
Chemists discover how blue light speeds blindness - maxwell
https://phys.org/news/2018-08-chemists-blue.html
======
herf
f.lux author here, still slogging through the article. It is hard to
understand the light levels used because they use "power" (uW, mW) from a
laser, and not "irradiance" (uW/cm^2 or mW/cm^2), so which area they have
concentrated that light over is hard to understand. All I can see is it is
from a laser, so the irradiance could be extremely high.

The human lens filters most light at the peak of the given spectrum for free
retinal (383nm), and so once you get to 450nm like an LED, the hazard data in
the visual range is 100x less sensitive, see Fig 1 here:

[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1751-1097....](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1751-1097.2011.00921.x)

It bears repeating that computer screens have <5% the hazard-weighted
irradiance of a blue sky. (Can't make a direct comparison with lasers.)

Not sure the conversion to white light is correct, and it is unclear to me
right now if this much retinal is available in vivo.

~~~
wpasc
Thank you for your input, but I mostly want to thank you for f.lux. It has
been one of my favorite things for a long time. It's silly how long it's taken
companies to provide a native blue light filter and your product just kicks
ass.

If you guys ever wanted to figure out your app on a smart TV (or apple TV), I
know there'd be a lot of thankful people!

Also, I'd love to contribute to the ongoing dev of f.lux (I don't think I've
had to pay for it?) How might I?

~~~
copperx
I just want to remind everyone that LED backlights emit blue light that isn't
eliminated by f.lux or similar utilities.

~~~
herf
You might want to refer to our measurement project for some numbers:

[https://fluxometer.com/rainbow/](https://fluxometer.com/rainbow/)

Also, you can be below threshold for circadian responses just by being very
dim.

~~~
hohenheim
Looking at your measurement, if I understand it correctly, you are saying that
OP is incorrect and flux does in fact reduce the blue light?

------
mafuyu
I'm in the process of building a Philips Hue-compatible light therapy LED
strip that goes above my bed, and I chose 500 nm cyan LEDs due to this
concern. The goal is to have the lights gradually wake me up every morning and
help align my sleep cycles, as I suffer from Delayed Phase Sleep Disorder.

Figure 3[0] in the paper seems to show that 500 nm is safe, and that
melanopsin has high absorption at 500nm, which has important effects on
circadian rhythm[1].

Anyone more knowledgable than me know if this setup is safe?

[0]:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28254-8/figures/3](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28254-8/figures/3)
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanopsin#Effects_on_circadia...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanopsin#Effects_on_circadian_rhythm)

~~~
chrisper
Any reason why you are not just buying a Philips wake up light? I have one and
it's great. Especially during darker months

~~~
sc00ty
How long have you been using yours? I have been using one for about 3 years.
Initially it worked great, but it seems the light just doesn't do it anymore
and the alarm sounds are what eventually wake me up.

~~~
chrisper
About a year. But I am having similar experiences.

~~~
thewizardofaus
Perhaps try and cycle using the light. Couple months using it, one month off
etc.

------
rgrove
> To protect your eyes from blue light, Karunarathne advises to [...] avoid
> looking at your cell phones or tablets in the dark.

Can someone explain why it would be worse to look at a cell phone in the dark?
It's emitting the same blue light (or less, if the display gets dimmer) as it
is in a bright environment. Why is that light more harmful in a dark
environment?

~~~
kjullien
Because of the way your eyes work. If it is bright, your pupil will be shrunk,
to not be blinded by the luminosity. When it is dark, your pupil will be
opened wide up.

It is this principle that camera apertures are based on.

Now if you have your pupil wide open in a completely dark environment and put
a 100% brightness screen at ~10cm of your eyes, what do you expect will happen
? Our eyes are made for nature, that means day and night, now we have
technology that is akin to a handheld sun and you use this at night at 10cm of
your face, our eyes are simply not equipped to handle this.

~~~
dsr_
... but I don't put a 100% brightness screen in front of my eyes at night. Do
people really do that? Don't they know how to adjust brightness?

Indoors, I use about 30% brightness. As the day gets dimmer, that slides down
to about 25%. If I'm reading something in bed, I start at about 10% and as my
eyes adapt, go down to 1%. When I'm finding it hard to keep my eyes open, I
take that as my signal to go to sleep. Am I ridiculously unusual?

~~~
anonytrary
This isn't weird at all. I'm jealous of your 1%. The default low on my phone
is maybe like 5-10% (I don't know how to check this), and it feels crazy
bright when I'm in bed.

