Discussion
RE: https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/117593068171654579
Oh how I wish for sodium lamps to make a comeback 😔
White LEDs are particularly bad with a "blue spike" that can suppress melatonin and disrupt our circadian rhythms. American Medical Association recommends against using blue-heavy LEDs.
Most vertebrates affected by this.
@Gargron
The bulbs outside our building (ours, not the streetlights) now are led, but so red they feel like they're a bit past sodium lamps and into red light district territory.
I'm not entirely sure how I'll feel about them when the novelty wears off, but at least they shouldn't have much blue in there
@Gargron@mastodon.social
What I'd really like to see is a reduction in the use of always-on outdoor lighting. I haven't found such proposals to be especially popular, unfortunately.
If a light source really needs to be left on all night outside, a phosphor-converted amber LED with a flicker-free driver is a good substitute for low-pressure sodium. There's no blue spike, and it emits a narrow band of long-wavelength light, though it's not as easy for astronomers to filter out as low-pressure sodium.
@Gargron @sundogplanets At the risk of sounding whiny, sodium lights are really noisy in quiet environments. I am not at all a proponent of violence, even towards objects but some nights I wish bad things on the neighbors light. I had ours disconnected. Fortunately, good lighting that is economical, considers, people, animals and dark sky is possible—if people care enough…
I don't really notice LED street lamps any more, but what does annoy me a little bit is all those single-color LED strips that so many stores use to make signs out of to put into their windows. These colors are very unnatural while also being obnoxiously bright at night.
@Gargron they are still gradually being replaced here, and every one that gets replaced with a bright white LED lamp pisses me off all over again. i walk at night a lot and there's such a difference
@Gargron @sundogplanets sodium lamps are also VERY bad for astronomy. We can do better.
@juandesant @sundogplanets What would be better?
@Gargron @juandesant It's high pressure sodium that are the problem, right? Low pressure sodium lights are great for astronomy (unless you are studying sodium in stars, maybe that's what you do?)
@Gargron How about Hunt-for-Red-October Red LED? ;-)
LEDs are a wild west and I feel like with street lamps nobody cares about picking the right color temperature or high CRI.
@Gargron I complained about high colour temperature LED streetlights to someone from the city of Calgary, citing all of the evidence that I could find about why they were a bad choice. Their response was that their wife liked the new streetlights. Now a bunch of them are also turning purple. We have literally painted our city in a bad light.
@Gargron you can’t really complain about leds being bad compared to sodium lamps for CRI reasons, low pressure sodium street lamps have a -44 CRI. Which actually does have benefits since it contributes to efficiency and reduced light pollution, but i didn’t even realize that CRI could go negative until i saw sodium lamp figures
@ikeacurtains @timmy When they put bright LEDs in street lamps that have low CRI, they make everything look ugly. Sodium lights have low CRI because they're orange, and they're not pretending to not be orange, so it's fine.
And in case you missed it, here's one other way sodium vapour lamps are cool.
YouTube
I've not had a problem. The 'temperature' is printed on the carton. Warm for leisure areas and cooler where you need a more clinical environment.
What I hate is car headlights ehere both the colour and concentration combine to dazzle us with less than perfect vision.
Whereas for cyclists that are bright and don't kill the battery after a few hours are a great boon.
@dey ...Is this an ad?
@Gargron even worse than street lamps are the advertising signs glaring all night long. I hate them!
@Gargron also they’re always too damn bright!!!
@Gargron Flicker rate… some of us see and/or perceive it, and it seems to trigger headaches. There are LEDs that don’t. Use them, especially where folks can’t easily opt out.
Ideed. I'm lucky that my University at least is somewhat competent and where replacing high pressure Hg vapor lamps with LEDs, they're actually opting for a low color temperature (~4000K-ish I'd say) and using fixtures that are mostly directed downwards.
@Gargron In the town I just moved from they still had them and the way they lit trees and streets at night was just gorgeous, especially the ginkgoes in autumn when they turn gold.