The Fabric of our Society

June 2022

LEDs and Public Interest

Bill Warren, PE, LC, FIES
Distinguished Service Award Recipient
Principal of Willard L. Warren Associates

Scientific research and engineering developments have provided us with remarkable increases in product efficiency, allowing us to upgrade our mechanical systems. Replacing incandescent and fluorescent light sources with LEDs have paid for themselves, and we're now looking at electric vehicles (EVs) as the latest new upgrading development to manage. But there's no agency or industry organization overseeing it in the public's interest.

After we overcome the Covid-19 pandemic, and initiate Climate Change, we need to solve lighting's environmental issues. We managed to demonstrate that upgrading to LEDs in our lighting systems was self supporting, cost-wise.

Edison Report's President Randy Reid, interviewed Drs. Marina Figueiro and Mark Rea of Mt. Sinai's Light and Health Research Center, who pointed out that we have photoreceptors in the retina, different from those used for vision, that can shift our circadian rhythms and suppress melatonin hormones. Some colored rays of light can even emanate from the desk-mounted monitor screens. We anticipate a third of our colleagues will wind up working from home and they need large monitors to shield a viewer's eyes from high angle light rays coming from luminaires or windows. 
 
There are still hundreds of millions of fluorescent and incandescent lamps that have to be upgraded to LEDs, the cost of which will be subsidized by the energy savings. Ironically, according to an article in the NY Times, most "Dollar" stores have taken incandscent lamps off the shelves, but there are no LEDs in stores in poor neighborhoods.