~~~
mohn
If you're on Android, I recommend Screen Filter[1] which will draw a semi
transparent overlay on top of nearly everything (depending on the phone and/or
OS version, it might not dim the status bar, bottom navigation buttons, lock
screen, etc.). I use it a lot when reading at night, because the lowest
brightness setting on my phone is also too bright for dark-adapted eyes.

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.haxor](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.haxor)

~~~
andymal
Shades is also a good app on android for dimming the whole screen much darker
than the default slider will go.

------
mikeleeorg
For the f.lux Mac users here, do you prefer that to Mac's Night Shift?

I just found this article, which details why f.lux is better than Night Shift.
But it's written by f.lux, so it's a bit biased.

[https://9to5mac.com/2017/03/28/flux-developer-says-apples-
ne...](https://9to5mac.com/2017/03/28/flux-developer-says-apples-new-
competitive-macos-night-shift-feature-falls-short/)

I'm guessing both are better than nothing, but is one actually better than the
other?

~~~
Eric_WVGG
I've been using F.lux for over seven years. Advantages…

\- You have a great deal of control over the blue level. Night Shift's blue
level is higher than F.lux's default, and not adjustable.

\- Flux transitions more naturally as the sun goes down.

\- More scheduling options, "disable until tomorrow".

\- the big one: disabling per-app or for full-screen apps. You probably don't
want Flux on while watching a movie or binging on a videogame. (I set up my
lady friend with Night Shift and watched a movie with her recently, spent the
whole film wondering why they made such awful color choices)

~~~
enos
\- Night Shift is disabled for external displays. That's another killer one.

~~~
xvector
NightShift absolutely works on external displays

------
JimboOmega
I don't quite understand. Blue light - any blue light - causes blindness? So
we shouldn't look at the sky even?

I've never heard blue being a danger other than its effect on the biological
clock, so that seems like a pretty bold claim. Ultraviolet, sure...

Though buried in there is something about immune system and vitamin E
levels...

I really find it hard to believe that blue light exposure is automatically
bad. We have receptors for that specific purpose. Wearing blue light filtering
sunglasses all the time as the article suggestions seems a bit ridiculous. Why
give up one color entirely?

~~~
astrodust
We have chemical receptors on our tongue and in our nose for poisons. We have
neurons that detect pain. Just because we can sense it doesn't mean it's not
harmful.

~~~
vosper
But those receptors signal something unpleasant - a terrible taste, pain.
Looking at blue doesn't cause pain or unpleasantness.

~~~
dqpb
On the contrary in fact, I find gazing at the blue sky to be calming and
enjoyable, and find it promotes diffuse thinking, which can greatly speed up
problem solving.

~~~
astrodust
Some people like the smell of ozone.

Ozone doesn't have a smell. What you actually smell is your nose burning.
Ozone is a very aggressive oxidizer.

Looking directly at the sun is also a super bad idea.

~~~
saagarjha
> Ozone doesn't have a smell. What you actually smell is your nose burning.
> Ozone is a very aggressive oxidizer.

Wait, what? Do you have a source for this?

------
JohnBerea
In addition to f.lux, I also use the Dark Reader Chrome extension[1], which
dynamically generates dark themes for every page you visit. It seems to make a
bigger difference than using f.lux.

1\. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-
reader/eimadp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-
reader/eimadpbcbfnmbkopoojfekhnkhdbieeh?hl=en-US)

~~~
verta
Def'ly a great relief for my eye strain - using it during the day too and
keeping on by default. One annoyance is that Chrome needs to let the address
bar be darkened as well as it stands out like a neon tube when Dark Reader is
on.

~~~
m_ke
I just use a dark chrome theme with it to get around that issue.

------
gregcrv
"to wear sunglasses that can filter both UV and blue light"

But isn't this bad with other consequences? I thought the lack of blue/violet
light was the cause of myopia?
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5233810/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5233810/)

~~~
derefr
You can't develop myopia or hyperopia after your eyes/skull/orbital muscles
are done growing. So this suggestion probably applies only to adults.

Keep in mind that this is _age-related_ macular degeneration. Your
photoreceptor cells are protected by the α-tocopherol until "a person's 50s or
60s." You wouldn't need any prophylactic interventions until then.

~~~
graeme
Interesting. My myopia worsened a bit from ages 22-27 or so. Does that mean my
skull and muscles were changing still?

~~~
UlisesAC4
Actually yes. Doctors have told me that I should wait til 25 to see If I am
candidate to eye laser operation because that is the average age where people
stop developing his muscle eyes.

