Bugger

[elettaria]

Incandescent lightbulb to be phased out in favour of energy-saving bulbs

Trust me, it's not a good idea. Energy-saving bulbs are almost always fluorescent, such as strip lighting, which is a particularly harsh form. (LEDs are low-energy and they're starting to appear in bulb form, but they're not bright enough for general use yet. A few have started to appear on eBay, very expensive and sold from Hong Kong, which claim to be bright enough, but when I tried to order one it never showed up.) They're currently used as standard in shops and so forth. They can cause a variety of medical problems ranging from intense visual disturbances to migraine, and particularly affect people with dyslexia, Meares-Irlen Syndrome, autism, Aspergers Syndrome, ME and so forth, though even generally healthy people often find they cause visual problems. I can't go shopping without wearing specialist tinted glasses, usually a hat too, and even so I end up with a headache and generally unable to read. In addition, I need to use dimmer switches for most of the lights in my flat because I get light-sensitive a lot of the time and need to have low light, not to mention the dawn simulator I use for my sleep disorders. None of the energy-saving bulbs currently available can be dimmed.

If they were to develop LED lighting, which incidentally is far lower-energy than fluorescent, this idea might work. Right now it sounds terrible.

In good news, I'm still stuck at home with the relapse, but ghost_of_a_flea has been bringing me lots of DVDs to watch and keeping me supplied with food, not to mention that catnip_junkie cooked me a lovely curry last weekend. Anyway, ghost_of_a_flea and I ended up curled up far too late last night watching the old BBC Narnia miniseries, giggling and snarking all the way through and eating pancakes. 'Twas most therapeutic.

Comments

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

You might like to know that there is a type of flourescent light that isn't likely to cause the same effects. It's almost certainly due to flicker -- I get it myself occasionally, particularly when I'm on the edge of getting a migraine, though it tends not to affect me most of the time.

The problem is generally because ordinary flourescents flicker with the mains frequency, 50Hz in the UK and Europe, 60Hz in North America. However, you can get high frequency ballasts (and suitable bulbs) that switch up to about a thousand times faster, making flicker essentially impossible. They can also be dimmed.

There's an explanation page on a lighting supplier's web site here:

http://www.dealec.co.uk/acatalog/erc_about_high_frequency_electronic_ballasts.html

I also get the same problem from CRT-style computer monitors. If I run them at 60Hz, I invariably get a migraine within a couple of hours. At 75Hz, not much faster, it has no effect at all. These high frequency flourescent lights run at about 20-40kHz, so are pretty much guaranteed to be OK.

It doesn't help much with dealing with lights in shops (I also have problems in supermarkets if I'm migrainey to start with), but it does mean at least that you're not left out in the cold when incandescent bulbs go away.

Actually, incandescent bulbs also flicker, it's just that their thermal inertia means that the amount of flicker is relatively small compared with their overall brightness. The new high frequency flourescents are likely to be significantly better than incandescents, and use 30-40% *less* power even than ordinary flourescents.

Hope this helps!

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

I spent a long time researching this and ended up seeing two eye specialists. It's not just the flicker, alas, it's the wavelengths of light as well, at least this is what the specialists tell me. I find that strip lighting (where the flicker is worse, right?) is hell on earth, but that I can still spot ordinary fluorescent lighting pretty fast. The one starts giving me a headache immediately, the other takes longer to kick in but I notice it if I try to read. That said, I have no idea if any of the fluorescent bulbs I've encountered have been the fancy new variety, how common are they? Have they changed the light colour at all? I've tried a bright light box (http://lumie.com/brightlights.htm) (the one on the right) which used a high frequency ballast (I remember fussing over this down the phone to the manufacturers) but still give me a pounding migraine. I tried it obediently for a while and then sent it back. I've got an LED lightbox (http://apollohealth.com/golite.html) now and I'm absolutely fine with it, apart from very rare occasions when I'm sleep deprived and headachy (which is unsurprising for bright light two feet away from your eyes). That said, I've met a couple of people who couldn't stand the light, D for one, but we think it's the colour they're reacting to.

Incidentally, my fancy specialist glasses are tinted blue, apparently that's the most common colour for people who have difficulty with fluorescent light, though the specialist did spend ages assessing me anyway.

[ghost-of-a-flea.livejournal.com]

That Ghost of a Flea chap is now feeling the effects of staying up too late and working the next day...

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Aren't you grateful I talked you out of setting your alarm clock for 7.30, you insane thing, you?

By the way, I've been snooping about IMDb (told you I'm at a loss for reading matter) and apparently they are planning to film all seven of the Narnia films. I suppose they're hoping that they'll have built up enough popularity by the time they get to the tricky ones.

[littlemissalien.livejournal.com]

This is very interesting. I have screwed visual processing, including Meares-Irlen Syndrome and have always favoured small lamps to overhead lights in general, usually lamps I can angle so that I get the benefits of the light without it being directly on me.

The energy saving bulbs we have at home don't bother me so much, as dimmed or not, I just hate overhead lighting. We have a few energy saving bulbs in lamps though, and they don't give me problems because I can still angle them away from me.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

I don't do too badly if the overhead lighting is really dim, but usually I gravitate towards task lighting. I even have a dimmer switch on my bathroom light, the builders thought I was insane.

Do you have tinted lenses for the MIS? Have you tried messing around with coloured lightbulbs or anything like that?