage of who deserves kudos until later. It goes
>They’re internally blue LEDs with a phosphor coating that shifts some of the energy from blue over to the rest of the spectrum - the reds, yellows, and greens.
>They look white to the eye, but they’re actually three separate peaks of light, and they don’t do a very good job rendering colors.
But this seems unnecessarily hand-wavey. We have actual specific measures for this in the form of CRI (color rendering index, 0-100 with natural outdoor light being 100) and R9 (a measure of strong red rendering, which most people tend to like, incandescents tend to be in the 90s). It's definitely true that lots of common cheap LED bulbs have poor CRI and R9, and even these aren't necessarily linked either. But it's also perfectly possible to get decent bulbs that do both ok or focus well on things like helping sleep. The plain old Ikea Tradfri E27 White (like $12) has a CRI of 90 and an R9 of 91. There is a specific sleep focused "bedtimebulb" that has a CRI all the way up at 95 and a respectable R9 in the mid-80s. The Ketra line of lighting gets specific about this as well. This isn't some impossible problem.
Which the article does kind of acknowledge, but only at the very end. If more people knew to look for and ask for these measures, then the market could better respond accordingly. It could be worked into various lighting standards as well for work and government. But "LED lights and screens are killing you" from the beginning doesn't strike me as a good approach.
Basically, the lede should have been the "future reviews" bit and the author should have waited on doing them first because otherwise it's just defeatist. Give people something that is actually actionable, not a "well you're screwed and that's that" because nobody is giving up their screens. Structure should be "these things matter and are in fact being done with more to come, but most don't know to look for these measures and they are far too hard to find, this is something that action should be taken on." Then get into the nitty gritty of why. The goal should be something people can take with them, like at a schoolboard meeting parents being able to ask about the CRI/R9 and general quality of their children's lighting.
The short answer is that I'm quite familiar with those, but I felt the post I'd made was getting alarmingly long already, and I did decide to try and reduce some of the "10k word epics" I'm prone to writing. This probably should have been split into multiple posts, but I struggled to find anything I found relevant to cut. And, yes, figuring out the structure of it was a challenge, because I know a lot of people won't read to the end, so... consider it my best attempt.
I probably should have mentioned CRI and R9 in particular, as those are quite relevant, and a lot of the cheaper LEDs perform very poorly on R9. But I also ran into a limit of the affordable spectrometer I was using being more focused on the blues (it's designed for a 400-580nm main range) than the reds, so I wasn't too comfortable using the data from it to make strong claims about the reds. I'd need a meter that reads either (a) far wider range or (b) more focused on the 600+nm range to make those claims, and I don't have one. While I don't mind spending money for blog post data, I'm also not willing to drop many thousands on a post. Sorry!
I'll pick up some of those Tradfri LEDs, and the "bedtimebulb" ones as well to poke and prod - I've been looking for "good LEDs," and I'm finding stuff that's at least decent looking and has a spectrum plot in the datasheet, but it's at $30/bulb. YujiLED has some stuff that looks good on paper, but... also $35/bulb shipped in small quantities, at which point it's a somewhat hard sell over just using incandescents.
I really do appreciate the feedback, especially on ordering - it's something I struggled with throughout writing this post, and I won't say I'm entirely happy with what I stuck out there, but neither did I find a lot of ways to radically improve it, without moving towards "another book of a blog post."
You say people aren't going to give up their screens, though - but I know people, myself included, who are doing exactly that after the sun goes down, to great sleep benefits. I really do notice the difference.
But as far as actionable measures... I did put those in there. Incandescents, on dimmers, in evening spaces. I have yet to convince myself that even high CRI, high R9 LEDs are low enough in blue to not interfere with human sleep. The ones I've used don't dim very well at all, and certainly not as deeply as incandescent bulbs do.