------
friedman23
I use f.lux all day I don't know if I'm particularly sensitive or if it's all
in my head but when I turn off f.lux, especially at night, to watch some movie
or video I can physically feel my pupils dilate and it almost feels like my
eyes go from being at rest to being strained.

~~~
danaos
As a linux user, I have found that Redshift works better than f.lux. It's the
first thing that I install on a new machine of mine.

~~~
paulcarroty
Last year use default "Night Light" in GNOME. Very easy and can be enabled in
one click like Wifi or BT.

------
zachrip
I was recently diagnosed with a condition called retinitis pigmentosa (it
basically just destroys your retinas). It's part of a larger condition called
usher syndrome (which caused my severe hearing loss at birth). I'm on heavy
doses of vitamin a palmitate as well as some other vitamins. Another thing
that I haven't done yet but will be doing shortly is blue light blocking
glasses, especially since I sit in front of a computer all day. I also use
f.lux and night shift on windows and mac respectively. I'm 22 and have lost a
significant portion of my night and peripheral vision so I'm still just trying
to figure this all out. Any tips are welcome.

~~~
gyc
I'm in my late 30s and was recently diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa too.
I've started to use night shift/f.lux on my computers, and reading this
article is also motivating me to update my glasses to one with blue light
blocking.

------
nathan_long
I am excited about LED lights for their efficiency, but keep seeing articles
like this and don't understand the practical ramifications, like "what bulbs
should I buy?"

I messaged Cree on Twitter, expecting a very corporate response, but they
linked to some studies (which I haven't yet had time to explore.) FWIW -
[https://www.energy.gov/eere/ssl/street-lighting-blue-
light-a...](https://www.energy.gov/eere/ssl/street-lighting-blue-light-and-
light-night) and
[https://www.lrc.rpi.edu/resources/newsroom/pr_story.asp?id=3...](https://www.lrc.rpi.edu/resources/newsroom/pr_story.asp?id=378#.WjLMBFWnGM9)
were the resources they suggested.

~~~
herf
The message is: there is no more risk from LED than older sources, by the
metrics we have now.

I would suggest that one problem is that LEDs don't "warm dim" (unless you get
some special ones from Philips and a few others), and people tend to dim them
less overall.

~~~
nathan_long
What do you mean by "warm dim"?

~~~
herf
An incandescent/halogen will go to warmer temperatures when dimmed. So it
might start at 2800-3000K but be 2100-2200K at 1% brightness.

------
pmoriarty
_" The researcher found that a molecule called alpha tocoferol, a Vitamin E
derivative and a natural antioxidant in the eye and body, stops the cells from
dying. However, as a person ages or the immune system is suppressed, people
lose the ability to fight against the attack by retinal and blue light."_

Does this mean that consuming alpha tocoferol can combat the toxic effect of
blue light? If so, at what dosage?

------
georgeam
One solution I use is a 1/8" thick sheet of amber transparent rigid
plastic/acrylic. It is designed to cut UV, but it also cuts blue light. I
bought a 2'x4' sheet from an online site (since ads are probably not
permitted, I will not mention the name of the company), and they cut it to
size specifications for me. Out of that I got filters for my 14", 15" and 17"
laptops, and a 30" LED TV.

I find it easier on my eyes at night (both laptop and TV), and it has its
place since the TV can't run f.lux and redshift.

~~~
sp332
Recommendations of products are fine. Paid promotions or kickbacks are frowned
on though.

------
upofadown
Note that the lens of the eye yellows as you get older which significantly
reduces the amount of blue light that reaches the retina. So much so that
there is an idea floating around that older people don't get enough blue light
to properly make the circadian stuff work and that teenagers get too much.

------
onnnon
I wear computer glasses at all times when working, and highly recommend them.
It greatly reduces eye strain, and filters blue light.

If anyone is looking for a good pair, I buy mine from Gunnar [0] (no
affiliation).

[0] [https://gunnar.com/](https://gunnar.com/)

~~~
hestipod
Tried these and some Uvex glasses that block 100% of blue light (Gunnars are
very low % blocking relatively). Zero impact on my strain. I have seen many
others state the same. It's obv there are many causes for strain, just wish I
could figure mine out.

