Monday, February 08, 2010

Reason TV: Light Bulbs Vs. The Nanny State

Fluorescent light bulbs pour out a shower of UV rays laying waste to photographs, carpets, drapery, plastics, and everything they touch. If you aren't aware, UV Rays are piercing photons which are used in etching of silicon and various polymers, and which damage the DNA cells of living organisms.

Thanks to the Green Movement, by 2012-2014, we will no longer be able to buy incandescent lights for use in our homes. Already, you see it becoming harder and harder to find a standard incandescent light at the store.

Fluorescent bulbs, the squiggly little pig-tail shaped bulbs contain mercury. If you drop one on the floor in your home or a place of business, you are advised to call out an environmental cleanup crew.

Here, Reason TV gives you the low-down:



Epa notes: We are turning the inside of our homes into what the environmentalists warn us would happen as terrible humans pump waste into the atmosphere and deplete the ozone layer?

4 comments:

Epaminondas said...

So what you are saying is, we are turning the inside of our homes into what the environmentalists warn us would happen as terrible humans pump waste into the atmosphere and deplete the ozone layer?

Pastorius said...

Pretty much. Good summation.

I think I'll add that to the post.

ciccio said...

Agreed, incandescent is inefficient, you get about 17 lumens per watt, CF
gets about 40, 8T fluorescent tubes nearly fifty but that is todays technology and it is changing rapidly.
Before the changeover is complete LEDs
will make the CFs look like candles.
Both in terms of capacity and price LEDs are like the history of the computer, every month there is an increase in capacity and a decrease in price. In the labs they have already gotten up to 150 lumens per watt, 60 is already on the market.Don't change, just wait a while.

Pastorius said...

Ciccio,
What are they doing to solve the directional problem associated with LED's.

LED are so uni-directional that when they are used for traffic lights, they only become visible in approximately the last hundred feet before you reach the light.

This uni-directional aspect of LED light is almost laser-like and can not be good for the eyes, as they exist today.

Additionally, LED's emit UV rays. These will destroy your valuables in your home.

And, LED's, like Fluorescent lights create color by combining basic primary colors to create a "full-spectrum" light.

However, if you look at a spectrograph reading of Incandescent, Sunlight, and fluorescent/LED, you will find that the fluorescent/LED peaks at the primary color range, and has valleys in the in-between colors.

So, you are not getting a full-spectrum light after all. Instead, you are getting a Kelvin reading which approximates full-spectrum but is not full spectrum.

The pupil opens up wide when it is exposed to fluorescent light. This is counter-intuitive because the glare associated with fluorescent light would seem to make the pupil want to close. My theory on this is the pupil is looking for the missing parts of the spectrum. (This is my theory. I have not heard it proposed by anyone else as of yet.)

Metal Halide lights combine more colors to create full-spectrum, so they are a cleaner light and easier on the eye, but they are still kind of sloppy aesthetically.

Incandescent, while yellow, is the most pleasing light aesthetically.

The solution to lighting problems would, in my opinion, be to use Incandescent lights with filters to make them "full-spectrum, if full-spectrum is desired.

This is not the most "cost-efficient" solution, but it is the solution which will be easiest on the human eye.