Fluorescent lights

Ever since environmentalists have started promoting how energy-efficient their compact fluorescent light bulbs are, I have been wishing fervently that they would all go to hell. I am one of those people (apparently 1/3 of the human population) who is sensitive to the flicker of fluorescent lights. I don't have it as bad as some -- I don't get migraines from it -- but I'm uncomfortable. My anxiety level is higher, my concentration is not as good, and I feel like it will be physically impossible for me to relax until that light is off or I leave the room.


The particularly challenging bit is that my household is pretty hard-core in trying to do all the stuff we can to reduce our environmental impact, make things energy efficient, etc. For the most part I am fully on board with this. But when we get around to light bulbs, we have trouble. They want to replace as many light bulbs as possible with compact fluorescents. I have been saying, basically, over my dead body.

Because I want peace in my household, I have been doing research. I figured maybe I'd find a solution to my problem, maybe I'd find scientific data to back up my "hell no." Either would be better than nothing. What I've got so far seems to be a little of both. It's also longish and probably boring, unless you have reason to obsess about this like I do. Proceed at your own risk.

There seems to be agreement out there that the older fluorescents -- the ones that hum, visibly flicker, and give dead, cold light -- are not good for people. There are studies showing significantly improved performance in school children in classrooms with full-spectrum light versus cool white fluorescent, and parallel studies for workplaces. On a hopeful note, these studies seem to agree that mixing fluorescent light with natural sunlight or incandescent (non-flickering) light can ameliorate some of the unpleasantness, or even block out the flicker effect.

Everybody including the people selling fluorescent lights will admit to these problems, because they want to tell you that their new improved CF (compact fluorescent) bulb is better than that. I can't count the number of kinds of them we have ordered by mail, just to try, just in case. None of them has yet been better than barely tolerable for me.

There seem to be several different variables to play with when making new improved CF bulbs. "Color temperature" is the color of the light that is emitted. The color rendering index (CRI) of a lamp rates its ability to render an object's true color when compared to sunlight, on a scale of 0 (bad) to 100 (good). Full spectrum fluorescents can apparently reduce a lot of the ill effects caused by "cool white" fluorescents -- but the full spectrum bulbs we've tried still haven't been pleasant to be around.

I also found out today about another different variable: the difference between magnetic and electronic ballast. This determines how fast the flicker is. Older fluorescents have magnetic ballast and flicker at about 60 cycles per second. Electronic ballast makes the flicker a lot faster, so it's supposedly way too fast for a human to perceive at all. Gaiam (trying to sell their light bulbs) says this completely addresses the problems usually caused by fluorescent light. The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (not trying to sell anything) says that switching to electronic ballast has reduced the number of complaints by 50%. Gaiam also lost some points with me because when I looked at specific bulbs on their site, there was no way to tell if they use electronic ballast or not, or how the bulb rated for color temperature or rendering, even though they had just told me I should be looking for those things. Does anyone know how you can tell, looking at a bulb, which kind of ballast it has?

This information may be moderately helpful to me. I can probably deal with mixing some CF with some incandescent bulbs, in rooms where more than one bulb is usually on. And this one bulb (the "warm glow" one) that M just bought that doesn't seem to be so bad -- maybe that's the difference that the ballast makes? I want to figure out how to confirm that. I still don't want to go out and buy a ton of them, because I'm afraid my not minding it might not last. But it's something to mess around with, anyway.

Meanwhile, I found some other interesting stuff along the way:


This guy is concerned that LED displays (like this here laptop monitor I'm using) may have similar health effects to fluorescent light. Boy am I lucky I haven't had a problem with that so far.

Fluorescents, like sunlight, suppress the production of the hormone melatonin. Usually we make it at night while we sleep. Too much melatonin can cause depression, such as in Seasonal Affective Disorder. This is why people use bright fluorescents to treat SAD. On the other hand, melatonin also suppresses the growth of cancer cells, especially estrogen-sensitive ones. So women who work night shift under fluorescent lights have less melatonin and a higher risk of breast cancer.


Connection between agoraphobia and fluorescent light sensitivity?
"Women who suffer from agoraphobia (a fear of open or public places) developed a faster heart rate and abnormal visual effects when exposed to fluorescent lighting. The non- agoraphobic women exposed to fluorescent light reported more miscellaneous symptoms while under the fluorescent lights." (Psychological Medicine 20(3)591-596, August 1990)