------
gumby
Many of the comments here are about displays, but what about the LEDs sold as
replacement for incandescent and halogen bulbs?

~~~
Eochei5h
Check the spec sheet of the bulbs, specifically the color temperature in
kelvin. Ignore the "warm white" and similar marketing terms, they are too
fuzzy.

A LED with low color temperature and high CRI should have pretty much the same
spectrum as incandescent. If you want really low temperatures look for some
retro filament style LED lights.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature#Categorizing...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature#Categorizing_different_lighting)

~~~
Brakenshire
CRI unfortunately is not a good test, it still can produce very high ratings
even when the spectrum is spiky.

~~~
namibj
95+CRI is an indicator for mostly lack of spikes. Look at Yuji (yujiintl.com),
they seem to be the only ones selling actual high-CRI LEDs with sane pricing
(i.e., no ideological markup).

~~~
mapmap
I'd like to try one of these out, but at $20 per bulb it's a a bit steep. Are
you able to comment how they compare to the Feit Electric 90+ CRI bulbs sold
at Costco for a few dollars a bulb?

------
b_b
For many of us whose use of these blue-light emitting computer and phone
screens is necessary, what can we do about it?

~~~
kjullien
Use f.lux or an equivalent (most OS have their own implementation by now) that
filters out the blue light at software/rendering level, it's not perfect but
you do instantly feel the comfort it brings to your eyes. Been using f.lux for
over 10 years and it also helps alot with going to sleep at night. When it's
off your eyes/brain thinks that they are in daytime / broad daylight, when
it's on I fall asleep 2 or 3 times faster than without.

~~~
shittyadmin
The biggest problem I have with it is that everything looks so much worse that
I just wind up turning it off all the time.

Is this so seriously a threat to vision that it's worth it? I don't have the
sleeping issues with screens some people seem to report, so I wasn't really
willing to commit to it over that.

~~~
Raphmedia
> The biggest problem I have with it is that everything looks so much worse
> that I just wind up turning it off all the time.

Change the settings. What you should do is take a sheet of paper and put it
next to your screen. Then match your screen's white to the sheet. It's only a
bit less blue. There's no need to set everything dark orange.

~~~
shittyadmin
Okay, but that's a trade-off, you're still getting a fair amount of blue light
through in that case. How much less blue light do you want? What's optimal for
minimizing eye damage if that's a significant risk?

~~~
Raphmedia
You don't want to eliminate all blue from your life. Decreasing it is good
enough. What's the point of making your computer screen red if the minute you
step outside in the sun you lose any benefit?

------
sandGorgon
Fedora/Gnome has had "Night Light" built into the OS by default. Big
difference to eye strain with it !

~~~
pishpash
This is not a permanent solution because simply shifting the color temperature
has the side effect of generating melatonin and disrupting your circadian
clock. You really need a daylight white spectrum and not concentrate all the
blue-green energy in one blue spike.

------
ScottBurson
Really surprised there's no discussion here about the ubiquitousness of black-
on-bright-white color schemes in apps (including this text box I'm typing into
right now, though for the most part, HN uses a soft beige tint for its
background; but it's still dark-on-light). It's really quite unnecessary. For
code editing I have a light-on-dark Emacs color scheme, which is much easier
on the eyes.

Yes, Macs have a setting to invert the color palette, but that's not useful to
me — a lot of my windows are dark; I don't want _them_ inverted, and it makes
images unintelligible. What I really want is something that doesn't screw with
images, but detects dark-on-light text and maps the colors in such a way as to
preserve contrast and even hue.

~~~
asadkn
For many of us with astigmatism, the trend to default to dark schemes would be
quite troubling. They're painfully uncomfortable irrelevant of contrast.
There's fuzzing and "halation".

It took me a long time to figure out the why. I love dark layouts in terms of
aesthetics, but I cannot use them.

Without being biased, from what I have read so far, the research seems
favorable for dark-on-light as long as proper room lighting is achieved and
monitor brightness and contrast is adjusted for it. In poor light conditions,
the inverse seems to be true.

While there's a reason for current defaults, everything should be optimized
for and have options for both black and dark schemes.

~~~
ScottBurson
Fair enough; I don't mind other people using whatever they prefer, as long as
I have an option for light-on-dark.

I wonder, though, what the real problem is that you have with dark themes. It
could be related to the combination of wide-gamut monitor blacklights and
high-index plastic eyeglass lenses. I wrote something about this here:
[http://scottlburson2.blogspot.com/2016/01/lcd-backlights-
and...](http://scottlburson2.blogspot.com/2016/01/lcd-backlights-and-eyeglass-
lenses.html)

------
DavideNL
Is this the same blue light as emitted by for example the Philips light
therapy lamps?