Thanks for the reply! I don't want to be overly critical and I agree it's important. And yes trying to keep things briefer matters too and is something I often struggle with. I just don't think the tradeoffs were quite right. The alarmism approach has gotten overdone, because in terms of percentages there are lots of things we just live with that are "killing us" by the measures you use there. I deal a fair amount with things like network/computer security that have long been seen as low priority cost centers, and it's always challenging to be in a "proving a negative" or "black swan" sort of area where the default result is nothing happens. I've found in those contexts it's important to chart a middle course between complacency and exhaustion/defeatism. For a long time I was most worried about getting any attention at all, but I've found over the last few years that it's also easy for people to start to feel so overwhelmed that they just give up and yolo it so to speak. So an approach of "this is real, but we can make real progress and it doesn't have to be perfect and here's how" can be effective. Or even a "here's what to ask for/look for over the next few years".
One bit of luck in this specific case is that we do have some relatively decent, relatively easy numbers. "Demand to know CRI & R9, and look for ones that are 80-100 in both, the higher the better" is doable for non-experts and not that far off together I think.
>But as far as actionable measures... I did put those in there. Incandescents, on dimmers, in evening spaces.
I don't consider that actionable myself frankly. Can be an option for "those who are really worried right now" sure, but I don't think most people are ever going back to this, and indeed even finding incandescents at all is going to become harder and harder. How many people have dimmers installed at all in general? How many know how to? How many will go to the effort, vs changing a light bulb? The energy savings and other advantages of LED-based lighting (particularly smart lighting) are too strong. If you present this as one-or-the-other, I think the vast majority are just going to write this off as the same category as various chemical hazards that don't seem like there is much individuals can do conveniently and is stressful to think about and thus people choose not to think about it.
Again, I appreciate the feedback. It's a post I really struggled with the details of, and I've been putting off actually publishing it in some form or another for months now.
The problem is... yeah. This stuff, as I see it, is very literally killing us. Our modern civilization, in a wide range of shapes and forms, is "human toxic" - and as a random blogger in the backwaters of the internet, I see no harm in calling a spade a spade.
I left computer network security for a while, because it was becoming a mental challenge to argue that "everything is broken." Because, as I see it, everything is broken. And nobody will admit it.
As far as CRI/R9 go... yes, it signifies improvement, but a lot of those also still spit out a lot of blue. You can spew a lot of blue, still have a high CRI, still have a high R9, not dim worth a damn, and still screw with human sleep. It's better than a 5000K "blue screamer," but it's still not good. I have a bunch of bulb reviews queued, and I've yet to find anything decent. I'll probably spend another couple hundred on high end high CRI LEDs, but... meh? Just not too exciting, when you're dropping that much on a bulb that's still likely to overheat and die if you use it in a regular fixture.
Incandescent bulbs are getting harder to find and more expensive, yes. Dimmers are rare. But dimmers are straightforward to install, and incandescents can still be found. If the question is, as I've formed it, "Your lighting vs your life" (and I recognize this is harsh, but it's also the conclusion I've formed from the research involved), then, so be it. If you want to sleep well and have high overnight melatonin levels, you have to do these things, because I've not found (yet) an LED solution I'm willing to use.
The energy savings? Install dimmers. Come on. I write about this in the post. If our LEDs are interfering with sleep, at great cost to our health, then I don't care what their efficiency is! They're toxic after the sun goes down. If you disagree, great. Use LEDs, hopefully they turn out to be fine. But human history is filled with "This is fine, this is the future, this is... wow. How was this ever allowed to be used?" stories, and I'll argue (as I have) that LED lighting is one of those.
>The problem is... yeah. This stuff, as I see it, is very literally killing us. Our modern civilization, in a wide range of shapes and forms, is "human toxic" - and as a random blogger in the backwaters of the internet, I see no harm in calling a spade a spade.*
Hey, super great post. Light and health is the topic I care most about, so much so that I created the aforementioned Bedtime Bulb product to make it simpler for people to get the right light at night. I also put out a YouTube video series [0] covering the modern history of lighting, although I haven't finished it yet.
We posted as many specs and graphics as we could for Bedtime Bulb on our tech specs page [1].
