Do Your Gadget Lights Harm Your Health?

Analysis: Those LED lights are more than
annoying; evidence indicates they might be
downright dangerous.

When I turn off my bedroom light at night, the
room is still lit up like the bridge of the Starship
Enterprise. No, I'm not some sci-fi fanboy, just
a gadget-happy materialist.
In one corner, I've got a
desk with a PC on it. Six
button lights on my two
monitors glow orange.
The PC power button
blinks bright green. The
speakers have a red light
near the switch. My
desktop microphone has
a shockingly bright green
light that casts a circle on
the ceiling, as if I'm calling
Batman. It's all plugged
into a generic surge
protector, which has a
very bright red light on
the toggle switch.
My wife usually leaves her
work laptop, a MacBook
Pro, and her personal
laptop, a Dell Studio, charging in the bedroom.
The Mac throbs with a blue-green light that
gradually brightens, then dims, then brightens
again like an airport beacon. Her Dell shines a
small, dim light in the front. And the AC adapter
has a light ring around the plug.
We also have a TV in the bedroom, and it has a
cable DVR plugged into it. The DVR has a bright
red light that's pointed straight at the bed. The
TV and the DVR each has a smattering of other
lights.
We've got two more surge protectors, each
with a bright red light. Our e-books have lights
that remain on when charging.
Our bedroom has a door to a bathroom, in
which our electric toothbrushes flash amazingly
bright green lights. Even when we close the
door, you can see the seam around and under
the door flash green! green! green!
Even with the room lights off, it's almost bright
enough to read by the collective light produced
by all of those status lights. And half of them
are flashing. I'm supposed to sleep? Isn't this
how they torture inmates at Guantanamo?
I wrote a column in this space four years ago
about how incredibly annoying all these gadget
status lights are and demanded that device
makers get rid of them.
I didn't expect manufacturers to respond. And
in fact, the problem is getting worse. The
number of gadgets we use keeps growing, and
each device seems to have more and brighter
lights.
Since I wrote that column, new research has
emerged that reveals how incredibly bad all of
those lights can be for our health.
Lights on During Sleep Harms Health
New science has shed light on various health
effects of sleeping in a room that isn't dark.
Lights at night can make you depressed and fat.
An Ohio State University experiment on mice
led researchers to conclude that even dim light
in a room during sleep may cause depression.
In a different study, Ohio State researchers
found that sleeping in a dimly lighted room
increases the amount of hunger experienced
during the day, which can contribute to weight
gain and possibly susceptibility to diabetes.
Sleeping in a room with dim lights increases a
woman's chance of getting breast cancer,
according to research conducted at the National
Cancer Institute and National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences. The reason is
that the body produces a cancer-fighting
hormone called melatonin at night during sleep.
But this process is interrupted if the room isn't
dark.
Another study conducted at the Scheie Eye
Institute at the University of Pennsylvania
School of Medicine found that babies who sleep
with a night light have an increased risk for
developing short-sightedness, or myopia. Just
10 percent of babies who slept in the dark most
nights needed glasses, compared with 34
percent who slept with night lights and 55
percent who slept with room lights on.
The bottom line is that the human body is
designed to sleep in total darkness. All those
gadget lights are lighting up our bedrooms at
night and damaging our health.
LED Lights are Toxic
The little lights that are built into our phones,
computers and other gear are made with a
semiconductor technology called the light-
emitting diode (LED). These lights are advertised
as "eco-friendly." But a recent study by
University of California at Irvine's Department of
Population Health & Disease Prevention found
that LED lights can contain hazardous
substances, including lead, arsenic, nickel and
more than a dozen other deadly materials.
According to a release by the university, "lead,
arsenic and many additional metals discovered
in the bulbs or their related parts have been
linked in hundreds of studies to different
cancers, neurological damage, kidney disease,
hypertension, skin rashes and other illnesses."
In general, say researchers, the brighter the
light, the more poisons they're likely to contain.
Colored lights contain more lead than white
ones. Red lights were found to contain up to
eight times the amount of lead allowed by
California law and about 35 times the amount
allowed by federal law. That's right: Red LED
lights are so toxic they're illegal.
Researchers say LED lights are generally safe
unless they break, in which case they advise
that you construct your own hazmat suit to
deal with the toxic cocktail that spills out.
One major ongoing risk is car accidents. When
cars collide, the LED lights built into the dash, as
well as gadgets and computers in the car, can
shatter, causing a release of toxic substances
that experts say should be treated like any other
hazardous materials spill. If LED traffic lights are
damaged, it's especially bad because those LEDs
are so bright and numerous. Unfortunately, the
risk is typically ignored, and emergency crews
are routinely exposed to these hazardous
materials without protection.
There's also an environmental cost. Current law
ignores the risks of LED lights, which are legally
disposed of in landfills. The toxic metals in the
lights, especially copper, can make its way from
landfills into lakes and rivers, poisoning wildlife.
And when gadgets are discarded and
"recycled," they're often handled by children in
filthy Chinese processing centers who have to
contend not only with the toxic materials
required to make computer equipment
function, but also the materials in the lights,
which aren't even necessary.
What Can You Do?
A single LED light on a single gadget is no big
deal. But most people surround themselves
with dozens of devices -- all with their own
lights -- in their bedrooms, homes, offices and
cars. These lights are incredibly annoying,
damage our health and represent a toxic hazard
both for people and the environment.
Worst of all: They're unnecessary! Sure, a status
light may alert you to an incoming e-mail, or tell
you at a glance that something is receiving
electricity. But we now know that benefits like
those are vastly outweighed by the costs.
You can protect yourself to some degree by
keeping as many devices as possible out of
your bedroom. Put black electrical tape over the
lights on those items you do keep in the
bedroom.
And treat any broken LED lights with extreme
caution.
Now that we know how toxic and dangerous
LED lights can be, gadget makers have a
responsibility to eliminate all lights that aren't
absolutely necessary. They waste electricity,
annoy users, wreck health and pollute the
environment.
Gadget makers love lights. But getting rid of
them would be the brightest thing they could
do.

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/220193/do_your_gadget_lights_harm_your_health.html