[https://www.usa.philips.com/c-p/HF3429_60/golite-blu-
energy-...](https://www.usa.philips.com/c-p/HF3429_60/golite-blu-energy-light)

~~~
jefe_
I use one of these every day, found two things, one from Philips in 2011 with
some PDF documents, making claims the light is safe:
[http://www.p4c.philips.com/cgi-
bin/cpindex.pl?ctn=HF3332/60&...](http://www.p4c.philips.com/cgi-
bin/cpindex.pl?ctn=HF3332/60&dct=QAD&faqview=1&refdisplay=EN_DETAILS_BLUELIGHT%20DANGER_NO&refnr=0074803&scy=US&slg=AEN)

2011 was a while ago, this Stack Exchange post from 2013 seems to indicate
there is a possibility for macular degeneration with use of these devices,
particularly if you are already at risk for the condition:
[https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/13891/can-
blue-...](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/13891/can-blue-light-
therapy-contribute-to-age-related-macular-degeneration)

Some googling seems to indicate there were rumors of these lights potentially
causing issues, and it sounds like the Chemist article may be presenting a
scientific basis for that speculation.

Turned off my light for now.

------
squarefoot
I deeply hate blue leds, never liked them. As an electronics hobbyist I have
been used for many years to the old red then green and yellow leds before the
blue and later white ones came out, so I rushed out to buy some as soon as I
could and while trying them I remember feeling uncomfortable staring at that
light, to the point I never used them in anything: they're staying in their
box for good. I already know about the blue light altering the circadian
rhythm, but didn't back then, so it's possible the brain was sending a message
there was something wrong with that light.

------
lukewrites
Can anyone recommend editor color schemes that look good when f.lux is set to
heavily filter blue light?

~~~
ninkendo
I’ve really started to like gruvbox lately. It’s naturally a warm color theme
already so I would imagine it should still look good under a heavy blue light
filter.

------
codemac
Anyone have suggestions for kindles? A lot of the "screens" I've seen on
amazon have pretty terrible reviews.

It's the one major source of nighttime blue light that I consume. I've largely
given up using my phone / laptop in the dark, as I decided I'm an adult and
can just leave the lights on.

Reading in bed is one of my favorite things, and it bothers my partner to
leave the lights on.

~~~
smileysteve
The contrast of just your screen and focusing in the dark is likely damaging
on its own; but you can add the red filter, and, if using kindle app, make the
font white on black background.

But yes, as Kindles imply, reading text printed without a backlight is
preferable to backlit text, so prefer lights over the backlight.

------
paulkon
[https://zerowidthjoiner.net/negativescreen](https://zerowidthjoiner.net/negativescreen)

I've been using it for some time now.

By default I look at my phone, tablet and computer monitor in inverted mode.
Video content is watched as normal.

Makes it way easier to get work done and keep the eye strain to a minimum.

------
titzer
Green on black terminals. I actually miss them! Just sayin'

~~~
bradknowles
Amber. Amber on black.

------
oblib
I bought a monitor a couple years ago that has a "Low Blue Light" feature you
can turn on/off.

At first I didn't like it. It kind of dulls the screen down and makes things
look greener. But after using it for a couple months, along with a couple
other monitors on my desk, my eyes were getting tired so I turned the feature
on and used it for a few days to see if I could get used to it.

When I switched it back off afterwards I was pretty shocked at how much more
my eyes were instantly stressed. I turned it back on and have left it on
since. I also turned the blue down on my other two monitors. And I can feel
the difference when I set them back to their defaults too.

I don't think I'd like it for TV, though I might get used to it as well, but
for coding and surfing the web it works for me.

------
kjullien
Did we not already know about this ? I remember 5+ years ago blue LEDs were
pulled off of the market (at least in France) because the spectrum they emit
in is way too close to uv and could burn your macula.

~~~
kypro
Wait, is UV light bad for your eyes? Should I be careful about visiting bars
with UV light too?