We're also working on a new Bedtime Bulb v2 that we'll launch in early Q3. More details to share once our patent is submitted, but it will have an improved spectral power distribution, much wider dimmer compatibility, improved reliability, and even better flicker performance. Our understanding of recent research is that there's more to it than blue/green light and flicker, and we'll apply those understandings in the new product as well. If you want to stay informed about that, feel free to reach out or subscribe to our newsletter.
Yep, we're planning for it by Q4. If you drop me a line at hey [at] bedtimebulb [dot] com, I'll make a note to reach out directly when it's available. Thanks!
I'm sorry, I love long-form heavily researched write-ups about topics not usually given attention, but you really did the thing that helping to kill mass adoption of critical thinking: you took a complicated topic and sensationalized it with an attention grabbing 'the sky is falling' headline, while burying the nuance in a essay that maybe 1% of the 'clickers' will read.
Stop doing that, please.
Add a 'tl;dr' on top with the 'here is the breakdown -- you should worry about X for these reasons and these are the complications and here are the mitigations and here is the ongoing progress'. Do this in a few sentences that are easy to read and have no jargon or conext-less data. Then follow with the essay.
As is, I applaud the effort, but you have taken on the habits of a degenerating system.
Eh, goal was more readership than my usual blog posts. Which it has now more than accomplished via HN frontpage.
And it's not like I'm arguing for changes I haven't personally made. My evening lighting, post-sundown, at home, is incandescent. On dimmers. Or lanterns, whichever.
Based on my research, the sky is, indeed, falling. If you're lighting with 5k LEDs at home, you've got a home spectrum opposed to sleep. If you're lighting purely with the 2700K stuff... better, but they're still a problem for a lot of people.
I could certainly have written a technical headline that nobody would read. Though the point about a "TL;DR" at the top is noted and I'll probably consider that for future posts of the long variety.
I hate video. I love text. So I write what I love.
:/. This is definitely an important and I think unappreciated issue right now, and I'm normally all for long form investigations too. But I don't think this piece structured it very well. It started losing me right at the beginning with what felt like an outdated description of technology applied too broadly, and then not actually bothering to cover the very real improvements changing things until the very end, and even then putting off concrete coverage of who deserves kudos until later. It goes
>They’re internally blue LEDs with a phosphor coating that shifts some of the energy from blue over to the rest of the spectrum - the reds, yellows, and greens.
>They look white to the eye, but they’re actually three separate peaks of light, and they don’t do a very good job rendering colors.
But this seems unnecessarily hand-wavey. We have actual specific measures for this in the form of CRI (color rendering index, 0-100 with natural outdoor light being 100) and R9 (a measure of strong red rendering, which most people tend to like, incandescents tend to be in the 90s). It's definitely true that lots of common cheap LED bulbs have poor CRI and R9, and even these aren't necessarily linked either. But it's also perfectly possible to get decent bulbs that do both ok or focus well on things like helping sleep. The plain old Ikea Tradfri E27 White (like $12) has a CRI of 90 and an R9 of 91. There is a specific sleep focused "bedtimebulb" that has a CRI all the way up at 95 and a respectable R9 in the mid-80s. The Ketra line of lighting gets specific about this as well. This isn't some impossible problem.
Which the article does kind of acknowledge, but only at the very end. If more people knew to look for and ask for these measures, then the market could better respond accordingly. It could be worked into various lighting standards as well for work and government. But "LED lights and screens are killing you" from the beginning doesn't strike me as a good approach.
Basically, the lede should have been the "future reviews" bit and the author should have waited on doing them first because otherwise it's just defeatist. Give people something that is actually actionable, not a "well you're screwed and that's that" because nobody is giving up their screens. Structure should be "these things matter and are in fact being done with more to come, but most don't know to look for these measures and they are far too hard to find, this is something that action should be taken on." Then get into the nitty gritty of why. The goal should be something people can take with them, like at a schoolboard meeting parents being able to ask about the CRI/R9 and general quality of their children's lighting.