~~~
kjullien
Yes, UV rays cause damage to pretty much any organic matter, that's the reason
we wear sunscreen, sunglasses, and why cheap "fake" sunglasses can be harmful
for your eyes (the glass is simply tinted and does not filter out the UVs,
which is what they should be doing)

edit: the way I remember it is that like any type of radiation, anything that
goes into your body stays there pretty much until your death, the only way to
keep your "uv capital" in good shape is to be proactive about it, cant do
anything retroactively. This is why about 1/3rd of Australians will develop
some form of skin cancer in their lifetime.

~~~
gomox
I just wanted to point out that most cheap (and therefore plastic) sunglasses
are actually perfectly fine in terms of UV protection. Polycarbonate is UV
opaque.

If you Google this subject there are several websites where people went out
and bought cheap an expensive sunglasses and had them tested and reached the
same conclusion: UV protection does not justify expensive Raybans.

------
lechiffre10
On a similar note, has anyone heard of Felix Gray? I've been thinking of
getting a pair of lenses from them. They make lenses that filter blue light
and they happen to look pretty good too.

------
chroem-
It's more than a little amusing to see this at the top of HN only a few days
after getting attacked for posting my personal experience with blue light and
retinal degeneration.

~~~
alain_gilbert
You should post the link. It could be fun to compare the comments !

~~~
drivers99
chroem-'s comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17634720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17634720)

Full thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17634316](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17634316)

------
Rotdhizon
Can someone say if it is harmful to use a blue light filtering software 24/7?
I get its use at night, but would using it from sun up to sun down cause any
problems?

~~~
graeme
Only if you never went outside. Otherwise, it shouldn't. Blue light emitting
screens are recent, if blue light is off, it's still more light than a book.

But never going outside would mess with circadian rhythm.

------
beams_of_light
I wish I had never been privy to this information. All it's going to do is
make me paranoid about yet another thing in life.

------
programUrJerb
>Karunarathne introduced retinal molecules to other cell types in the body,
such as cancer cells, heart cells and neurons. When exposed to blue light,
these cell types died as a result of the combination with retinal. Blue light
alone or retinal without blue light had no effect on cells.

Does anyone disagree that this is equivalent to looking at a phone?

------
upofadown
It is already known that you can damage retinal tissue with the light from
blue LEDs. At a particular power density blue will be the more damaging colour
as it has the highest energy. So the question is if the intensities and
duration of exposure encountered in day to day life can cause permanent damage
to the retina.

------
ChikkaChiChi
Don't want any blue light from your devices at night?

\- AMOLED Android device with a custom kernel that supports color profiles set
to fire only the red pixels.

\- Get transparent red film from Amazon and cover your Kindle screen.

\- Wear orange safety glasses at night to dramatically reduce all blue light.

\- Bonus difficulty: Wear red laser goggles. Do not attempt to drive!

------
arprocter
I wonder if the brightness settings have any bearing on this?

If I don't dial mine way down it's very uncomfortable

------
foo101
What would be the right daytime setting in f.lux to reduce the harmful effects
of blue light?

The default daytime setting under recommended colors in f.lux is 6500K. I tend
to use a daytime setting of 5500K. Is 5500K good enough to reduce the harmful
effects of blue light or do I need to go even lower?

------
corpMaverick
From the article...

    
    
       To protect your eyes from blue light, Karunarathne advises
    
       to wear sunglasses that can filter both UV and blue light 
    
       outside and avoid looking at your cell phones or tablets in the dark."
    

Please share any additional actionable advice.

~~~
lawlessone
Wear Sunscreen

Start a pension.

~~~
downrightmike
Go back in time and plant a tree.

------
fierybanana
This might be relevant: [https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/2446/blue-light-
and-the-...](https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/2446/blue-light-and-the-
retina)

------
wodenokoto
I don't know if this is a stupid question, but if I set my LED lightbulb to
warm-light, or set my OLED phone to blue light filter / warm light, am I still
exposing myself to this dangerous blue light?

------
pishpash
I definitely feel I've been going blind, more than I should with age.

------
dewiz
Now I’m wondering about the damage of all those Windows crashes and blue
screens :-)

Seriously though, the sky is blue, the sea is blue, how come we’ve evolved
into beings affected by blue light??

~~~
vladus2000
This is affecting people in their 50s+, a lot of our evolution people had and
raised offspring before this occurred so there was no evolutionary pressure to
keep your vision much past that. It was good enough.

------
foolrush
One would have thought that the thousands upon thousands of hours of daylight
exposure would have already made us all blind if this was actually solid
research.

------
peterclary
Something to consider for VR headset manufacturers and VR software developers?
Pumping bright blue light into the eye at close range seems like the worst
case.

------
exegete
Do we know why bankers chose green instead of yellow for their eye shades? I
know they wore them due to eye strain, but why green and not something else?

------
fpgaminer
Lots of comments here about blue-less lighting at night, so I thought I'd
share my experiences in trying to warm-ify our household lighting. I'm in no
way an expert; just sharing some experience.

It all started when we moved in to our current place. The previous tenants had
left a bunch of old incandescent bulbs. I guess I had forgotten in the past
two decades just how warm colored those lights are. It is a really comforting
color temperature and great for getting sleepy before bedtime. Of course when
I went to replace them with LEDs the contrast was obvious.

Now enlightened (heh) to the differences I went on a quest for warm colored
LEDs. Turns out, that's really difficult. First I bought just any old light
with the word "warm". But most LEDs you find are actually "warm white" or
"soft white". Basically 2700K and up. Whereas old school incan. is ~2400K. The
difference is huge and I was very disappointed.

So I began to filter my searches looking for things in the 2400K range. The
local lighting store had _nothing_ (a store completely dedicated to selling
lights). Amazon had a few options, but not many. Once you filter by low
temperature and dimmable you begin to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Most
were off-brand, which I try to avoid since poor quality LEDs will fail early
when their cheap power supplies burn out.

I went through a few rounds of orders but finally settled on a set of Philips
dimmable A15 lights "with warm glow effect". They are small enough to fit in
all fixtures I've run into for those kinds of bulbs. But the best feature is
that they change temperature as you dim them. So you have the option of a
cooler "soft white" (2700K) at full brightness, or all the way down to 2200K
when dimmed! To a non-expert in lighting they subjectively looked the best and
gave us the same warm, comforting glow we were looking for at night.

So my advice, if you're looking to upgrade your house to warm bulbs, make sure
to look for something 2400K or less.

Others have mentioned checking CRI, and that's important. I don't know the CRI
on the bulbs I got. Again, they subjectively looked the best. But there aren't
a lot of options in the truly warm color range so it's a feature I had to not
care much about.

I also found some really great vintage filament style LED bulbs for a project
(vintage style outdoor string lights with corded wiring; built from scratch).
They're from a company I found on Amazon called Cmyk. Off brand, but they're
the best option I found in that category and their packaging was actually
really professional. They are labelled as 2200K, but they look even warmer
than that. When dimmed about half way you get just the right amount of glow
that you can see the faux-filaments. Super happy with those.

Beyond that you can also just get color-changing bulbs like Philips Hue. Since
all this went down I've been slowly upgrading to those instead. That gives you
the option to choose really any temperature you want at any point. I'm not
sure how the "quality" of light from that setup compares to a real warm LED
lightbulb. Obviously you're getting a "warm" color by mixing red and green
LEDs so it isn't a true color temperature. But on the other hand you're
definitely not getting blue light, which is the important thing. Either way,
subjectively they look great and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
(Usual caveats about buying into a somewhat closed system applies; Philips
Hues are sort of the best worst option today.)

------
graeme
What about morning wakeup lights? I have one that's daylight spectrum with 93
CRI. Is this generally ok, or harmful?

------
heed
I wear glasses with a blue light filter coating. I'm not sure how much this
helps though. Anyone know?

------
sunseb
So I have switched my coding theme from "Cobalt" to "Solarized Light"

------
polskibus
So LED bulbs would be even worse, right? Is it time to go back to incandescent
bulb?

------
davidcyp
google "blue light mrsa"

Blue light kills cells. It's used in hospitals to kill germs and also use to
treat acne. Hand dryers also use them. I'm not surprised it kills certain
human cells as well.

------
hestipod
This or something connected to it is literally ruining my last chance at life
but I cannot solve it and there is always a catch. I was disabled long ago by
bad surgery and left in lots of pain. My physical career was ended. I was
denied social assistance and fell in every crack. Life has never been stable
enough long enough to reeducate and rebuild. In suicidal desperation I posted
in a few places asking for ideas. A few months back a very kind person reached
out to me in response to one of my posts on social topics and offered me an
opportunity, a once in a lifetime thing that can work around my issues. In the
process of updating my equipment (I had been primarily using a 12yo TN/CCFL
having laptop) I experienced severe eyestrain. That sent me down a path of
"why" and months later I still have no answer.

Eye doctor said I was ok and found nothing to explain this. I have monovision
from Lasik done 20 years ago but it's never been an issue. I tested for and
ruled out, to the best of my limited ability, the common gremlins like
excesive blue light (always used f.lux/redshift before) and even tried the
Uvex glasses that block ALL blue light. Tried PWM free displays and no change.
Lowered brightness, changed ergonomics, font rendering, drivers, filters,
OLED, ambient lighting. Anything common sense or the internet has come up with
doesn't work for me. I even considered it was psychosomatic given the
importance of me being able to do the one last thing I could do for any
conceivable work and entertainment...sit at a computer...but no tactics to
deal with that help. I was thinking about making an Ask HN thread recently but
my last experience with that was pretty poor and the offer came from outside
of that, but I saw this relevant post today and am desperate so here I am
again.

Other than some older, specific stuff like a MBP 2011 17" antiglare screen
that I had to sell(panelook.com says it had an RGB backlight but some dispute
that), an iPad 2 on iOS (for at least 30min anyway), and a Windows Phone Lumia
635 on Windows Phone 8.1, Any LED backlit display I look at, and ALL modern
ones I have found, on any brightness, filter or setting, or OS causes tingling
in my face, back of head, and neck which turns into strain/pain/headache. I
can replicate it. I can soothe it with time away or using the old, half
functional CCFL laptop. I have tried 8 different panels in a Thinkpad,
everything Best Buy has, borrowed from people, wasted money buying on eBay and
testing. No success or answers.

There is a 10yo/168+ Apple support thread with no solution (was posted here
not long ago in fact and most people blamed PWM or said it wasn't a big deal).
A forum called ledstrain.org where people much smarter than me have tried to
drill down through drivers and dithering and other options. Many of them
reduce their quality of life further by using one of the 2 expensive and
limited E-Ink displays out there, or hoard specific models of old displays and
GPUs and outdated OS revisions they found work for them. I just cannot live
even more limited like that since everything else about my life is already
shrunk and reduced and miserable. Not being able to use or function around
modern LED stuff is not tenable and there is no reasonable solution even on
the horizon. Everything in my life is unstable and I have to solve this to get
some foundation again. I am even entertaining the idea that this is all a big
cosmic prank given how perfect the timing and specificity of this issue is.
So, Loki, if you are out there I surrender. You win. Please give me a break.

~~~
dm3730
> reduce their quality of life further by using one of the 2 expensive and
> limited E-Ink displays out there

Could you elaborate on above? I did not understand the logic behind the
sentence. E-Ink displays by themselves do not generate any light as they don't
have any backlight or light emitter behind the display. That's why they work
in bright sunlight. Some products with E-Ink displays have frontlights for
night time reading. Is that what you are referring to? If so, given this
article, just turning off the frontlight and using non-blue light sources for
lighting is sufficient to avoid this, right?

~~~
hestipod
I was stating that having to use the available E-ink displays is a reduction
in quality of life because they are small (13"), expensive (~1000usd), and
limited in function and performance which makes most web activities
aggravating due to lag and ghosting. They aren't a solution, but just a more
difficult workaround that shrinks life even more in my case.

------
georgewsinger
Implications for VR?

------
dang
Submitted title was "Blue light is toxic to human eyes". That broke the site
guidelines, which ask you to " _please use the original title, unless it is
misleading or linkbait; don 't editorialize._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
DmenshunlAnlsis
Here’s the actual study, thanks to sci-hub: [http://twin.sci-
hub.tw/6979/4112e16f7195f7f33cd3e861c6345df0...](http://twin.sci-
hub.tw/6979/4112e16f7195f7f33cd3e861c6345df0/ratnayake2018.pdf)

~~~
superkuh
The post's URL actually includes links to the sci rep paper and the full text
pdf paper is available from there for free for everyone. No sci-hub needed.

[http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28254-8](http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28254-8)

[http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28254-8.pdf](http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28254-8.pdf)

------
HIPisTheAnswer
This is a _huge_ problem. Neon light everywhere. I go out at night with
sunglasses. The world is littered with light polluting salvages. That and
combustion engines. I used to drive one. I used to behave criminally too.
Light, sound, air pollution are real crimes. The world is littered with
criminal brutes; anyone who uses bright neons, churns a combustion engine, or
plays the stereo loudly. Soon the little people will be angry at the 'rich
bastards who burn gas with their machines or waste power on overly bright
aggressive lights'. Average person will then only afford a handful of KWh per
month, and my life will be better. I wont stop any crowd from hanging
gas/naphta burners or smashing neons tubes.

------
linuxyz
For this exact reason, I've bought a e-ink 13.3" monitor from here
[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/paperlike-3-a-smart-e-
ink...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/paperlike-3-a-smart-e-ink-monitor-
save-your-eyes-iphone-computers#/)

It's not cheap because it is the only one on the market. Apparently,
constructors don't care about this future big health hazard...

